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In 1994, Gilman & Ciocia
contacted Continental Resources
with the need for custom-designed
personal computers. Due to the
timely nature of Gilman & Ciocia's
financial accounting and tax prepa-
ration business, the firm required a
24-hour
maximum
turnaround
on any
computer
repairs that
could not
be done
on-site at
their
Mineola,
NY MIS
headquarters.
To meet that need, Continental
Resources provided Gilman &
Ciocia with their custom-
engineered XPROŽ Systems 486
PC with a removable hard drive.
Gilman & Ciocia also had a limited
call service contract with
Continental Resources since the
majority of in-house computer
support was performed by the
internal MIS department at the
Mineola NY office.
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Three years later, in 1997, Gilman
& Ciocia discovered that the financial accounting software package
they were currently using was now
outdated, and the company that
owned the software was no longer
in business. Gilman & Ciocia's MIS
Manager,
Scott
Fisher,
wanted to
upgrade
to a new
software
package
that would
run on
Windows
95. This
would require replacing all personal
computers in 128 offices nation-
wide in order to support the new
software.
Because Continental's custom-designed XPRO Systems 486
personal computer (with a removable hard drive) proved to be a
highly effective solution for
Gilman & Ciocia in the past, they
wanted to keep this removable
hard drive on the new computers.
Gilman & Ciocia requested that the
new personal computers still have
removable hard drives so repairs
could still be made on-site, and if
necessary, ship to Continental
Resources for further repairs with a
24-hour turnaround. Gilman &
Ciocia also requested that
Continental Resources provide the
hardware required for a network
upgrade. Some of the PCs, specifi-
cally in the larger Gilman & Ciocia
offices, needed to be linked to their
own Local Area Network (LAN).
Continental Resources
manufactures, sells, and services
XPRO Systems, a complete family
of desktop, notebook, tower and
rackmount PCs built for total
performance. Supported by over 36
years of experience and a nation-
wide team of technical professionals, XPRO Systems offer name
brand, quality components and
comprehensive support to corporations of all sizes across the country.
Continental customizes the XPRO
Systems PCs to specific requirements, regardless of CPU, case size
or any other requirement, and for
over seven years has offered "built-
to-order" services. Continental
configures everything and optimizes all components to ensure
peak performance.
In 1997, Continental Resources
replaced Gilman & Ciocia's
XPRO Systems 486 PCs
with approximately 250
custom-designed XPRO
Systems Pentium II PCs
running Windows 95.
These PCs combine the
architectural advances of
Intel's Pentium Pro
processor with the instruction set extensions of MMX
technology.
Continental also provided
the hardware to install the
NT and Novell network
upgrade. Most of Gilman &
Ciocia's PCs are stand-alone, but in
some of the larger offices, they are
linked to a Local Area Network
(LAN). Most of the larger Gilman
& Ciocia offices now have their
own LAN.
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The new XPRO Systems Pentium
II PCs all have removable hard
drives which make it possible for
Gilman & Ciocia to do repair work
without sacrificing run-time. All
MIS support for Gilman & Ciocia nationwide is performed at the
Mineola, NY office. If the repair
cannot be done on-site, the
computer is sent to Continental
Resources with a 24-hour turn-
around repair guarantee.
In a cost-effective
measure, Continental
Resources offered to
ship all XPRO
Systems Pentium II
PCs directly to
Gilman & Ciocia
offices across the U.S.
with the exception
of the removable
hard drives. These
hard drives were
shipped to the Mineola, NY office
where the new software was
installed, and the hard drives then
shipped
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