---Purchasing a computer system for your new business

You've just raised enough money through personal savings and a bank loan to open up your own local video rental store. You know that you will need a computer and software to run your operations. Because you cannot afford to hire a computer specialist, you will be using the software yourself to:
1.	Keep track of sales, expenses, daily transactions and other basic bookkeeping functions. Periodically, you would also like to print financial reports that summarize what has happened in your business, such as total sales and expenses by category (electricity, telephone, video purchases, employee wages, etc.).
2.	Prepare flyers announcing video rental specials, local newspaper ads, and other advertising pieces.
3.	Maintain an inventory record of the videos in the store, including the number of videos for each title, how many of each title are checked out to customers and the number of times each video title has been rented.
4.	Develop a customer list containing name, address, phone number, membership number, last date the customer rented a video and videos currently checked out.
5.	Mail newsletters to customers notifying them of upcoming titles and other events.
6.	Mail letters to individual customers. They may be letters of appreciation to customers who had many rentals in the past year or past-due notifications when videos are not returned. ---
Select a computer and software for accomplishing these six tasks. Prepare a shopping list of what you want to purchase that includes:
1.	The brand, model number and price of the computer. Also, explain why you chose this model above all others you reviewed.
2.	The name, current version number and purchase price (including where you obtained the price) for each software program. Explain the reasons for your software choices, including why you selected them over similar products and how each one addresses one or more of the six tasks listed above.

Resources for this exercise To help you select the hardware and software you may need, we have included links to some of the more popular brands and products for each of the categories below. You may decide that a software category may or may not be necessary in accomplishing any of the six computer-based tasks. Also included below are several shopping guides for obtaining prices and a product guide containing reviews on computers and software. ---
Computer Systems Compaq Dell Gateway Hewlett-Packard IBM --- Accounting Quickbook Peachtree Accounting --- Database Microsoft Access Corel Paradox --- Desktop Publishing Corel Ventura Microsoft Publisher QuarkXPress --- Graphics Adobe Photoshop Corel Photopaint Micrografx Picture Publisher	Integrated Office Packages Microsoft Office Corel WordPerfect Suite --- Presentation Graphics Astound Microsoft Powerpoint Corel Presentations --- Spreadsheets Microsoft Excel Lotus 1-2-3 --- Word Processing WordPerfect Microsoft Word
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--- Review Finder by PC Magazine. This excellent resource provides reviews on many hardware and software products. Shopping Guides: To obtain discount prices for the products you have selected. Computer Shopper CNET Shopper.com BuyComp.com

 

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