Mears Furniture is a five-man company which supplies new and second-hand office furniture. The company consists of the owner, John Mear, an administrator, Angela, two salespeople, Sarah and Simon, and Dave, the delivery guy.

Mears Furniture have four PCs in the company, and two printers. Dave knows a little bit about PCs and has recently installed a small network with the aim of letting any user print to the printer that is connected to John's PC. This has worked reasonably well, although there have been a few teething problems, and of course it does require that John's PC is permanently turned on. Angela's PC has a modem on it, and she dials up to their Internet Service Provider four or five times a day to collect any email for Mears Furniture. Any she gets is printed out and distributed to the correct recipient.