Compudyne: A Timesharing Office Management System

Abstract

Using a timeshare system for office management presents unique advantages. With this kind of system, you buy or rent terminals (keyboards and screens), printers, and modems, and do all your data inputting by telephone hookup to a central minicomputer, which you share with other users. A technical staff maintains and programs the system, and this relieves you of such headaches as backing up your files, insuring the machine, repairing disk drives or memory, and worrying about the operating system. You can print out the data you enter, as well as reports and insurance forms, just as though the computer were in your office; and the staff at the center will print out all your monthly statements at no additional charge. In fact, there are only a few drawbacks to a timeshare system: you are at the mercy of AT&T (oops, I mean your regional phone company); you will never get to own the computer; and if you are dissatisfied with the billing program, you cannot change it without hooking up to a new timeshare system. But then, for practical purposes, if you had already input a lot of data to your own system, you wouldn’t want to start over in any case.