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The cost of sorting out the mess would be horrendous.

"Well, if you want to look at it that way," said Bob, conceding that I might have a reason for relieving him of some cash. He suggested that I visit the following week to talk to Creepy Ted, the accountant. I remembered Creepy Ted from 17 years ago. A grey, cadaverous man with the limpest handshake you can imagine. It was like grasping a dead cod. God knows what it's like now. I'm amazed he's still working.

In from the cold

I visited Bob's place the following week, on the coldest day of the year. A hot coffee to kill the chill? Fat chance. I felt even colder after being 'greeted' by Ted, who now looks about 103.

We started by discussing the current system and the folly of not having a backup. He promised to shake Sid from his stupor that very day. Moving on to the requirements for the new system, he proudly informed me that it needn't 'do' email. They already had a system for that whereby everybody in the office shared a common PC that was sitting in the corner.

I told him that I thought he needed a small file server plus a PC to replace each of the ageing

Then we moved on to software. Word processing? Got that, on the shared PC. Excel? "What does that do? No, I don't think we need that." Internet? On the shared PC. They'd even changed to broadband when they'd sussed it was cheaper than paying phone connection charges. Did I want to take a modem in part exchange? "Er, no thanks."

I showed him some modern accounting software with integrated customer relationship management (CRM) features, which are great for tracking customer service issues, and who should be dealing with them. No, didn't want that, either. The works manager records that using WordPad - on the shared PC, of course.

Quote, unquote

I'd checked with Mrs R and it is possible - though not advisable - to run old UNIX programs under Windows Server 2003 after a recompile. But do I offer him the option of sticking with something that is dated but could, with a rewrite, be easier to use? At a higher cost, of course. Still, what the eye doesn't see, and all that.

I knocked up a quick quote for a simple server with a backup device ("What! Can't we use the one Sid's just got?") and a rewrite for the application plus data translation. It'll take me at least a day to work out how to get the old UNIX box to transmit the data to anything we can work with now. Hopefully a serial connection and FTP will work.

But Ted's aghast at the figure. The fact that the bill is less than the original system cost in 1991 is lost on him. "Don't know whether I can get Bob to pay that much," he said glumly. "How much is the old system worth second-hand?"