The practical limit on what a computer can do is not the memory built into the machine itself, although any serious computer should have at least 48 and preferably 64K of random access memory, but rather how much information it can quickly draw from its disks. Here again I speak from the perspective of the sadder-but-wiser man. In moving up from tapes to a disk drive, I took the bargain route. I bought one rather than two, used small disks (5 1/4" diameter) rather than large (8"), and chose single- rather than double-density storage. I saved a couple of hundred dollars but bought myself a source of frustration, since each disk fills up too quickly and I have to keep rotating different disks in and out of the drive. (Again, this may not sound like much to you, but live with it for a year or two and you'll see what I mean.) I think you're cheating yourself if you get anything less than two double-density 5 1/4" drives, which together should be able to store 400K or more of data. The exact capacity varies quite a lot, depending on the configuration a manufacturer chooses. A two-drive system of 5 1/4" disks for the Apple III, for instance, can store as little as 280K, while Heath-Zenith and Victor each offer two-drive 5 1/4" systems that hold more than 1,000K, or one megabyte. In some cases, you may do better to get two 8" drives, depending on the specific prices and configurations different manufacturers offer.

The top of the line among storage systems is the hard disk, most often available in the form called the Winchester. (This is not a brand but a nickname, applied by wits in the computer world because the model number on one of the earliest drives was 3030, reminiscent of a rifle.) The other disks, known as floppies, get pulled in and out of their drives like tape cassettes, but a Winchester is permanently sealed in its case. You don't need to remove the hard disks because each one stores a prodigious amount of data, from two or three on up to several dozen megabytes. With even a small Winchester, you can store some 2,000 pages of data at once—enough, for example, to contain all the notes for a book, along with drafts of all chapters, or a record of all your correspondence over a period of years. Winchesters are expensive; cheap models go for about $2,000, and some of them cost at least twice that much. But you shouldn't buy one right now anyway They're just entering the period of soaring volume and falling prices and will be cheaper in a year.

3. Scrimping on the printer. The same misguided frugality that directed me toward tape recorders also tempted me to think that my converted Selectric printer was a great deal. True, I could have made an even worse mistake. I could have bought a dot matrix printer, which is fast and cheap but which leaves you with a manuscript resembling a grocery receipt. If eyes other than your own are going to see the things you print, you're foolish to get anything except a letter-quality printer. This means either a converted Selectric, like my first printer, or one of the systems known as daisy wheels or thimbles. These have small wheels or drums that spin across the page and print at a phenomenal rate. They cost more than the Selectric to begin with, but they're a bargain in the long run. The real cost of the Selectric is the headaches of repair and breakdown. In operation, it is a blur of rods and connectors, one of which is always about to go awry. But daisy-wheel printers have only one main moving part. A year ago, I gave in and bought a daisy wheel, the Anderson-Jacobson 830 model, which cost about $1,400. In a year of steady use, it has broken once, which is about one tenth as often as the Selectric. You should get one from the start.