Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/products/volume_08/issue_02

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 33KB | 577 lines

•  16-bit audio card − Expressive Software Projects have launched the
first stage of their 16-bit Minnie audio card for the Risc PC. Priced at
£69.95 +VAT, the card provides output via the internal speaker or the
headphone socket on the Risc PC. The software provided with the package
can handle playback from a number of sources. Later this year, the
second half of the package, providing MIDI synthesizer and MPC support
for the PC Card will be available, at £39.95 +VAT.
8.2
•  A4 colour scanner − Irlam Instruments have now added the Canon IX4015
A4 flatbed colour scanner to their range of scanners using their Proi-
Mage software. This is a 400 dpi scanner that interpolates to 1200 dpi
in greyscale, taking only 20 seconds for full colour A4 scan. This high
speed is possible because it uses a SCSI interface. The scanner and
software costs £699 +VAT including the software and leads (£765 through
Archive). If you don’t already have a SCSI interface, that would be
extra, e.g. a Morley uncached card at £160 through Archive.
8.2
•  Acorn Advantage − This isn’t a product as such but Acorn’s latest
marketing campaign. Never-the-less, it provides opportunities that
Archive subscribers might want to take up. It is a membership scheme,
designed to build a mutually beneficial partnership between Acorn,
school teachers and parents. The teachers start the process by
registering with Acorn as Advantage agents (although I’m sure they won’t
call them “agents”!). This won’t cost them anything but simply means
that whenever they buy Acorn equipment for their school, they clock up
“points” for the school. Parents can also help in this because if they
buy an Acorn computer (from a participating Acorn dealer such as NCS!),
they will be given points that they can allocate to a school of their
choice. The school can amass these points (a bit like the Tesco scheme)
and use them to “buy” equipment from an educational resources catalogue
which Acorn provide to the school.
8.2
Once teachers are registered on this scheme, they can ask Acorn to send
them as many “concerned parent” packs as they want and give them to all
the pupils to take home, thus encouraging parents to buy Acorn computers
and earn points for the school. If you are a teacher and want to join,
just ring the Advantage Helpline on 0181-673-5455 and ask for a teacher
pack. Teachers registered on the scheme also get personal benefits
including discounts on national events, training and conferences,
regular free reports on educational and IT issues, magazine
subscriptions and educational directories.
8.2
Basically, it seems to be a “no-lose” situation. Teachers gain by
getting free perks and free information, parents who buy Acorn computers
get a system that will allow their children to do educationally valid
tasks at home and, at the same time, help the school with points, so
they don’t lose anything, and schools gain by getting free educational
resources. Oh, and Acorn don’t lose either because people buy their
computers!
8.2
•  Acorn Desktop Guide is aimed to fill the niche between tutorials and
manuals. The Norfolk Information Technology Team have produced this
booklet as a reference for new users first learning their way around the
desktop. 28 ring-bound cards cover basic use of the desktop, icons,
mouse, keyboard, discs and printing. The guide is available from Norfolk
Educational Press at £6.95 all-inclusive (cheques made payable to
Norfolk County Council).
8.2
•  Acorn Early Years pack − Acorn have launched a new computer pack for
the A3010 aimed at parents with primary age children. The Early Years
Pack consists of a 2Mb A3010 with no monitor so you can use whatever
screen you like − you can even use your existing TV for the absolute
minimum budget version. There is a range of software available with it
and the total price is £499 inc VAT.
8.2
The software packs are:
8.2
Talking Start-Write (Icon Technology) − a fully-featured, although
simple to use, word-processing package. It uses outline fonts and allows
the incorporation of pictures into the text. It can also talk the words
as they are typed, providing reassurance that they have been typed
correctly.
8.2
Explore with Flossy the Frog (4Mation) − a graphical adventure where the
user is in control of what actually happens. The delightful pictures
encourage questions, and the different objects in the pictures all have
different effects and actions.
