I have to confess, I didn't know that was why it was called C:. And I'm not even a future generation....
"Ya learn something new every day. Some days, even two things."
Heh. Our first PC was a Leading Edge Model D, a proper IBM Clone with 2 5.25" floppy drives, A: and B: -- we later added an enormous 30MB HDD as our C: that we thought we'd never fill. (We didn't!)
Of course, this PC ran at a blazing 4.77 MHz, and not only didn't come with a mouse, but didn't have a port for one-- we had to buy a serial card.
Anyway, the 30MB HDD beat the heck out of loading MS-DOS (3.0, I think) from floppies every time you turned it on. I recall being strongly suspicious of such a thing being permanent as opposed to volatile memory.
This something that I never really understood: Why does a hard drive have to be so huge now? I can understand that the graphics, the features, etc. etc. take up that much more space, but seriously: do programs like Word, Excel, etc. etc. need to take up so much space?
Lex, check out
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
Basically it's lots and lots of features that need to be in there to be competitive, though Joel says that relative to how cheap hard drive space is now, it's not all that much.
I guess I can understand the point. For some reason, though, it still grates on my efficient side. For some reason, I just have this idea that as more versions come out, developers and programmers would make the routines in programs more efficient, smaller, etc. etc. Maybe they do, and people just come up with more and more stuff that can be done on a computer. . ..
As someone who's just bought an insanely huge hard drive, I think they're being made much bigger a) because they can be and b) to cope with the PC being turned into a 'media centre' with music and films etc on.
Yeah, I'm fine with that one & can understand the size of those programs. It's things that really feel like they should be something basic that get HUGE! I guess, if anything, I feel compassion for a friend who has a laptop with WinXP and has only a 3 or 4 gig HD for their main HD, & it's way too easy to fill up that space with just basic applications like Word, Excel and everything else that EVERYONE uses!
Personally I find the digital photos I take to be the biggest user of disk space...or at least the biggest hassle when it comes to making backups.
you would be amazed at my disk space requirements. I'm straining against my laptop drive with has 80GB. Seems like it would be enough for anyone. But I have 3 databases, including Oracle installed, plus 6 gigs of apps and 30 GB of mp3s, which is only a fraction of my collection. Once I start extracting TV shows from my TiVO and ripping more than a few DVDs I'll be really straining. Not to mention the pr0n, that takes up a lot of space too.