>>>>My advice to Dimity is - find an excellent network person.
>>>
>>>Good to have one on your list - alternative is to make client pay for all work caused by his network issues.
>>
>>I do both. That's how (and a lot of TLC) I keep the networker happy.
>>This is just one example of non-programming issues that would drive me batty if I didn't have that guy. Printing is probably the worst offender, followed by hiccups with remote connections.
>>It's great to be able to forget about those things and concentrate on application programming because that networker is just about infallible.
>>
>>Technology also helps.
>>Every time I do a SQL backup and I notice that Microsoft has not changed the default medium from "Tape" I remember the hours frittered away on tape devices.
>>I haven't seen one in so long I forget what they look like, but they were another source of grief.
>
>[shrug] perhaps the reference to "tape" is something like "tar" on *nix systems? (i.e. an file bundling format rather than physical media) ... or the virtual cardpunch/reader found on IBMs VM systems was used to transport data between different computers?

I always head the idea tar is /was the directory structure used on tapes. You need to read the whole data to get the last file. No random access. The 'nix folks just stuck to it - tar is a mighty tool, but the file format. OMIPU.