8.2
Mouse in Holland (4Mation) − In a similar vein to Flossy the Frog, it
allows the user to explore the life of Martin Mouse, who lives in a
windmill. With many scenes including the Dutch countryside, canalside
Amsterdam and an art gallery, as well as inside the windmill, the
graphics encourage the user in terms of an overall goal of finding
fruit, cheese and moles!
8.2
Doris the Dotty Dog (Sherston) − This is a talking story with still
pictures and animations. It can be used by a parent with a child who is
not yet reading or by a child on their own to develop their reading and
vocabulary − individual words may be spoken if they are not known.
8.2
Gemini (Cambridgeshire Software House) − This is a computer version of
pelmanism with many different card sets making it suitable either for
very young children who can recognise shapes with only a few cards, or
for older children who can identify more complex pictures.
8.2
Amazing Maths (Cambridgeshire Software House) − In this package you have
to find your way through a maze while being asked arithmetic problems by
the computer. The parent can set the difficulty of the questions asked,
both in terms of the numbers used and the operations (add, subtract,
multiply and divide) that are available. This can then be used to
reinforce mathematical skills from simple addition (as one stage on from
counting) to providing the whole range of numerical operations.
8.2
Paint Pot (Emerald Publishing) − By dipping into the paint pot, you can
learn how to use the !Paint program. The book (and accompanying disc) is
written so that it can either be used by a parent encouraging their
child, or by an older child who can read themselves. Simple examples of
many of the facilities of paint are given as drawings of real objects.
There is also a library of animals and sea creatures that can be used to
build a jungle scene or an undersea picture. Ideas for projects using
Paint are also provided − and this keeps children fascinated for hours,
with no risk of spilling poster paint on the settee!
8.2
•  Acorn Publisher is a new subscription magazine for the Acorn world.
It will cover all aspects of publishing on Acorn computer systems,
including electronic publishing and multimedia. The aim will be to
promote the Acorn platform as a high quality professional system capable
of addressing a large proportion of the needs of professional publishers
and designers, as well as catering for a more popular user base. A
second aim will be to raise the standard of publishing based on Acorn
systems.
8.2
The new magazine will be A4 in size, printed on quality paper with full
colour cover and mixed colour/mono contents. The magazine is entirely
edited and produced on an Acorn Risc PC, and aims to be an example of
all that is possible on an Acorn system.
8.2
The magazine will be published every other month with the first issue
scheduled for publication on 10th October this year. Subscriptions are
£24.95 in the UK, £28.95 in Europe and £32.95 elsewhere.
8.2
For further information contact Mike Williams at Akalat Publishing on
01582-881614.
8.2
•  Advanced file server − Datathorn are launching a Motorola-based
“Super Server”. This high speed network system allows a number of
platforms, especially RISC OS, Apple Macintosh and PCs, to use the same
server, and a server can support up to 200 computers. Further
information and demonstrations are available from Datathorn.
8.2
•  Autograph is a teaching package designed to help in the understanding
and illustration of many aspects of mathematics seen at both GCSE and A-
level, covering a very wide range of topics. Autograph costs £90
inclusive (no VAT) from Eastmond Publishing. A site licence costs £180.
(It was reviewed in Archive 7.12 p77.)
8.2
•  CartridgeMate − How would you like to have an inkjet cartridge
refilling system that just involves putting the cartridge in a box and
pressing a button − no plastic gloves, no ink spilt on the table, etc?
Well, if you have a printer that takes Hewlett-Packard 51626A high
capacity cartridges, you can − more or less. I haven’t tried the system
yet but it looks extremely simple and easy-to-use. The system plus two
38ml ink tanks costs £36 through Archive and the extra 38ml tanks are
£22 for a box of two.
8.2
•  Clicker is a new piece of software from Crick Computing. It provides
an on-screen overlay keyboard, with facilities for speech in software.
The program displays a grid of configurable size on screen, in which can
be placed words. Clicking on a cell can then enter the contents into a
word processor, for example, or provide a link to other grids for a
hierarchical structure. Cells can also contain function and editing
keys. Switch Clicker is a special access version of Clicker for users
who are unable to use a mouse, allowing switch users access to the RISC
OS desktop, and providing all the facilities of Clicker together with
the special facilities. Clicker costs £35 +VAT, including a site licence
for up to five machines, and Switch Clicker is £75 +VAT, from Crick
Computing.
