COMPUTER AND TELEPHONE APPARATUS WITH USER FRIENDLY COMPUTERINTERFACE AND ENHANCED INTEGRITY FEATURES

摘要

A user communicates with several informational or financial service computers using a home terminal, which includes a prompter for prompting the user to select one of the service computers, means for accepting input data from the user, means for accepting input data from the user, and means for establishing effective communication with a network host computer, which includes means for accessing a service computer in response to selection of the service computer by a user, a translator for translating a signal provided by the home terminal in response to the user's selection of a service computer into a sequence of access commands for accessing the user-selected service computer, and a downloader for downloading to the home terminal any software required to allow the home terminal to prompt the user to supply the selected service computer with any information required to provide its function to a consumer thereof.