Strategies for Getting Into Computers

If you're interested in getting your farm's operations computerized, and you're just starting, you could choose various strategies for doing so. One way is to first buy the basic hardware and components you think you need, and then add memory and other components later. If you do that, be sure you can add additional disk drives, memory, and a printer to your computer, all at a reasonable cost.

What can you do with a small computer once you outgrow it, and you want to get a bigger one? You might want to use your older computer in a small, specialized farm operation, or keep it to retrieve and analyze records that you stored on the old equipment. Other alternatives would be to trade it in on a larger computer, advertise to sell it through the local want-ads, trade or sell it to a friend or neighbor, keep the small computer for someone else in the family (perhaps a game-playing youngster), or donate it to a local school or religious or charitable group and take a tax write-off.

The farm of the future may have many computers, some for specific functions such as irrigation scheduling or dairy operations, and one for financial records. Having several computers would help farmers deal with the problem of malfunctioning computers, so that the whole farm would not be shut down if one computer goes down.