Hardware Solutions

The Premise

You work in a graphic design studio. Your boss, Mr. Rubble, pokes his head into your office and barks this order at you “Find a new hard drive for Fred. His is dead. Bring me options.”

The Process

Being thorough as you are, you'll brush up on all the latest storage tech. You'll look at:

• prices
• specifications
• availability
• where it's going to be used
• how it's going to be used
• competing products
• possible purchase sources (stores or online)

You'll find and exhaustive list of solutions. From that list, you'll weigh the pros and cons of each. Choose which you think is the most suitable solution to present to Mr. Rubble.

You need to explain why some products don't fit as much as why your solution is the one. "This hard drive was a candidate, but we chose another because it had this feature."

Make sure you document your findings. I suggest creating a folder on your computer to keep things organized. Save images from the web. Take notes in a word processing document.

Your Dog & Pony Show

At this stage in the game, you figure out how to present your ideas to the boss. This is up to you. You'll actually be presenting your findings to the class.

Do not limit yourself to this list of presentation methods. Think outside the box. Have fun with this. You are free to present any way you wish, but it needs to be professional, clear and thorough. It can be funny, but it shouldn't be silly.

These are only a few ideas of how you can present your findings.

• Create a slide show to project on the screen.
• Do an oral presentation with props to show the class.
• Act out a skit of your scenario.
• Act out a skit, film it and present your movie to the class.
• …

During your presentation, your audience will be taking notes. They'll even be free to interrupt to ask a question, if something is not clear. Be ready to be challenged. You'll need to defend your solution.

What's in this for us?

The underlying goal of the whole presentation is to teach your class about the technology problem you've been given and the solution you've found. To that end, you need to present all peripheral information within your subject matter. Don't limit your presentation to your solution only. Show all possible solutions. Tell us why you rejected them in favour of your final choice.

Make sure you use the right terminology. i.e.: is it memory, or storage? There's a difference.

Discuss the properties of the technology you've chosen. For example, if you've gone with a solid state hard drive, you could say it's more expensive per gigabyte, but it's so much faster because it has no moving parts. See what I mean?

Scenarios

I'll give you one of the topics below and match you up in teams at the start of the assignment.

1- Data Storage

Add external storage for a MacBook Air user. This user is always on the go, so she bought the lightest, most portable Mac she could find. The problem is that there's a very little storage in this computer. She needs a drive she can keep on her desk to store large files she doesn't need when she's on the road.

2 - Memory

Fred's iMac was bought with only two GigaBytes of RAM a few years ago. It's starting to show its age. It's performing slowly. You've been tasked with upgrading the memory in it. It's an (version) iMac9,1.

3 - Processor (single & multi-core)

Barney Rubble does video editing. He needs a powerful computer to work with video in his office. He also needs a computer he can take to his clients to show his work. You were given the job of finding the right computer for him. Put the emphasis on the processor.

4 - Connecting Peripherals

Find a solution for connecting peripherals to a computer. Which interface is optimal for which device? You have a computer, printer, scanner, external monitor, RAID drive, keyboard and mouse.

5 - Displays

Buy an external monitor for a laptop user in the studio.

6 - Internet/Intranet

Provide a plan for building an internal network in a design studio. Everyone will need to be able to share files in the office, as well as access the internet. Assume you have internet access in the office already. You have to figure out how to get it to each computer in the studio.

7 - Scanners

Purchase a scanner for a designer who scans over-sized documents as well as images for reproduction.

8 - Printer (Laser & Ink Jet)

Purchase a printer for proofing in the studio. You have an $800 limit, all in.

9 - Backup & Archive

Find the best backup and archive plan for a studio with 6 employees. The studio does general graphic design work for print and the screen. They also dabble in video, which produces very large files.

10 - Internet Access (including bandwidth & throughput)

Shop internet access for a graphic design studio with 6 employees. You need to make sure that the connection is fast, stable and allows for large downloads every month. Don't over-buy nor under-buy.

11 - Tablet

The studio you work for is getting more illustration contracts. They need a tablet to sketch and illustrate directly on the computer. You have less than $700 to spend, all in.