8.2
•  DEC_dATA are increasing the prices of their Primary Education
Services products to £11.16 inc VAT for single disc collections, and
£22.32 inc VAT for double disc collections. New collections of clipart
from PES are Soccer, Beowulf, Farming Then and Farming Now. DEC_dATA are
also providing a resource disc for Impression Publisher, including a
number of backgrounds, borders, motifs, forms, graphic borders,
helpfiles and masks. The Impression Publisher Resource Disc is £12.95
inc VAT. Other new products include a collection of over 50 cartoons in
drawfile format for £9.34 inc VAT, and for Acorn World 94, The Normans −
a set of pictures relating to the Norman invasion and Norman life in
Britain.
8.2
•  Digital Phenomena have a number of titles available. LabelBase is a
professional database aimed specifically at printing labels simply,
priced at £49.95, or £199.95 for a site licence. WordSearch is a utility
for generating word searches, taking the required words, arranging them
randomly and filling in the gaps with random letters. WordSearch costs
£9.95. Disc Commander, at £29.95, offers a disc sector editor and
recovery utility, backup, search facilities, archive reading, disc
protection, network use and advanced virus protection; a shareware
version offering only the virus protection facilities is available for
£5. Rune Seeker, at £4.99, is a fantasy puzzle game. ESP, at £14.95,
generates ‘Zener’ cards to test your psychic skills, and will analyse
the results for you. Finally, !Gematria is a numerology package which
will produce a four-page analysis of a personality based on an
individual’s name and date of birth, intended both for entertainment and
for serious research. !Gematria is £9.95 from Digital Phenomena. (All
prices are inclusive.)
8.2
•  Dis-le − the computerized speaking French tutor has now been updated
to version 3.0. The upgrade is available from Mike Smith (used to be
Bits ‘N’ Bytes).
8.2
•  DTP clipart − G.A.Herdman Educational, have increased their range of
DTP clipart to 20 discs. Also, Map_Chem, a resource of spider diagrams
and reaction pathways in draw format, is now available at £69.99 +p&p
for all four discs. Digital Thermometers is a plug-in system for the
analogue port (so the I/O interface is required), and is available for
£39.99 for a two-probe system or £32.99 for a single probe. A range of
educational games, assessment packages and products aimed at various
parts of the Physics and Chemistry courses up to A-level standard are
also available. (VAT not applicable.)
8.2
•  Education 2000 − Matt Black has a new pack of clipart consisting of
2,000 drawfile images on 8 discs with a user guide and visual index, a
quick reference card and a copy of Hugh Eagle’s PickAPic imagefinder
program. The cost is £65 +£2 p&p (inc VAT) from Matt Black.
8.2
•  Evacuation is an educational compilation from Northern Micromedia
designed to teach today’s primary children about the evacuation which
took place during the second world war. It covers the evacuation itself,
food and rationing, and includes a package which produces fax-style
print-outs of chronological events to which the children must respond. A
full catalogue of their educational software is available from Northern
Micromedia.
8.2
•  Impression upgrades − There has been some confusion over the cost of
upgrade paths between the various versions of Impression. We said in
this magazine (7.6 p9) that owners of Impression II could upgrade to
Style for £29 +VAT through Computer Concepts. This is correct. Then we
reported that “when Impression Publisher is released, Impression Style
owners and Impression II owners will be able to upgrade for £29 +VAT.”
However, that meant that owners of Impression Style who had previously
owned Impression II could upgrade at that price. New purchasers of
Impression Style wanting to upgrade to Impression Publisher will have to
pay CC £70 +VAT. In fact, the £29 upgrade was an introductory offer and
it now costs £49 +VAT to upgrade from II to Publisher. (There is also a
p&p charge of £3.53 to add.)
8.2
(As a now very satisfied user of Impression Publisher, I can say that I
think it is worth every penny of the upgrade price − see page 18 for
details. Ed.)
