Looks like you can store data on computer MP for 20 , or on Optical Chip for .5 Per MP. If a computer can read a chip, why not use the cheaper? Or, can you secure some (secure) matrix storage so you can grab you backups of that blackmail when you are on the lamb?

I might be way off here, but I figure that the chip is just empty storage, but the computer MP you're buying for 40 times as much is operating software and processing power.

So of course, you'd go buy a blank opti-chip to download paydata. The flipside is that if you want a system that'll run HaloVIII or operate the Boeing metallurgy plant's automated factories, you gotta buy the computer with the MP to do it.

Or maybe I'm just blowing smoke.

Punch cards. Only the really devoted deckers have any idea how to read them.

Or wax cylinders.......

Simple. You buy a computer with enough MP to do whatever task you are doing (think of today buy a comptuer with enough HD space and RAM to do whatever task you are doing). But buy the optical chips ( think CD-Rs of today) to store data on a easily carried and hidden copy of the data that does need a computer itself. Just one to read it. You could always mail (you know like postal mail) a set of optical chips to Lone Star about the details of someone that you dont care for especially if you have details that would get the police all riled up. It is a little hard to mail a computer that way.

so MP for the computer is to work from/on
OpticalChips are offline storage.

dx

Right now I'm playing Footnote, a dedicated data courier. He stores his "paydata" in his head, encrypted of course. And honestly, he doesn't want to know what it is. An oblivious data courier is a living data courier.

(He's my "Not Johnny N." character. Been wanting to play him for a while.)