TECH: Hard drive or CD-ROM tower?

[Susan Mackey <iluvlib@NS.NET>]

I need information/opinions on installing Info Finder and SIRS Discoverer
to a hard drive rather than purchasing a CD-ROM tower.  Our LAN will be
serving 12 student stations for now, and be linked to the school-wide LAN
in the future with a max of about 50 stations.  We may eventually run EBSCO
Primary Search on this network, also.  My reading indicates that
downloading a CD-ROM to the hard drive increases the speed at which the
stations access the information.  The SIRS tech told me that there should
be no problem downloading each time we receive an update.

A 3 gig hard drive runs about $400 with taxes and S/H.  This is a lot less
expensive than a tower.  I am imagining that the set up is simpler, too.
Does anyone have experience or an opinion on this?  We will be running a
Windows 95 environment over Novell Netware 4.1.  What kind of menuing
software would you recommend?

Thanks for the help.  I know there is always someone _out there_ who has
the experience and expertise to help.

Susan Mackey
District Librarian
Rio Linda Union School District
Sacramento, CA