How do you get $89,000 worth of new computer hardware into agovernment office building?

The answer, following a demonstration at the Brookhaven-LincolnCounty Government Complex Wednesday afternoon, is verycarefully.

A city water department forklift was used to remove the county’snew approximately 1,100-pound hardware mainframe from the deliverytruck. After releasing the equipment, which had been bolted to adelivery pallet, county jail trustys and County Administrator DavidFields maneuvered the computer through the complex’s narrow doorsand into the supervisors’ board room.

Fields said county records are scheduled to be converted to thenew computer Jan. 17. County offices are scheduled to be closedthat day in observance of Martin Luther KIng’s birthday.

“That way, we can do the conversion with the offices closed,”Fields said. “We shouldn’t have to hinder the taxpayers any.”

Fields said the mainframe impacts all county offices, includingthe tax collector’s office, chancery clerk’s office, countyadministration, circuit court and justice court. The sheriff’sdepartment utilizes the mainframe as part of a hybrid computersystem.

The county’s current computer is about six years old and hadreached its disk space capacity. Fields said the county’s mainframehas a typical five-six year lifespan.

The chancery’s clerk’s office imaging system for land records isconsuming a lot of space, Fields said. The new system will addressthose concerns.

“It’ll do us for the next five to seven years,” Fields saidabout the new equipment.

With a vertical alignment, the computer will be more spaceefficient in its room next to the boardroom. Fields mentioned someother expenses in addition to the equipment.

“We’ll have some costs for conversion and we’ll have somehardware and software maintenance costs over the five years,”Fields said.