Lotus articles from November 1989

Lotus archives from November 1989

Analyze buyouts for medium- to small-size businesses. (ValueSource's Buy-Out Plan) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... Analyze Buyouts for Medium-to Small-Size Businesses Buy-Out Plan lets you organize and analyze the complex financial data necessary to evaluate a leveraged buyout or the acquisition of a public or private business worth $100 million or less....

Manage small 401(k) plans. (Wen-Set Enterprises' 401KPC) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... Manage Small 401(k) Plans 401KPC lets you administer a 401(k) plan for up to 50 participants. You can track a participant's individual account within each of four investments and life insurance. The software will automatically insert salary...

Assess tax consequences of changes in income, dependents. (Wipple Software's 89Watifs) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... Assess Tax Consequences of Changes in Income, Dependents 89Watifs is a 1-2-3 template for estimating the federal-tax consequences of earning different amounts of money, buying or selling a house, and changing the number of your dependents. The...

dBase memory manager swaps applications and TSRs. (Ashton-Tate's Trading Places utility program) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... dBase Memory Manager Swaps Applications and TSRs Trading Places improves upon the Run command found in dBase III Plus and dBase IV. This command is similar to the System commnand in 1-2-3. The program lets you run 15 popular applications that...

Lock up your hard disk. (Rupp Corp.'s FastLock utility program) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... Lock Up Your Hard Disk Fastlock effectively denies access to your hard disk to anyone who doesn't know your password. Once you unlock your hard disk, it reports to you any attempt at unauthorized access. After three attempts have been made to...

One list of all your files. (Madison Software Co.'s FindDir utility program) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... One List of All Your Files FindDir can make a catalog of all your files regardless of the medium on which you store them, including tape and floppy-disk backups. The number of catalogs is limited only by your available disk space. You can...

Circumvent DOS commands. (Shortcut Software's six utility programs) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... Circumvent DOS Commands Shortcut Software Inc. provides six utilities designed for easy use. Disk/Director lets you copy, move, rename, and delete files and directories on your floppy or hard disk, as well as create hard-disk directories and...

Control screen appearance in Symphony applications. (Q-Soft's Symphony Show*Case!) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... Control Screen Appearance in Symphony Applications Symphony Show*Case! is a Symphony add-in that lets you control the appearance of the screen in applications that you develop. You can make the screen look completely different from the...

Run CrossTalk in Windows. (CrossTalk Communications' Crosstalk for Windows) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... Run Crosstalk in Windows Crosstalk for Windows works with Xmodem, Ymodem, Zmodem, Kermit, CompuServe B, and Crosstalk's DART file-transfer protocols. It supports DEC VT52 and VT102 and IBM 3101 monochrome terminal standards. It also supports...

Release 3 training for users with some spreadsheet skills. (Anderson Soft-Teach video course for Lotus 1-2-3)
November 1, 1989... Release 3 Training for Users with Some Spreadsheet Skills Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3 is a two-volume course that teaches those with a basic understanding of spreadsheets how to use the new features in Release 3. Volume 1 covers working in the 3-D...

Beginner and advanced courses in Releases 2.2 and 3. (MicroVideo Learning Systems' Lotus 1-2-3 Learning System)
November 1, 1989... Beginner and Advanced Courses in Releases 2.2 and 3 The Lotus 1-2-3 Learning System provides an introductory course in basic spreadsheet skills, such as creating macros, databases, and graphs, as well as in some features peculiar to Releases...

Scan text and graphics into 1-2-3 and word processors. (Kurzweil Computer Products' Discover Freedom circuit board, software and drivers) (product announcement)
November 1, 1989... Scan Text and Graphics Into 1-2-3 and Word Processors The Kurzweil Discover Freedom comprises a board, software, and drivers that let you scan text from popular scanners into 1-2-3. It lets you scan both text and graphics into 16 popular word...

Upgrades.
November 1, 1989... UPGRADES Personal Finances with Lotus Version 3.0 takes advantage of features in 1-2-3 Release 3. Running with 1-2-3, the finance-management package now links all of its worksheets, which include budget, net worth, stock portfolio, bond...

