Banks are stuck with 40-year old branch accounting systems that process in overnight batch, said Schlesinger, who is based in the UK. The systems assume a customer goes through a branch.

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While it may pale in comparison to the slew of laptops that HP just dropped on us, Toshiba's batch of just-announced systems is certainly respectable enough, including a pair of new Tecras, some updated Satellites, and the desktop-replacin' Qosmio G45.

ENGADGET: Toshiba intros Tecra A9, M9, and Qosmio G45, updates Satellite P205, A205

This contrasted with the batch processing or time-sharing models which allowed larger, more expensive minicomputer and mainframe systems to be used by many people, usually at the same time.

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