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Xref: sserve gnu.misc.discuss:6477 comp.os.linux:12420 comp.unix.bsd:6447 Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.os.linux,comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!agate!boulder!colorado.edu!ejh From: ejh@khonshu.colorado.edu (Edward J. Hartnett) Subject: Re: Suggestions for the free Unix projects In-Reply-To: joeg@gagme.chi.il.us's message of Mon, 12 Oct 1992 04:25:18 GMT Message-ID: <EJH.92Oct12095359@khonshu.colorado.edu> Sender: news@colorado.edu (The Daily Planet) Nntp-Posting-Host: khonshu.colorado.edu Organization: CIRES, University of Colorado References: <1992Oct7.040347.425@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <1992Oct12.042518.19839@serveme.chi.il.us> Date: 12 Oct 92 09:53:59 Lines: 34 In article <1992Oct12.042518.19839@serveme.chi.il.us> joeg@gagme.chi.il.us (joe grosch) writes: I recently spoke to the owner of Walnut Creek CD on the phone. His company is distributing a CD of the GNU and X source code. He charges $40.00 for this CD. The company I am contracting for is interested in distributing a product on CD and I was researching costs. The owner of Walnut Creek CD quoted figures very simular to the above figures, execpt he indicated that a number of the larger pressing plants will take a tar of the data on 8mm and do the mastering for you. If I remember right he said the mastering charge was $200.00 or $300.00. That is a lot less than buying your own mastering system at ~$20,000.00 a pop. I only followed this thread sporatically. Did someone suggest that you have to buy a mastering system? That's crazy. I recently (two years ago) produced a CD of meteorological data for a research project I was working on. I can't remember the exact costs, but they were quite reasonable. I think I bought a trial version of the CD (pre-master I think they called it) for $500. Plus maybe another $300 processing cost. After getting the trial version and making a bunch of changes, I had 150 copies made for two or three bucks a copy. I think we charged people $35, which mostly covered all costs (including documentation of microfische). Of course, we weren't trying to make a profit, or even necessarily cover costs totally either, we had funding for this stuff. I sent the CO ROM people my data on 6250 bpi 9-track mag tapes, in tar format. I got the very strong impression that they could handle pretty much any media. In fact, I think the guy mentioned that a lot of people sent in a hard drive with the data, and that was the easiest of all. So it's quite easy to get the CD made. (Of course, it's a little more difficult to ensure there are no mistakes on it! As someone else pointed out, it can be a lot of work, and that cost money too.) -- Edward Hartnett ejh@khonshu.colorado.edu