Books.
November 1, 1989... BOOKS The Lotus Guide to Learning 1-2-3 Release 2.2, by Lotus Development Corp. Complete description of Release 2.2's features, tutorials for beginning-level and intermediate-level users, and a section on macros. Published September 1989, 550...

About two new staffers. (Staff Letter)
November 1, 1989... ABOUT TWO NEW STAFFERS Before I tell you about the faces you see here, let me alert you to a note elsewhere in this issue. As I told you last month, templates and macros published in this yearhs issues are now available on CompuServe's...

(At)ERR. (corrections)
November 1, 1989... @ERR "Expanded Memory Without New Equipment" (September): The price of Turbo EMS from Lantana Technology is $99.95, not $295. "How to Build a Versatile Toolbox" (September): If you set up the macros in a different part of the worksheet than...

Answers to your questions about Lotus products. (Q&A )
November 1, 1989... ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT LOTUS PRODUCTS 1-2-3/SYMPHONY @@ AND @VLOOKUP Q. I use a spreadsheet that contains several depreciation schedules drawn from different depreciation methods. I'd like to be able to enter the...

More tips on using Lotus products. (Good Ideas)
November 1, 1989... MORE TIPS ON USING LOTUS PRODUCTS SYMPHONY CUSTOMIZE YOUR PRINT SETTINGS WITH NAMES Since I print my annual report only once a year, it's easy to forget that it need legal-size paper. To help me remember, I created a...

Real-time translation. (Fujitsu America's ScanFile, on-line Japanese-English translation) (Ideas & Trends)
November 1, 1989... REAL-TIME TRANSLATION It may soon be a lot easier to do business with Japanese firms. There's already a small but growing business in translating Japanese information sources into English. US Fax (Philadelphia), for instance, will...

Scandal in the pits. (Chicago Board of Trade, Mercantile Exchange to use hand-held computers) (Ideas & Trends)
November 1, 1989... SCANDAL IN THE PITS In September's Shorts section, we reported on efforts by the Chicago Board of Trade to conduct business by computer outside normal business hours. A recent scandal in that city may hasten the day when computers...

Scaling new territory on the PC. (font-scaling technology may replace bit-mapped format) (Ideas & Trends)
November 1, 1989... SCALING NEW TERRITORY ON THE PC Bit-mapped computer images may soon be yesterday's news. Such, at least, is the view of market research firm Infonetics in Santa Clara, Calif. According to Infonetics research, while most of today's soft...

New utility checks your PC's memory. (Lotus Development Corp.'s CHK123 utility) (At Lotus)
November 1, 1989... NEW UTILITY CHECKS YOUR PC's MEMORY This month Lotus Development Corp. plans to release CHK123, a diagnostic utility for evaluating your computer's memory configuration and determining whether your system has enough memory to run 1-2-3...

More on the DataLens Developer Toolkit. (vendors develop Lotus 1-2-3 drivers) (At Lotus)
November 1, 1989... MORE ON THE DATALENS DEVELOPER TOOLKIT In September Lotus Development Corp. shipped the DataLens Developer Toolkit. The Toolkit is a set of programming tools that enable developers to create drivers that connect Lotus applications, such as...

Lotus/Sybase alliance. (Lotus Development Corp. acquires interest in Sybase)
November 1, 1989... LOTUS/SYBASE ALLIANCE Lotus Development Corp. will acquire a 15% interest in Sybase, a leading vendor of relational databases for on-line applications. In addition, the privately held Emeryville, Calif., firm may sell another 10% of the...

1-2-3 in your Poqet. (Lotus 1-2-3 on ROM cards) (At Lotus)
November 1, 1989... 1-2-3 IN YOUR POQET Poqet Computer Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) will manufacture and distribute read-only memory (ROM) card versions of Lotus software for its new one-pound, IBM-compatible personal computer. The one-year-old company expects...

