RE: some statistics on using bz2 for packages

["Terry Katz" <katz@advanced.org>]

Craig,

<snip>
> the reason i'm writing is that i'm curious to know what the status is
> with DVD roms. are they in common use yet? are there reasonably priced
> burners available yet? my knowledge of these units is minimal, all i
> know is that they are supposed to be multi-gigabyte RO drives.
>
> it's possible that in a year or two, the 650MB limit on CDs won't be an
> issue.
>

DVD-R's are still relatively 'new', and, just like when the first CD-R
drives came out, they are a bit expensive .. You can get a good Pioneer
(supporting 3.5gig and 4.2gig) for approx $5,400 and I've only seen prices
going up and up from there (another pioneer at $16,000, and a complete
hardware/software package at a high of $72,000)

I'm not sure how much of the population currently have DVD drives .. I only
have one because my company gave me a laptop that had one .. I still have
yet to get one for my personal machine (same with most of the other
employees at my office, the only DVD roms they have are in their laptops.. )
Who knows, though, in a year  or so DVD may begin to obsolete CDROM's
(especially with games and applications spanning multiple cd's now-a-days)

So, are there still people actively using 386's?  The lowest end machine I
still use is a P-90 which is acting as a masquerade for my home network (and
it does the job perfectly ;-)... we still have a bunch of older thinkpad's
with 486's, but their re-deployed as bookends and door stops currently..

-Terry