Use of ``vi'' for business office word-processing

[Noemi Berry]

> 	At the moment I am being compelled to offer an opinion on a computer
>system for a medium-sized law office; they want to start out small, and do
>not want to spend the money for a law office automation system (like a product
>of Barrister Information Systems).  For three or four secretaries (and to
>allow for growth), I am inclined to recommend a 3B2 or NCR Tower XP as the
>most COST-EFFECTIVE means of implementing a multi-user system.  Comments,
>anyone?

	Here at Moscom we have several NCR Towers, two 3B2's, around 20
AT&T PCs (for developing and testing a PC product) and various other
machines.  Other departments around here have IBM PCs, an Apple or two and
a few Macs for documentation.  This is a medium-sized company ( < 90 people)
and there is no poverty of computer literacy around here - or so I thought.

	Yesterday someone from Accounting approached our resident software
expert and informed him that they were having "trouble with the hard disk"
on Accounting's PC.  "You see, there's a directory containing an old
application and we need the disk space - how do we get rid of what's there?"
I had a hard time containing myself while my friend, gritting his teeth,
explained DOS's "cd" and "delete" command.  This isn't the first time he's
had to help Accounting or Sales with something incredibly basic.

	Point is, even DOS machines require maintenance from reasonably
knowledgeable people, let alone 3B2's and Towers running Unix.  The average
law firm may not have such people.  I would not recommend any Unix system
for primarily word-processing.  The maintenance nightmares it would cause
the average secretary would not be COST-EFFECTIVE.

	Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't trade any one of our Unix machines
for a Lamborghini - there is nothing in the world like it for development.
And for an editor, I have never found anything leaner and meaner than vi.
But not for ordinary office word-processing.

	An alternative might be an AT or two, networked together (SysV is
even available if you're *really* bent on recommending Unix).


noemi berry
{allegra|seismo}!rochester!moscom!noemi
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