Accountancy Dept buys 17 National Panasonics

Press, 26 April 1983, Page 44

Accountancy Dept buys 17 National Panasonics

The accountancy department at the University of Canterbury has ordered 17 National Panasonic JB-3000 microcomputers. Thirteen will be used for teaching and research in the department and four will be used by other teaching departments. Each machine has 128 K bytes of memory and two s¥« inch disc drives (giving a total of 1.4 M bytes of disc storage). Included in the order are two printers. The microcomputers later will share a hard-disc drive. The order has been placed with Business Distributors, Ltd, the Christchurch master distributor for the Panasonic, which is imported by Microcomputer Electronic Company, Ltd (a subsidiary of Fisher and

Paykel). Compatible with the IBM Personal Computer, the JB--3000 is based on the 8088 16bit microprocessor and uses the MS-DOS operating system. “The computers were chosen after an exhaustive and, frankly, exhausting, 10month evaluation and bench-marking of some 30 proposed machines and configurations,” said Professor Bevan Clarke, of the accountancy department.

“We were impressed both by the diversity of computers available in New Zealand and by the rate at which the new technology is improving. “The department was grateful to the university and the University Grants Committee, whose funds made the new micro-

computer laboratory possible, and to Panasonic, which dame to the party with a very supportive educational pricing policy,” said Professor Clarke. Professor Clarke said that the proposed microcomputers were evaluated with three goals in mind: • To expose future accountants and managers to the use of the microcomputer in office automation and its use as an intelligent, personal work station, offering new management tools such as wordprocessing, electronic spreadsheets, and access to the corporate database. ® To facilitate research into these areas. • To allow teachers to offer computer-assisted learning in support of the department’s courses.

“To meet the first two goals it was essential that the chosen microcomputer run under a popular operating system and also provide access to the market range of relevant commercial software.

“To meet the third goal it was desirable that the machines offer high-resolu-tion colour graphics and be easily programmed by teachers and, of course, be priced to permit a large number of separate workstations.

“There will be problems faced,” said Professor Clarke, “particularly in creating the large volume of teaching software required. But this is an exciting advance for the department.”