----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Lindner" <[log in to unmask]>
> Factually -
> Moore's law has nothing to do with storage - it has to do with the density 
> of transistors on an integrated circuit approximately doubling every 12 
> months.
>
The FUNCTIONAL version of this law suggests that the capacity of readily-
available desktop computers will "double" (in terms of on-board memory and
processor speed) every 12 months! So far this has proven accurate!

In 1989, my then-employer offered me/us interest-free loans, maximum amount
$2500, to purchase computers. I paid around $2460 for a 80286 machine (long
since thrown away!) with a "great whopping" 65MB hard drive! It served me
well for close to a decade...but even though I augmented it with various 
"yard
sale" machines! I eventually gave in and bought a Pentium? 233 machine 
(around
$1000). My current computer came from a "Staples" sale...uses Windows Vista
(Bill Gates' revenge on everybody who called him a "geek" before he owned 
all
the money in the civilized world)...and, except for being much faster at 
sorting
and indexing dBase files, doesn't seem to be a major improvement on my old 
286!

Steven C. Barr