Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!uunet!bionet!cgecmu51.bitnet!BAIROCH
From: BAIROCH@cgecmu51.bitnet (Amos Bairoch)
Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank
Subject: Data banks and CD-ROM.
Message-ID: <8912192350.AA01990@net.bio.net>
Date: 19 Dec 89 20:55:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@genbank.BIO.NET
Lines: 28



I do not know why everyone seems to discuss the long term adavantages of
distributing sequence data banks on CD-ROM: if you add up the number of
CD-ROM disks containing Genbank and/or EMBL + PIR and/or SWISS-PROT
distributed by many secondary distributor you already have more CDs
out there than tapes !

You must remember that most commercial PC sequence analysis packages
distributes data banks on CD. EMBL also ship an increasing amount of
CDs.

I always have the impression that managers of big computer centers tend
to ignore what happening in the real world. CDs are not only a good
and very cheap distribution medium, they are also an efficient on-line
storage alternative. Ok they are slower than hard disk and it takes 2 to 4
hours to run a Lipman and Pearson on the complete data bank, but buying a
386 system plus a CD drive and using it only for this purpose is much
cheaper than using a VAX.

I saw someone quoting a price of $ 2000.- for a CD drive, well that's
sure is an expensive one !  You have some discount house that sell drives
for about $ 500.- List prices of most drives are around $ 1000.-

Amos Bairoch
Dept. Medical Biochemistry
University of Geneva
Switzerland