1-2-3 add-ins: which ones still work? (Lotus Add-In Toolkit for Release 3) (Ideas & Trends)
November 1, 1989... 1-2-3 ADD-INS: WHICH ONES STILL WORK? For the most part, upgrading from 1-2-3 Release 2.01 to Release 2.2 or Release 3 is easy and straightforward. You may have a few more commands to learn, but you can load your old files, display your...

Windows lures draw program to PCs; workstations and Macs lose their market monopoly. (Ideas & Trends)
November 1, 1989... WINDOWS LURES DRAW PROGRAMS TO PCs Ernest Lilley uses a computer to create complex drawings of protein molecules. A year ago, Lilley, who works at Neurogenetic Corp., a biotechnology research firm in Paramus, N.J., would have been limited...

Bruce Thatcher predicts a boom in color printing. (director of marketing for printers at NEC Information Systems) (Ideas & Trends) (interview)
November 1, 1989... BRUCE THATCHER PREDICTS A BOOM IN COLOR PRINTING The demand for color printers is large and growing. But until recently, high-quality color output was a luxury few could afford. Color-output technology is more complex than that of...

Control your data. (extracting selected information from Lotus 1-2-3 database) (Start Here) (column)
November 1, 1989... CONTROL YOUR DATA In the past two installments of this column we explored 1-2-3's database features. First we saw how to sort a database's records into alphabetical and numerical order. Then we learned how to create a Criterion range to...

Inside the new macro commands. (Lotus 1-2-3 2.2 and 3.0) (includes answers to readers' macro questions) (1-2-3 Macros) (column)
November 1, 1989... INSIDE THE NEW MACRO COMMANDS 1 2-3'S Releases 2.2 and 3 offer new macro commands, as well as enhancements to some existing ones. We surveyed these new features in the July Special Report. Now we'll take a closer look at their...

Translating 'A Pauper's Notepad'. (making a Lotus 1-2-3 macro work on Symphony) (includes list of macros Macro Conversion Aid will translate and answers to readers' questions) (Symphony Macros) (column)
November 1, 1989... TRANSLATING 'A PAUPER'S NOTEPAD' Several of you wrote to complain that the 1-2-3 annotation macro from "A Pauper's Notepad" won't work in Symphony. That isn't surprising, given the differing menus of the two programs. But what may be...

How corporations lend a helping hand; grants, educational programs, and support for the disabled. (Ideas & Trends)
November 1, 1989... HOW CORPORATIONS LEND A HELPING HAND On the sixth floor of the Glide Memorial Church building in San Francisco, eight preschoolers, many of them recent Asian emigrants, sit in front of PCs donated by Apple Computer. They are learning the...

Programs written in reusable chunks. (object-oriented programs) (includes related article on advantages of object-oriented programming) (Ideas & Trends)
November 1, 1989... PROGRAMS WRITTEN IN REUSABLE CHUNKS 1-2-3 Release 2.01 contains 80,000 lines of code. Release 3 has over 400,000 lines. As programs get bigger and bigger, so does the problem of cranking out those programs in a reasonable amount of...

9,600-Bps modems put more data on-line. (Ideas & Trends)
November 1, 1989... 9,600-BPS MODEMS PUT MORE DATA ON-LINE Who really needs a modem that operates at 9,600 bits per second? Brett Remington does, for one. Remington is data resources manager at IDC Financial Publishing (Hartland, Wis.), which puts together...

An easy way to add: your first macro can help you write formulas that sum values. (includes related article on naming macros) (Macro Basics) (column)
November 1, 1989... AN EASY WAY TO ADD One of the first @functions you learn to use in 1-2-3 and Symphony is the @SUM function. It seems appropriate, then, to use this function in an introduction to writing macros. Macros are recordings of the keys that...

The personal income-tax estimator. (Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony tax-analyzer worksheet)
November 1, 1989... THE PERSONAL INCOME-TAX ESTIMATOR Each year about this time many of us begin a paper chase, searching for bank records, charge-account statements, and expense receipts in an attempt to calculate what we owe in income tax. The search...

