[speaker001:] okay Art you say you own a TI or you own a uh an IBM compatible
[speaker002:] uh yeah I have one of these little Zenith laptops which uh the uh everybody here at school has to buy one
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] and
[speaker001:] oh you're in school
[speaker002:] oh yeah I'm a student uh at at Harvard Business School
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] and uh tremendously useful thing it's uh the the portability and the compactness of it are uh pretty nice it's uh you know enough that you can kind of throw it in a briefcase or uh slap it over your shoulder and carry it around
[speaker001:] what what do you use to to download into the system can you put hook up a a floppy to it
[speaker002:] uh it's got an internal three and a half inch floppy
[speaker001:] oh it's built in
[speaker002:] yeah and uh it also has a forty megabyte hard drive built in
[speaker001:] oh that's pretty good um
[speaker002:] and uh you know the batteries carry it for at least four or five hours
[speaker001:] um
[speaker002:] and so you know I use it um both in school to do uh spreadsheet analysis for various uh businesses that we're studying and also uh you know it hooks up to normal printers and what have you and uh works pretty well in that mode as well
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] I'm I'm curious what you use your uh home computer for
[speaker001:] uh I do I do uh word processing on it primarily uh the main reason why I'm I'm hanging on to it is because of the business that I'm in the the home computer business I have a
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker001:] a store in my house where I've got the uh the hardware and the software and I also do repair work on the system if if I started using a different computer at home then I wouldn't be using the the software and the hardware and it would be that much more difficult for me to try and market it the the product
[speaker002:] does it does it cause a problem for you to use a different computer at work than you use at home
[speaker001:] uh oddly enough no uh because I do different things with it at home I I do mostly play and at work I do mostly work uh it's you know you you you can put a game on an IBM compatible computer uh but uh
[speaker002:] uh-huh yeah
[speaker001:] you know I I don't normally do that at at work uh and I I typically deal with uh Lotus uh WordPerfect which is a spreadsheet
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] and uh we also have a tie in to a mainframe out in in Dallas Texas
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and the mainframe has a lot of software out there where I use to interface my computer with
[speaker002:] are are you at the point where the the mainframe appears slow to you relative to your personal computer given the the ratio
[speaker001:] no um there was at one point in time where where it was continually down it it appears at though whenever I wanted to use it it wasn't working and this was about
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] seven ten years ago
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and they made a dramatic effort of trying to reduce down time down to nothing and today uh I can't say that I can remember the last time it went down uh several months it's it's just up all the time now they take it down like on Sunday nights like for a couple of hours to do maintenance or whatever but uh unless there's something dramatic that happens with the telephone system uh usually doesn't break down and I think what they're doing is they're using satellite somehow
[speaker002:] that's
[speaker001:] to uh to transmit the signals to have a backup some to back that that system up so that there is no no down time
[speaker002:] um-hum you you don't think that they went and did a uh what is it an Ishihara uh quality analysis
[speaker001:] analysis I don't I don't know how they fixed the problem but they're uh you know the whole theme of of what they were doing was was to measure and record and and uh reduce down time
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and the other big thing is uh quality satisfaction or customer satisfaction
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] how do how do the users feel about the the system and what are their likes and dislikes and that's that's uh that's where they they were heading and the system is fantastic so it's it's not slow if anything the the PC is now slower than the mainframe
[speaker002:] that
[speaker001:] we're transmitting from from uh New England to Dallas Texas and I'm getting responses in in split seconds
[speaker002:] that's tremendous are are your computers at work net uh networked at all or is that
[speaker001:] yeah oh well that that's another system that I link in to I I network internally to Texas Instruments in Attleboro
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and use the mainframe for corporation uh type programs like payroll and uh financial data bases and we also have uh uh a message system which is a worldwide network within within the corporation