8.2
(Editor then dons sales hat and says... We have found three copies of
Impression II in our stock room so if anyone wants Publisher on the
cheap, they can buy Impression II at a special price of £60 and then get
it upgraded by CC. The total cost is then just over £130 − a real
bargain! Ed.)
8.2
•  InTouch is a concept keyboard program aimed at the early stages of
children’s cognitive development. The package was designed originally
for children with severe learning difficulties and there are many
aspects that are appropriate to other phases of mainstream education.
InTouch offers opportunities for activities such as picture/symbol/
colour/object/number recognition, matching and sequencing as well as a
scanning communication aid (using one or two switches) all of which can
be enhanced with sound samples. InTouch costs £40 +VAT from Hampshire
Microtechnology Centre.
8.2
•  L’Ensouleiado Software have a number of languages programs, including
new versions of French Verb, Spanish Verb and German Verb, packages
which allow practice of tenses as far as the A-level standard, for the
Acorn and BBC machines, at £20 +VAT each. Voyage! takes students through
an interactive sequence for holiday-booking and letter-writing, aimed at
those with a few years’ experience in French. Gute Reise! is a follow-up
to German Holiday, and is a companion to Vivent les Vacances! and ¡Viva
España!, aimed at GCSE level. Allons!, ¡Vamos! and Komm Mit! are three
suites of programs aimed at the early stages of language learning. A
full catalogue of over 20 language programs is available from
L’Ensouleiado Software.
8.2
•  Micro languages − LCL’s range of home educational software has now
expanded to include new versions of Micro French, Micro German and Micro
English which will follow the approach used in their Micro Spanish
program and have interactive speech on disc. They also have a range of
maths courses available.
8.2
•  Micro Librarian Systems are now up to release 4.2 of Micro Librarian
Professional, a librarian assistant package. To complement the package,
they also have Magicat − a pre-entered catalogue of 150,000 common
school books, an ‘acquisitions and budget control module’, Photocheck −
a system which allows storage of digitized pictures of borrowers as a
security check, a self-service utility and a barcode reader. In
addition, search facilities can be made available from other machines
(including PCs and BBC Masters) linked by the serial port to the Acorn
machine on which the librarian software is run; this is in addition to
the search facilities offered by the package running directly on the
host machine. There is also a Junior Librarian package aimed at primary
schools, packaged with a barcode reader, and there is a corresponding
junior version of Magicat containing 40,000 books common to libraries of
schools for the ages of 5-13. MLP4 is £495, Magicat is £180 and the
barcode reader is £375; Junior Librarian is £395 +£5 carriage and its
version of Magicat £90, from Micro Librarian Systems. These prices do
not include VAT.
8.2
•  A Mouse In Holland − 4Mation have released A Mouse In Holland, a
piece of interactive fiction full of animations and sound effects. The
software contains over 3000 words of text, but the ability to read is
not a requirement. A Mouse In Holland costs £29.50 +VAT or £33 through
Archive for a single user or £59 +VAT or £65 through Archive for a site
licence version.
8.2
Betsi, A Mouse in Holland and Explore with Flossy the Frog are also now
available in high resolution versions (mode 28) on newer 2Mb machines,
either at the time of purchase or at £4.99 inc VAT as an upgrade from
4Mation.
8.2
•  Mouse in Holland − 4Mation’s latest program for the young ones is
part of Acorn’s Early Years Pack (details above) but is available
separately for
8.2
•  Oak Recorder 3 − Solent Computer Products have announced the latest
incarnation of their Oak Recorder, a sound sampler which plugs into the
bi-directional parallel port on the later Acorn machines (A5000 and
later). Sampling at 8-bit accuracy and from 7kHz up to 32kHz on a Risc
PC with VRAM, the hardware includes a uni-directional microphone. The
updated software now allows output to a number of file formats,
conversion and manipulation of the sample, and filtering, all under
button-bar control. Oak Recorder 2 is still available for users of
machine without the bi-directional parallel port. Oak Recorder 3 is
priced at £44.95 +£3 carriage +VAT from Solent, with educational
discounts and upgrade paths available.
