ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth) (03/14/89)
Help me spend some money ($25,000). I'm in a position where I can more or less decide how to computerize word processing and record keeping for my academic department. Currently we have a NBI system 64, a piece of S__T (no other word for it) that costs us $7,500 in "maintenance" per year, above and beyond supplies. It has the worst communications software I've ever seen and utilities that you wouldn't believe (do a search for a word that happens to be in the last line of a 500 page manuscript, and it'll show you every line, every page, until the end of the text!). My idea is to replace this dinosaur with something running **IX. The replacement should be able to: (a) run Wordstar; (b) a DeBased clone; (c) various MiSerable Dos programs on an adhoc basis; (c) support six terminals for secretarial word processing (no more than 3 active at any one time); (d) support two or more dialups (2400 -> 9600); (e) support at least one tcp style high speed link (56k plus); (f) have 150+plus meg disk capacity; (g) have reliable and simple tape backup; (h) support fax. Additional, highly desirable features. Support for all Western European languages including Russian plus Japanese, and Chinese. So far, the one configuration that looks close is the Sony News Workstation. With academic pricing, a pair of these and terminals would come within budget. The MiSerable Dos support is a bit weak as is the Chinese, but the other criteria are fulfilled. Please e-mail comments and suggestions. I'll provide a summary to anyone who is interested.