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] where I can send telegrams to any TI site and they've also hooked up to some company to allow us to do E-mail and allow it to convert it
[speaker002:] huh
[speaker001:] to other companies so that the other companies can recognize our E-mail and now we're getting into faxes as well right off the PC
[speaker002:] that's tremendous
[speaker001:] yeah that's uh the technology is really really blow you know going going crazy with this
[speaker002:] it's clearly a uh a uh a uh productivity enhancement uh device and allows you to do
[speaker001:] uh originally I didn't think it was I thought that what ended you know we ended up doing was uh doing all of the secretarial work and the secretaries had nothing to do uh and and that I guess part of that is true uh I do all my own typing I I I don't give anymore uh paper to the secretary to type up only because it takes me longer to write it and redo it and then give it back to her again for me to sit down and and do it and correct it myself I I I am not a typist I type with two fingers but I do very well at it and uh I I do everything I do my only typing do my own foils uh it's just it's just so much easier for me to do that
[speaker002:] that that's been my experience also I've actually I guess I've been doing that since probably when I was in high school
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] many years ago and uh uh it it it's gotten to the point now I think where the uh secretaries are are finding other jobs to do because you know the typing and to some extent the filing is just not there anymore
[speaker001:] yeah and
[speaker002:] big paper files are disappearing
[speaker001:] the the files may be disappearing but the secretaries are not the the people people in power are are afraid to give up that status symbol
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and uh although what they're doing now is is they're maintaining secretaries but they're piling more and more people onto that one secretary rather than get rid of the secretary they're they're just you know they're finding justification by adding more people to her
[speaker002:] I guess there's there's a fear that one day if the computers ever stopped working there'd be a bunch of people staring at the typewriter with no idea what to do with it
[speaker001:] well I don't know like back in my particular office there must be at least uh twenty twenty five people one secretary no typewriter it's all computers everybody's got a a PC sitting in front of their desk
[speaker002:] huh do you uh if if I assume you all are networked to a a variety of of laser printers
[speaker001:] oh uh I I have a laser printer I have access to a laser printer in my office but I don't have one tied in to my system yet uh I'm I'm networked into it but it's so inconvenient for me to to
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] to run all the way downstairs that that I don't use it
[speaker002:] huh because what I was what I was going to ask you is it seems like the next big jump will come with color printing you were talking about doing your own presentation and foils it would seem that color capability would be the next big sort of leap in presentation
[speaker001:] yeah well I think what I see is a different direction I don't know if you are you familiar with uh programs like Harvard Graphics where they have uh
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] like a print shop or or a thing in the system well we have uh instead of using view view foil machines we have uh a transmitter that will pick up the signal from the the monitor
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] and transmit it just like a view foil
[speaker002:] huh
[speaker001:] so we we do that somewhat uh we also have uh teleconferencing where we have
[speaker002:] a
[speaker001:] um so we we do that somewhat uh we also have uh teleconferencing where we have uh the the mainframe as being the monitor in other words if you've got foils you pull it out of the mainframe and then use the telephone speaker system to communicate with
[speaker002:] wow
[speaker001:] and and we use uh we do teleconferencing that way so that that everybody's looking at the same foil because we're pulling it off the network
[speaker002:] interesting yeah that's uh that's uh pretty powerful set of tools to give to people who traditionally have had to go through a whole production process just to get the
[speaker001:] oh yeah I can remember at one time the the uh secretaries actually had to be artists and and technicians and today uh with the laser printer they're uh really not being utilized as much as they had been in the past I'm making some really pretty foils that uh four or five years ago I wouldn't have ever dreamed I could be doing them and it's it's so easy to do uh with the with the programs that are out there now
[speaker002:] huh huh well uh Frank I think I kind of need to get back to some other things so I I hope we've talked uh
[speaker001:] all right okay I believe we have
[speaker002:] covered enough of of this for for what this is all about
[speaker001:] okay nice talking to you
[speaker002:] yeah it was a pleasure
[speaker001:] take it easy
[speaker002:] thank you bye