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PCs

By 1985 the PC arrived in the serious business environment. This computer could perform all the functions of the mainframe-right on the desktop. PCs could process databases and spreadsheets, and their word processing features were the death knell for typewriters. These computers were fast compared with the mainframe, which usually was slowed due to the number of users logged on from the individual dumb terminals. Now, each user had his or her own machine.

But for all the new functions they could handle, the first PCs still had a long way to go. Data exchange was difficult. To share information among other PCs and users, files had to be copied onto floppy disks and then physically installed in the disk drives of other PCs. A partial solution to this drawback came with the local area network (LAN). With a LAN, computers in the same building could communicate with one another through wiring, as shown in Figure 4.2.

Figure 4.2: An ethernet LAN interconnects PCs in the same building using wiring and a concentrator.

Now users could share files without having to physically install them in each PC; however, only one person could work on a file at one time. Although users could share files, they still could not easily exchange data. This was inefficient for businesses, and organizational problems arose. For example, if an organization with several salespeople wanted to track sales, each salesperson had to keep a separate sales data file. When it was time to look at the complete sales picture, each salesperson's file had to be merged with the other files to obtain effective and accurate data. Because of this inconvenience, much of the data was compiled and stored on paper, which was more expensive in materials and labor costs.

Internal communications for businesses and the government became easier with the advent of internal e-mail in the late 1980s. This eased communications within a building. But what was being done to allow these businesses and the government to communicate with other businesses or agencies across town, on the other coast, or even in another country?

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