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.If only certain companies areable and willing to put their products in my hands, I have to judge thoseproducts as superior to those who can t.It s kind of an economic Darwinismthat tends to favor the better-financed, better-staffed company.But oftenthe better-financed and better-staffed company just happens to be the com-pany that makes and supports the better product.I hope you agree.Research Methods You Can UseYou can certainly use my methods to do your own prepurchase evaluations.If you want to find out the best products in a particular area, explore thetopic on your favorite search engine (mine is Coppernic at www.copernic.com) and then examine the web sites of each company you dis-cover.Although I would not recommend you impersonating a member of thepress, you can and should contact the company s investor relations office,requesting the appropriate annual reports and Form 10K (a more com-plete financial report required by the Securities and Exchange Com-mission [SEC]).These will be sent to you for free.While you re at the web site, check out the technical support options.Does the manufacturer offer a toll-free phone number or a pay-as-you-wait900-support option? Is live tech support available 24/7 or just during busi-ness hours in Sri Lanka? Is there a knowledge base that you can search foranswers? These are all good research leads that can help you decide whichproduct to buy.Another good technique is to check out the Contact Us facilities on thesite.Does the site provide an address and phone number prominently, ordo you have to search the web site registration to get the name of a¤'responsible party? Many companies simply don t want to be bothered by¤'their customers after you buy their product.The fastest way to find suchfirms is by noting the lack of a Contact Us page or one that is populatedonly by anonymous email options. 03_200505_Avg_ch03 9/5/03 11:28 AM Page 117Investing in the Necessary Equipment117The web sites of large equipment distributors are also a good place toobtain equipment specifications and comparisons.When writing this Desk-top Video Studio Bible book, I spent hours researching on a web site main-tained by B&H Photo and Video, a large distributor in midtownManhattan (www.bhphotovideo.com).Here you can enter a generic cate-gory, such as animation software, and receive a current listing of all the cur-rent brands offered, descriptions, photos, and extensive literature suppliedby both the manufacturer and B&H s staff of full-time web authors.You canalso verify the retail and street prices of any product and its relative avail-ability for purchase.Naturally, in your search for good products, your search engine will turnup numerous forum and chat sites with references to your query.When youread them, make sure they are up-to-date.On numerous occasions, I haveobtained negative opinions of companies only to learn, after a bit more dig-ging, that the opinions were several years out of date.The companies men-tioned in many cases had been improved by better managers, had beenrebuilt, or had, since the time of the bad review, corrected the source of thenegative comments.In such cases, you might be led to avoid a company thatdeserves better consideration.Verify the dates of the reviews you read, andif you really want to do your homework, write to the reviewers you read andask for more details.Sometimes you will find the reviewer s address isbogus.What does that mean?Building a Mission-Critical WorkstationThe most essential element of your computer is this: It must be missioncritical.That is, it simply must not fail the mission under any circum-stances.If you design your computer and its support systems so that noth-ing can go wrong, you are making your computer mission critical.Let s say,for instance, it s summer and your town is subject to brownouts.Have youconsidered what you would do if you were in the middle of a final render ona deadline job and the power failed? If you said, I bought an uninterruptedpower supply and a gasoline generator is installed in the shed outside, I dsay that your power support was mission critical.You cannot afford to lose your work after you ve invested significant timein it or before it is delivered to the client.It would also be nice, after you vedelivered the work, to have your work archived safely.Using such archives,you can offer your client the ability to revise the work at some later date. 03_200505_Avg_ch03 9/5/03 11:28 AM Page 118Chapter 3118Clients are notorious for losing masters of everything and you can oftensave the day and make a nice piece of change by offering a copy of workthat was otherwise lost.Good archives are a byproduct of a mission-criticalcomputer.Power SupplyOne of the most frequent sources of computer problems is the power fromthe outlet.Tiny spikes and drops in the current affect your hard drive s per-formance and longevity, while brownouts and blackouts simply wreakhavoc.Simply put, if you are connecting your computer directly to the housepower, you are heading for a meeting with the graphics grim reaper.Asidefrom the problems noted, a lighting strike within a few hundred yards ofyour location can cause anything from a simple crash to a complete and per-manent disabling of your computer
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