>For me, using a 33K modem and zmodem: It takes about 3 or 4 minutes for
>my uqwk 2.0 to grab and package around 2 Megs of articles, and it takes
>zmodem around 7 minutes to download the 2 Megs (these estimates are
>quite rough).
I found with my ISP that eventually server load increased causing
uqwk and the zipping process to run slowwwwwwwly, negating any speed
advantage for offloading the task to the server and downloading
compressed files... too much thumb-twiddling going on on my end. So
I switched over to directly accessing the newsserver using souper
(using Hardy Greich's OS/2 vsoup for maximum speed with 10 separate
threads running) and it cut my time online dramatically. YMMV, but
if the server is slow, consider changing over from uqwk/zipping to
direct access and let the modems do the compression.
I regularly get about 800-900K/day combined mailing lists
and 30 or so newsgroups of varying loads, and spend a total of
4-5 minutes online once a day.
>I had assumed it would not be great for my hard disk to be whirring around
>that much each day. I believe the total life of hard disks is measured
>in read/write revolutions - yes?
I don't think so. Most hard drives are spinning all the time, and
the read/write head floats above it on an air cushion, so wear is
nonexistent from that aspect. Most drives are rated like 800,000 hrs
mean time before failure (MTBF) [maybe 3-4yrs?], so is it the
spindle motor bearings wearing out first, or the worm-gear driven
read/write head movement slack building up that makes it unreliable?
Insignificant, really. A little advice from the old upgrader, who
took a 1990-era 286/16 with 1mbRAM, not no steenking 640k, and a
whopping 40mb! hard drive to a 486/33 VLB 20mbRAM and 2 new HD's for
720mb recycling all possible parts up till 3/97, and now a fresh
PPRo150 / 128mbRAM, 2 2.1gb SCSI drives, ready to start again... ?
I say use the little devil hard and when you begin to worry about
its age or reliability or the performance is excruciatingly slow
enough to warrant dipping into your wallet, wait just a little bit
more (so drive capacity ups by another 1/2 for the same standard
price of about USD$230), then purchase the latest standard offering
and enjoy your new 8.6Terrabyte drive along with the existing drive
(don't throw the puppy out till it clunks! or can be sold/traded
off), or switch to whatever else replaces these old spinning
platters we use now.
Purchasing excess capacity before you really need it is comforting,
but you do pay the going market rate then for hardware when the
performance is always increasing for about the same price-point. In
other words, prices remain pretty constant, but newer-faster-better
is always in the pipeline, if only you had the patience to wait till
you NEEDED it.
's my advice.