8.2
•  Optical Professional from Neurotron Software, provides optical
character recognition, including features such as reading of text out
loud (with a speech synthesizer), a multi-column mode, automatic spell-
checking, and multitasking operation, the package is said to be twice as
fast (300 wpm on a 25MHz ARM3) as other leading OCR packages. Optical
Professional can cope with italic and kerned text, and foreign
characters, and can learn outline fonts in under 10 seconds. Accuracy is
claimed to be between 98% and 100%. Optical Professional is available at
£119 +£2 carriage +VAT from Neurotron Software, or £59 +£2 for the
standard version of Optical. Site licences are also available.
8.2
•  Personalised CD-ROMs − Eesox are offering to produce a CD-ROM for
only £60 +VAT, as a special offer lasting until 31st October. The
company have also announced a special network version of their CDFAST
package, which uses cacheing to radically speed up the access of CD ROMs
over networks, available for £130 +VAT.
8.2
•  PLink − This is a RISC OS compliant application to allow users of
Amstrad NC100s to transfer text to any Acorn RISC OS machine. PLink
costs £32 +VAT for a single user (including a lead) and £64 +VAT for a
site licence (including four leads) from Hampshire Microtechnology
Centre.
8.2
•  Softcrete is a new application from the Really Good Software Company
which allows users to encrypt their software to protect it from piracy.
The encryption system allows the software to be tied to a specific
machine using the unique machine ids on later systems, to a password
held in CMOS RAM, or to a password which the user must type in each time
the program is to be used. The package is aimed at programmers and
teachers who may wish to limit the machines on which a package may be
run. Softcrete is £24.95 inc VAT from the Really Good Software Company.
8.2
•  SoftTeach have two new educational products for Acorn machines.
MakeIT allows art drawn by students to be made into cards, stamps and
envelopes, aimed at the Christmas market, and costs £35 for a school
site licence. Class Lists is a class management utility for teachers,
and costs £15. SoftTeach have a number of other educational titles.
8.2
•  Stika Designer − Techsoft now sell CAD design software with a driver
for the Roland Stika vinyl cutter giving output that can be used for
signs, labels, screen-printing etc. The CAD package can cope with both
sprites and drawfiles because the Stika can work in two modes − bit
image cutting and vector cutting. The software on its own costs £75 +VAT
and, as a limited offer, Techsoft are selling the cutter and software
together for £165 +VAT − mention Archive when ordering.
8.2
•  Studio 24 − Pineapple Software have joined the ranks of 24-bit paint
packages with Studio 24. The package will continue to be developed, with
the promise that future upgrades will be free to registered users.
Studio 24 is £125 +VAT from Pineapple − demo discs are also available
for £5. (This should not be confused with Studio 24 Plus from EMR which
is a music sequencer package!)
8.2
•  Supersound Expansion System for A3/4000 − Audio Dynamics have
released a new member of their Supersound Expansion System range, this
one being for the A3000/4000 series. The SSES1700mc has the same
features as the SSES1600, except that the output box will be optional.
The card has a stereo 3.5mm jack and a MIDI interface, and an interface
for a sampler upgrade. A user port has also been included. The
SSES1700mc is £199 +VAT from Audio Dynamics.
8.2
•  Swimming 2.0 − CD Sports Ltd have an interactive multimedia package
intended to teach swimming, water safety and survival skills by means of
animations and games. The package costs £25.52 +VAT with site licences
available.
8.2
•  Starspell Plus is a package aimed at primary and junior school,
incorporating 134 letter patterns and over 1600 common words (which can
be changed) to take an integrated approach to language and spelling. It
has been recommended by the British Dyslexia Association and also by
Educational Psychologists and Advisory Teachers, the package is
available for a number of platforms at £19 +VAT from Fisher-Marriott,
with site licences available.
