Coping With Inadequacy

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Then there are some options you must have if you plan to do a certain task. "You go to any computer store," says Honeycutt, "and there will be someone sheepishly shelling out two or three hundred dollars for something they didn't realize they needed or thought they were originally getting." The add-on you might need depends on your system. To do color graphics with an IBM PC, for instance, you need a color monitor -- a high-resolution one costs around $700 to $900 -- and a $250 card to drive the monitor.

To run some newer software packages, you might need more RAM. Lotus 1-2-3, for example, which runs on the 16-bit IBM PC, won't work without at least 128K RAM. (A newer version of 1-2-3, designed to run on IBM's new XT machine, needs 192K.) If you bought the plain vanilla version of the PC, which comes with 64K you would have to purchase an expansion card, with another 64K, for $350. (Cards, or boards, slip into special slots in a computer's chassis. They can be either expansion cards or interface cards, which allow one device to work with another.)

Or, your work might require extra memory. Stephan's computers each have 256K. But until he increases the RAM of at least one micro to 512K, he won't be able to run the giant 1-2-3 spreadsheet he has created. That model, which helps him calculate the loans on any piece of equipment SMI owns, measures 30 columns by 250 rows and uses 300K. "We can't even get it on the machine until we upgrade the memory," he says.

Mark Nigberg, the computer-savvy president of Nigberg Corp., a $6 million -- a-year advertising and public relations firm in Framingham, Mass., found adding more memory the least of his worries when he bought an Apple II four years ago. (That model has recently been replaced by the improved Apple IIe.) At the time, about the only software available for the micro, which uses the Apple's own operating system, Apple DOS, were game programs and a handful of business programs. So Nigberg first spent about $200 for a so-called integer card, which added 16K to the computer's 48K RAM and allowed him to program in Basic. Then he noticed that the business software he was trying to create already existed on the shelves. But to use it, he needed Digital Research Inc.'s CP/M operating system. For about $200, he bought a card that allows the Apple to run CP/M.

He then bought word processing and spreadsheet programs. But when he looked on the screen, he says, "every letter was capitalized and when I was in VisiCalc I couldn't get 80 columns." So for a few hundred dollars more he bought an "enhancer" card that provided upperand lower-case characters and a "video-term card" that let him see 80 columns at once. His next purchase was a $300 modem and a communications board that allows him to swap data electronically with his clients.

Along the way, he bought a couple of printers -- and two more boards for serial and parallel interfaces, so he could hook up the printers with the computer. Then, last year, he bought another Apple -- along with all the accessories he had for his first machine -- to accommodate employees who wanted to use the computer.

The two machines, he explains, "were generating lots of diskettes. Everything was mixed and matched." The next step was to buy two 10-MB Corona hard disks for $2,500 each. But, he says, "I'm filling up this box with cards and peripherals, and I'm creating too much heat, so I got a system saver." That device, which costs $75, in addition to allowing the user to turn everything on with one switch, provides a fan and a power-line-surge suppressor. Now, says Nigberg, "if I get a line surge, the whole thing won't blow up."

Nigberg figures he has gone to the wall in adding capacity to his Apples. "You can stuff only so much into the box," he says. Eventually, "you run out of power, you run out of steam, and you run out of space." Consultant Jay Honeycutt would agree. Running your business on an Apple, he says, "is like hauling timber in a Volkswagen. You can do it, but it's not the most logical way of doing things."

Nigberg is now looking into a departmental computer that will provide multiple terminals, let employees share data, and allow him to take advantage of advances in technology. After all, he says, even if he got more Apples and linked them with a network (see INC., November 1982, page 49), he would just have "five or six little boxes using little box software." The system he chooses will also let him use his Apples as terminals.

Stephan, though, plans to add another IBM PC and network the three machines. And even though he doesn't intend to use the third PC in jobs that require much storage, he will buy it with another hard disk, "because we've learned how easy it is to eat up file space." One week, for example, he had to erase files off one hard disk every day just to give him room to operate. "I was bumping my head on the 10 megs," he says. "We're so optimistic about the time savings and the convenience of the hard disk," he adds, "that it's worth the extra money to do it up front as opposed to later."

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