Answers: May 2001

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My company outsources its Web hosting, but we're thinking of bringing it in-house. What are the pros and cons of hosting your own Web site?

Stay where you are unless you're part of a big company with its own IT department and a room full of high-speed servers feeding into a T3 line. Launching such a project can quickly cost you several hundred thousand dollars.

However, outsourcing isn't without its drawbacks. Carefully screen small, local companies. They may have good prices, but that may be because they don't have 24-hour support or adequate backup servers. If their servers crash, it could be hours before your customers can get through to your site again. Find out if a host has a record of reliability and high-speed connections. We recommend Verio (from $25 per month; www.verio.com) for price and reliability.

Desktop Publishing

My company publishes battlefield guidebooks. Which desktop publishing software do you recommend, QuarkXPress or PageMaker? What is the best system for scanning black-and-white photos into these programs?

Both programs have cult followings that Jim Bakker would kill for, but here's the deal: Get Adobe PageMaker ($500; www.adobe.com) if you have a lot of time to learn it and if you're publishing long documents that are mostly text. If you're producing smaller print jobs that are heavy on graphics, QuarkXPress (www.quark .com) is yours for around $850. But while QuarkXPress and PageMaker are both great programs, we really recommend Adobe InDesign ($699) for maximum versatility.

Most flatbed scanners out there will handle photos just fine. We suggest Epson's Expression 1600 Pro FireWire ($1,399; www.epson.com) for crisp, professional results at faster speeds than USB scanners will provide. InDesign and PageMaker, by the way, are designed to work directly with a scanner. QuarkXPress isn't.

VHS to DVD

I have a huge collection of VHS movies I've made over the years. How can I convert these to DVD?

That depends on what kind of VHS movies you're talking about. If you want to convert your collection of Kevin Costner flicks, forget about it. It'll be cheaper to buy the DVD versions—even if you pay list. If you're talking about priceless family videos, turn to a conversion service such as DVD Productions (www.dvd-productions.com). It'll cost you $125 to $250 for as much as 120 minutes of video. If you don't insist on DVD, conversion to CD-ROM runs $25 to $50, but you're limited to 60 minutes per disc.

For really large video collections, invest in a DVD recorder. Panasonic's DMR-E10 costs $2,995. For an even better deal, connect Apple's new Power Macintosh G4 733MHz model ($3,099; www.apple.com) to your VCR's S-Video port and burn your movies with the G4's built-in DVD-R/CD-RW drive.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Ziff Davis Smart Business.