8.2
•  TableMate 2 − Dalriada Data Technology have released the updated
version of their table creation application. Additional features over
the version that is bundled with Impression Style & Publisher include:
full colour handling, wordwrapping, drawfiles inside cells, insertion
and deletion of multiple rows or columns, cut and paste editing,
variable rule-off widths and a multiple document editor. Tablemate 2
costs £32.50 inclusive, a primary licence costs £40 and a secondary one
is £70, all inclusive.
8.2
•  Talking Stories − Wyddfa Software have four new talking stories about
Gwen, the lovable, mischievous bear, Gwen’s Nose, Gwen’s Tummy, Gwen
goes to School and Gwen at the Fair. These are £20 each inclusive or £50
for all four.
8.2
•  Twain Drivers − David Pilling is releasing Twain scanner drivers for
the Nikon Coolscan, a 2700dpi 35mm slide/colour negative SCSI bus
scanner, and for the Mustek Paragon and Microtek Scanmaker II A4 3-pass
colour flat bed SCSI bus scanners. The drivers are £20 each, or £35 with
ImageMaster, including VAT and carriage from David Pilling.
8.2
•  UK School Internet Primer is a new book aimed at explaining the truth
behind all the recent hype about the internet. Aimed especially at
school and teachers, the book is also good reading for the general
enthusiast. The book is available for £8.50 from Koeksuster
Publications.
8.2
•  Vision 24 − HCCS have launched a 24-bit real-time video digitizer,
the Vision 24, capable of 254 lines by 720 pixels and priced at £99
+VAT, or an extra £40 +VAT for a version capable of 508 lines. A 254
line digitizer can be upgraded later, and discounts are available on
earlier Vision products. A3000/3010/3020/4000 internal, A300/400/5000/
Risc PC internal and MicroPodule versions are available, with the
external A3000 version £20 more expensive. A JPEG compression/
decompression utility is supplied with the package.
8.2
•  Words and Music have expanded their range of Midi files for the
Archimedes. These include three more ‘Classic Collection’ volumes, and
‘Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier’. These collections are available for
£10.95 +£1 p&p each from Words and Music.
8.2
•  XOB upgrades − XOB have announced an upgrade to their SuperMon
software to allow the network managing software, previously limited to
Econet, to be used on other AUN networks. They have also announced
TimeCord, a product intended to ease the recording of time spent on
tasks in professions where charging of fees is based on time spent, when
that time may be fragmented, and in situations where work-load is being
monitored. Finally, Adventurers’ Computer Kingdom is a multi-user
network adventure game, and an upgrade has now been released to allow
this to run on AUN networks rather than just Econet.
8.2
Products (still) Available
8.2
In our trawl through Acorn’s list of “companies that produce things for
Acorn machines” we have brought to light various products that we didn’t
know about. Some of them have been out for a while so they are not
necessarily new products available.
8.2
•  Avanti is a training authoring system from Westland Systems
Assessment, which helps structure and create multimedia interactive
training presentations. The program outputs Basic V code, which can then
be hand-tailored if features beyond the capabilities of the original are
required.
8.2
•  Computer Tutorial Services has a number of educational and
specialised programs available for the Acorn range. For more
information, please contact CTS.
8.2
•  Contex Computing have a number of Acorn packages, including
educational reading tutors, a typing tutor, and Bank Manager financial
software. Contex Bank Manager is £25, typing tutor £19 and Easy Reader
and Madlibs (a grammatical game) are £12.50 each − p&p extra. (Slight
snag − their phone number is ‘unobtainable’ so I can’t check if these
are inc or ex VAT. Ed.)
8.2
•  Dixon & Dixon, the business software manufacturers, have a package
called Flyprint costings £40 inc VAT, aimed at easy production of
leaflets in any size or quantity. The company also has a keyboard
emulator, which provides a window containing a view of the keyboard;
clicking on keys is equivalent to the key being pressed on the keyboard.
Control, shift and caps keys can be toggled on or off to allow full
keyboard flexibility. The keyboard emulator is £12 inc VAT from Dixon &
Dixon.
8.2
•  G-TABS Time and Billing System − Gartside Neville Ltd. have a package
for the Psion series 3a (and Pocket Book II, presumably) which provides
a system for recording time and expense data. The system allows for
reviewing, summarizing, back-up and printing, as well as data transfer
via the serial link.
