Printer/peripheral sharing devices are often ignored as potential connectivity solutions by uninformed users and aggressive sales people who see LANs as the sole answer to PC connectivity requirements. Cost per connected PC can be as slow as $5 for peripheral sharing devices and as high as $1000 for a sophisticated LAN. Additional costs, such as the need to hire technically oriented personnel to manage LANs, add to overall impact of PC connectivity decision making.
The business motivation that usually brings one to non-LAN PC connectivity is the recognition of the large expense involved in equipping individual PC users with their own dedicated printers. Resource sharing is an obvious solution as users need access to a printer, but not necessarily their own individual printer.
The key challenge of PC connectivity analysis is to grant this access to shared printers while maximizing the productivity of PC-based workers. The trick is to find the best connectivity solution for a given situation in terms of both delivered functionality and cost. Incorrect analysis of the situation may yield unsatisfactory results. Potential non-LAN PC connectivity solutions range from manual switches costing as little as $10 to printer sharing systems costing several hundred dollars. Delivered functionality must always be compared with that delivered by LANs, which can cost anywhere from $100 to $1500 per connected PC.
The specific business activities involved with peripheral sharing are relatively straightforward:
- Users may wish to share one or more printers among numerous PCs
- Users may wish to share one or more modems among numerous PCs. This is known as accessing a modern pool.
- Users may also wish to send e-mail to transfer files to another.
- Users may wish to occasionally log onto a minicomputer or mainframe. Given the occasional nature of this use, it is important to minimize the number of minicomputer or mainframe ports dedicated to this purpose.
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