[CIMC-working] Computers and equipment

[Ian Bicking]

After the meeting I came back and cleaned up the office a bit, and put in
a new desk space for our new computers.  Don thinks he can get another
older Mac, and I'm picking up another PC hopefully tonight, so we should
have lots of computers soon.

In the process I thought I'd inventory what we have, and what we might
want to acquire.

----

New Dell PC that I described in a mail yesterday.  Very nice computer,
certainly better than either of my own computers.  Some things we could
add to it:

Headphones.  It has some simple speakers, but people will want headphones
for real audio work.

Negative scanner.  I brought one up in an email to Garth: $190 from
Microcenter.  We might also want a flatbed scanner, but very possibly not.

Combo Smartmedia and Compact Flash card reader.  You can get USB reader
for $20 on sale, about $40 otherwise.

CD Writer, for archiving, backup, distribution, whatever.  $100, but you
can find them for as little as $50 sometimes.

Bigger hard drive -- it has 10Gb, but if we kept archives of multimedia
stuff it could start getting full.  10Gb might be more than enough, we'll
find out.

It only has 2 USB ports, on the back.  If we have more than two
peripherals, or want to swap those peripherals between computers, we'd
want a USB hub.  $20.

It might be fine for video, I really don't know -- not great, but fine. 
We'd want a Firewire card in that case.  I'm not that excited about video
myself -- I think we should concentrate on the mediums we can do well:
text, still images, and audio.

The computer has a Zip drive, CD-ROM, a good sound card, and a good
monitor.  I can't think of anything else it would need for hardware.

For software it currently has (besides standard stuff) Office 97 and
Photoshop 6.  Chris G. can get us CoolEdit (for audio editing); she also
likes PaintShop Pro, which she might have around -- nothing wrong with
more options.  For quick image editing (cropping, resizing, rotating) the
image viewer I installed (IrfanView) works well and lets you get things
done fast.

The other software we should have is some sort of desktop publishing for
making fliers and whatnot.  Chris G. might have that too.

----

In other computer news, there's the PowerPC from Rita.  Don and I looked
at it, and we tried both ethernet cards Chris K. left.  Unfortunately
neither worked; the computer did not recognize them.  One even had a
"MacOS" sticker on it.  Don has CDs for MacOS 8.6 and 9.1 and thought an
upgrade was in order -- an upgrade might also get the computer to
recognize the hardware.  The computer has 48Mb of memory, and could use
more (especially with an OS upgrade).  An extra 64Mb can be had for $20. 
If Chris K. knows anything about getting a Mac to recognize hardware, he
may want to try it.

----

We have a laptop, a Mac PowerBook 1400cs/133.  It starts up and appears to
work just fine.  The display is dark, and has some corruption in one
corner.  Specs: OS 8.5, 48Mb RAM, PowerPC 603e processor (133MHz).  No
CD-ROM, and what's worse, no ethernet.  Without a net connection, it's
rather useless for the office.  The battery works, and it has the adapter.
 We could get an ethernet component of some sort (I don't know if this has
PCMCIA or what...) -- I'm not sure it's worth it.  I'd advise we give it
away or sell it cheap ($30?) to someone who can find it useful.  Maybe it
could be used to compose things in the field, then transfer the text by
floppy -- I'm not sure how useful that is, but if it got broken or stolen,
no big deal...

----

We have this old Mac Quadra sitting in the corner, and an external CD-ROM
and 21" monitor to go with it.  I think these are ours, not the Greens'. 
I think we should get rid of them.  Unfortunately to be responsible we
should recycle them or something, since they're toxic (especially the
monitor).  I don't know what to do -- you have to pay to dump them.  The
monitor works, but has a red tint and is hard to read.  It has a VGA
interface, so anyone should be able to use it (though, for instance, the
PowerPC here has a different interface).  Certainly if anyone wants that
monitor they should take it.

----

We also have:

SanDisk reader -- seems like it reads some sort of card that has lots of
pins.  Beats me.  USB interface.

Two phone recorders (i.e., phone-to-mic converter).

Microcassette recorder.  No cassettes.

Fancy audio wire -- it's heavy and looks like something you'd connect to
an amp.

Nokia cell phone.  Unless someone wants it, we should throw that away.

Then just some wires.


  -- Ian