Despite advances in data-storage technology, huge hard-disk drives and
computer faxes, the volume of paper in the average office has continued
to grow. The reason for this is computers with printers. While the
younger generation are comfortable working on screen, a lot of older
people are not happy with a document draft unless they have a printed
copy of it. (1)______ . Older computer programs were generally not
capable of producing screen previews of what was to be printed, and you
simply had to see a draft copy. (2)______ .
This led to more copies, until the computer software finally produced a
satisfactory document. (3)______ . Word processing programs today are
capable of showing, on screen, exactly what the output will look like,
so that the hard-copy drafts are generally not required for documents,
spreadshe ets, etc. (4)______ . But in doing so, they miss the point,
because the document is already on file. (5)______. On the other hand,
disk drives are now big and cheap enough that they are a much better way
of storing data.
A. Those days are now long gone.
B. Printing it out is wasteful, because laser cartridges and paper are both very expensive.
C. There used to be a good reason for this.
D. Consider, for example, how much time it takes to send a fax.
E. This draft would then need to be corrected for layout several times.
G. But, even though they don’t need to print out documents any more, people still want copies “for the file”