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05.21.07
Western Digital My Book USB Drive
 By A.P. Lawrence
I had to find an ATA internal hard drive the other morning. In years past there would have been at least a couple of them kicking around here somewhere, but I've let stock go down over the years as demand dwindled.
Reliability is part of the reason driving the demand side , but mostly it's just because hard drives are so big nowadays: customers are unlikely to need another. Cost is also an issue; people who need more space often just buy a new machine entirely.
But here I was with an "emergency" at 7:00 AM. Customer out of disk space, had been fighting it for weeks cleaning up files, but now absolutely needed more space. Not tomorrow. Today.
I whined. It's just somebody's desktop, and it's probably seven years old. Buy them a new machine.
No. The Big Boss was firm about this. No new machine. Add or replace this drive. Period.
But that's silly, I went on. By the time I buy a drive and get it and my body to your site, and replace it or add a secondary, the cost is going to be almost that of a new machine. This makes no sense!
Sighs from the other end. She whispered that she knew that, but Big Boss wouldn't listen. Please just do it?
Grumble, grumble, yeah, OK.
So where do I get a hard drive at 7:00 AM? Compusa has closed most of their stores and they don't open at 7:00 anyway. Ahh, Staples. Overpriced, limited selection, but they open early. That's the ticket!
Except.. where is Staples? We've been down here a little over a year but I don't know where everything is yet. So I checked on-line and found that yes, there was a Staples just 11 minutes away. Their "driving directions" link was broken, so I put it into Google and soon was on my way.
Of course I got lost. Turned out that I had mis-typed the address and the directions had me miles out of my way, but after arriving at an empty field on a narrow road, I knew that, and used ancient cell phone technology to call the store and get reoriented. Soon enough I was actually walking through Staple's front door.
I headed toward the computer stuff section and started looking at the selections. A young man in a red shirt appeared out of nowhere and asked if he could help me.
Huh? What kind of scam is this? At Staples, the help is trained to turn their heads and walk rapidly away from any customers. If you trap them behind a counter, they pick up the phone and ignore you until you go away. What the heck was this kid up to?
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com
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