Today, though, Carsonville not only owns more machines; they’re more sociable. Its twenty-one Kaypros speak to each other through a local area network. That’s gobbledygook for nearby computers swapping electronic files or programs—and sharing goodies like printers.
People, too, are communicating better. They needn’t swap floppy disks as often or fight their way through as much paperwork. Thanks to the computer network, Madden says, Carsonville may enjoy $1,000 a year more in effective work time from each office staffer. That’s not all. Sales normally are around $12 million a year; Carsonville competes in the dog-eat-dog areas of defense and auto-parts contracts; and the network may help win millions of dollars of new business. With facts handier, the executives can more easily submit low but realistic bids.
The secret is simple: The WEB network, which in late 1984 was listing for several hundred dollars per computer.
The WEB’s price sounds outrageous. It isn’t. Had Carsonville used Ethernet or another of the much-touted networks, it might have spent well over $1,000 to wire in each computer—perhaps several thousand with all the trimmings included.
Instead, Madden went by the philosophy of this book. He shopped around for the least costly gizmos that could do the job well.
Souping up the IBM mini wasn’t the answer. It offered 64 megabytes of storage, the equivalent of 32,000 double-spaced typewritten pages. But Madden worried if it could run programs fast enough with a number of people tugging at it simultaneously. “We had five terminals, and we dropped it to four,” he said, “because our mini slowed down horribly even with five.” Going the mini route, Madden would also have had to spend perhaps $30,000 on at least twenty more terminals without the brains of a full-fledged computer. In addition, he’d have had to buy new software and other hardware, so the final costs might have totaled up to $100,000. Besides, Madden cherished the notion of a “democratic” system. Machines at all locations should boast plenty of power; then people would feel more in control, and the whole system wouldn’t fall apart if a Big Brother computer broke down.
Madden might also have gone another route, buying a multiuser-system micro—one computer and a number of dumb terminals, somewhat like the mini arrangement.
That, too, however, wouldn’t have been “democratic.”
And with too many people piled on the supermicro, it might have run programs at the pace of a crippled snail.
UNIX, the software system developed by Bell Laboratories, was good for multiuser arrangements and allowed much more speed—but few computer and software companies had UNIX offerings out yet.