In this month's Review, you will see an ad where LOCIS, the Illinois Municipal League Local Government Computer and Information Service, has announced the availability of a personal computer (PC) product. We gave a great deal of thought to providing this product for a number of reasons.

1. We had many requests from very small communities for a computer solution to help resolve their problems.
2. These small communities had limited budgets and limited requirements.
3. There appeared to be a real need for an inexpensive solution that would handle a low volume of activity but provide a high level of sophistication.

The decision was made to provide a PC product based on the above considerations even though PC's by the nature of their design and architecture are more susceptible to data corruption problems than mini computers.

Listed below are what we feel are some of the distinguishing characteristics between PC's and mini computers.

Personal Computers are generally inexpensive single user devises. Application SOFTWARE is generally written to be memory intensive.

Personal computers came into the market place to provide office automation, i.e. word processing, spreadsheets, and time management. Recently a great deal of application software has become available along with the ability to network i.e. attach a number of stations to a file server so that they may share resources. The obvious advantage of networking is for those organizations which have a number of devices to have common use of printers, plotters and in some instances, software. The expectations that networking will provide the ease of operation and effective use of data that mini computers provide is generally not met.

In summary, PC's are effective tools for organizations which have a need for office automation functions and a limited need for data processing functions.

Mini computers were generally made available in the mid seventies and provide a high level of efficient data processing of large volumes of information. They are generally multi-user, multi-tasking devices which allow many users to access and process common data at the same time.

There are many similarities between PC's and mini computers just as there are many similarities between a pickup truck and a semitrailer. One should be very careful in their selection of hardware and software which will best meet their needs.

The Illinois Municipal League LOCIS program has, with the announcement of the PC product, a PC system with financial software starting from $5,490 and a single user mini system with financial software starting from
$8,490. •

Page 22 / Illinois Municipal Review / September 1988