The loan-status analyzer: what you owe. (loan-tracking spreadsheet for Lotus 1-2-3) (includes related article explaining quick-and-dirty loan term estimation)
November 1, 1989... THE LOAN-STATUS ANALYZER An article of mine, "Track the Payments on Your Loan," appeared in the September 1988 issue of LOTUS. It explained how to produce a schedule that shows how much of each payment covers principal and how much covers...

7 worksheet tips. (Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony)
November 1, 1989... 7 WORKSHEET TIPS I've been using and writing about 1-2-3 and Symphony since 1983. Over the years, I've explored every nook and cranny in search of the keys that open doors to new possibilities. Sometimes I'd discover a neat trick on my...

What's causing the differences? (two-way analysis of variance worksheet)
November 1, 1989... WHAT'S CAUSING THE DIFFERENCES? In the August issue of LOTUS, the article "Differences Are Not Always Real" showed you how to use the statistical technique known as one-way analysis of variance with 1-2-3 and Symphony. That technique...

Beyond (at)SUM. (how to use several 'at' functions in Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony)
November 1, 1989... Beyond @ SUM Software users typically rely on a small set of features for most of their work. A few basic skills go a long way in 1-2-3 and Symphony. Sometimes, however, you run into a problem that can't be solved with basic formulas. ...

Keep that money working. (float management worksheet in Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony) (includes related article on forecasting float time)
November 1, 1989... Keep That Money Working A new breed of corporate cash manager is exploiting delays in the payment cycle to reap rewards for his company. By placing disbursement dollars in high-yield, short-term investments for the period between the time...

The time tracker. (time management spreadsheet for Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony)
November 1, 1989... THE TIME TRACKER Professional and consulting firms struggle with a perennial problem: wide swings in their volume of business. One month everyone is busy working for clients--too busy to develop new business. The next month everyone is...

LOTUS models on CompuServe. (how to download worksheet models)
November 1, 1989... LOTUS Models on CompuServe The models we have published in the magazine this year to date can now be downloaded from CompuServe. As we promised last month, here are instructions on how to get the ones you want. You must have a modem...

How to get more from MCI Mail. (useful, little known features) (includes related article on MCI Mail's help features) (Data Transfer) (column)
November 1, 1989... HOW TO GET MORE FROM MCI MAIL It happens to every MCI Mail subscriber sometime. You have a proposal that must be delivered tomorrow, but you don't finish it until 10 P.M. Fax transmission won't yield the high quality output that you...

Sophisticated database work via menus. (Alpha Software Corp's Alpha Four) (evaluation)
November 1, 1989... SOPHISTICATED DATABASE WORK VIA MENUS Are you looking for an alternative to dBase IV that costs less, is easier to use, and reads dBase III files? If you don't need to program, Alpha Four will fill the bill. Alpha Four is designed to be...

Tests, surveys, distributions: what do they mean? (programs that calculate statistics in your worksheet) (evaluation)
November 1, 1989... TESTS, SURVEYS, DISTRIBUTIONS: WHAT DO THEY MEAN? Are your hiring policies fair? Are your improved sales attributable to your latest advertising campaign or to market fluctuations? If you keep your data in a 1-2-3 or Symphony worksheet,...

SeeMore Version 2.0: Windows unlimited. (Personics Corp's add-in software for Lotus 1-2-3) (evaluation)
November 1, 1989... SeeMore Version 2.0: Windows Unlimited The first release of the 1-2-3 add-in SeeMore allowed you to choose among several sizes of screen fonts so that you could view more of your worksheet than you normally see on your screen. The new...

Software for the 1990s.
November 1, 1989... SOFTWARE FOR THE 1990s In the business world, one of the least addressed and most important developments during the 1980s is that most businesspeople have become computer literate. They've also become more technologically sophisticated....

Write us.
November 1, 1989... WRITE US Do you have a question? We can't answer every letter, but if yours is selected, we'll publish it along with an answer or a request to other readers for advice. We'll pay $25 for each letter we publish. Send your letters, including...