Reference no: EM132147913

The following conversation has some mistakes, can u help me point them out? what are the mistakes?

Mark: Hi, David, my company does not use much computer technology and I would like to change that. But I have a few questions and concerns.

David: Ok. How can I help?

Mark: We had a hard drive failure last year and lost lots of data. What do you recommend we do?

David: You should try something called RAID technology. It combines multiple hard drives into one storage unit and improves storage reliability and performance. There are different RAID levels. Please consider RAID 0 as it is the fastest and the most efficient in these situations.

Mark: I went to BestBuy shop yesterday for a new laptop. They talked about these 64- bit and 32-bit machines. What are they?

David: They refer to the amount of data the computer can process. A 64-bit computer can handle data as large as 64-bit and 32-bit for a 32-bit computer. Obviously, the larger, the better.

Mark: I have just read an article explaining different storage devices for a computer. Holy cow, there are many, like register, RAM, ROM, cache, hard drive, SD card etc. Why make it so complicated? Can they make up their mind and use one of them, say the hard drive?

David: They are indeed the same thing. But different people have different preferences. So, they build everything into one machine to satisfy different needs.

Mark: So, if I am going to buy a new laptop from BestBuy, what kind of storage devices should I choose?

David: Choose an enterprise hard disk.

Mark: Why?

David: It can work 24 hours/day - 7 days/week with 100% workload. And it has a higher mean time between failure.

Mark: Awesome. Also, I heard about mainframe and supercomputer. They are very expensive. Do you think I would need a supercomputer?

David: Not quite. The mainframe is designed for multi-tasking, to support many applications and users' requests at the same time. The supercomputer is for largescale and complex computations. For business computing, the mainframe is more appropriate.

Mark: I went to Canada Computers Inc. They recommended IBM AS/400 server. Its price is very affordable. Do you think the IBM 400 server would be sufficient to run e-mail, website and accounting software?

David: It depends on what operating systems these services require. If they run on the same type of operating system, it should be fine. However, if some run on Unix, some run on Windows, you will need multiple IBM 400 server machines as a server machine can only install and run one operating system at any given moment.

Mark: Ok, right now, we have 5 Intel Pentium PCs with Windows 98 preinstalled. Each is running some accounting software and MS Office 2000. We occasionally use Gmail.

We want to replace them. We also like to have a website for the company, some program to keep track of inventory. How much would it cost?

David: 5 PCs, each cost $600; 5 copies of accounting software, says Microsoft Money, each is about $100; 5 copies of MS Office 2013, each is about $300; 5 copies of Excelbased inventory system starting from $500; building a website costs about $1,000 and up. So, you are looking at $8,500 and up.

Mark: Ok. This is not as expensive as I expected. But once we build it, how long can it last?

David: It depends on its usage. The more often you use it, the more likely it will break down sooner. On average, I would say about 10 years.

Mark: One of our employees, Helen, suggested that we could use some software for free and we could even customize it to our needs. She called it ... ... Mmm ... ... Yes, she called it freeware. Is it really so?

David: I believe she meant open source software. Freeware is free but open source software is not only free, but also its source code is publicly available, and you are allowed to modify it. Because it is free and highly customizable, if you find some open source fits your need, you definitively should go for it.

Mark: I heard about web services? Do you think I should consider having such technology in my company?

David: This is a fantastic technology. It can help your company achieve integration among disparate applications over the internet. However, it's platform-dependent and language-dependent. This will make it run in only specific hardware series with the operating system not being relevant.

Mark: Also, I heard about this cloud computing thing. It sounds really cheap. What is it and should I use it?

David: Cloud computing means that you run your application and services on someone else's machine and you access it over the Internet using a web browser. It is cheap, easy to set up and flexible. I never heard any bad things about it. You should definitively use it as much as possible. You can even run your inventory system, office software and, accounting software in the cloud.

Mark: What about grid computing? Is it the same as the cloud computing or there is a difference? It's very confusing to me.

David: Both have the same vision of providing services to the users through sharing capabilities and resources. However, cloud computing is better because it can divide a massive job into smaller chunks and processes those chunks separately.

Mark: Ok, then, I need to know, what should I do with the old machines?

David: You can either recycle them or give them away. But make sure you delete all your data and files before you do that. You can do that by deleting the data and files under Windows, then empty the recycle bin.