8.2
•  Hampshire Microtechnology Centre produce a huge range of educational
materials for use with Acorn computers. Guides include: Using Hard Discs
in the Primary Classroom, PipeDream user notes, Impression II and
Junior, RISC OS 3, Draw, Paint & Edit, ArcTerm7, Intro to A3000, A5000,
Parents’ Support Pack. Curriculum resource materials include: PipeDream
cooking recipe datafiles, Nature pack (KS1&2), Introduction to !Sparkle
(control software), Planning and tracking IT in the Curriculum, English
11 − 18, Geography KS2&3, Food Technology KS3, Datacapture work cards,
Control Technology at KS1&2, Control Technology at KS3, Art & Design.
8.2
Also available from HMTC are: Linguatext, a text manipulation package
for modern language teachers; Granville, a French holiday simulation;
Move it!, mechanical movement at KS2&3; Ezekiel, a draw-based DIY
skeleton; Con-Text, a program to create concept keyboard overlays; Con-
Verse, a program to put sound on concept keyboard overlays; Nutrients, a
diet analysis package; Bridges, a technology-led package (KS2&3)
supporting a cross-curricular approach to learning; Knowledge Station,
an application that allows you to explore knowledge in a carefully
structured way and Writing for a Purpose which uses Knowledge Station as
a means of studying different genres of writing.
8.2
•  In House Publishing are providing key stage science assessment and
homework packs in both reproduction master form and in Impression form
so that materials can be modified ‘in house’ if necessary. Assessment
reproduction masters (printed in 600dpi monochrome) are £25.50 each,
with homework packs for key stage 3 £20.50 each for the masters. The
corresponding colour Impression DTP files are £38.50 and £35.50 each.
8.2
•  Micro Studio have a range of clipart on different topics. Ones we
haven’t mentioned before include: Transport Graphics Library (£29.95),
Designer’s Graphics Pack (£19.95), Drawfile Mazes (£19.95), Seashore
Guide (£19.95), Science Graphics Pack (£29.95), Illustrator Graphics
Pack (£19.95), Greetings Pack (£19.95), Decorated Alphabet (£19.95),
Nature Graphics Pack (£19.95), DTP Library Pack (£29.95) and Military
History (£19.95) − all prices are inclusive of VAT.
8.2
•  Primrose Publishing have a range of language programs under the Tick-
Tack title. These cover topics such as beginners language, general use,
business use, travel and tourism and job-hunting. By use of control
codes, the packages provide common phrases, and cover up to 30 languages
(in the case of the business pack). Training and multi-lingual e-mail
packages are also available. Prices from Primrose Publishing.
8.2
•  Reduce − Codemist Ltd are now on release 3.5 of the Archimedes
version of Reduce, the interactive algebraic manipulation package, aimed
at mathematicians, scientists and engineers. The package is based on
Codemist’s own LISP, and is a standard on other platforms, coming with a
number of additional utilities. Reduce itself is capable of ‘expansion
and ordering of polynomial and rational functions, substitutions and
pattern matching in a wide variety of forms, automatic and user
controlled simplification of expressions, calculations with symbolic
matrices, arbitrary precision integer and real arithmetic, facilities
for defining new functions and extending program syntax, analytic
differentiation and integration, factorisation of polynomials,
facilities for the solution of a variety of algebraic equations,
facilities for the output of expressions in a variety of formats,
facilities for generating optimised numerical programs from symbolic
input, and dirac matrix calculations of interest to high energy
physicists.’
8.2
•  Selective Software have a range of educational software: Little Red
Riding Hood is a two-part problem-solving adventure for children aged 5
to 8 (£15); Number Zoo is a first number program for ages 3 to 6 (£14);
Cinderella is a “magical adventure” for 4 to 7 year olds based on the
well-known fairy tale (£17); Shylock Gnomes is a mathematical adventure
for ages 10 to 15 (£17); Don the Professor is a four-disc set of
mathematical software for Key Stages 2 & 3 covering number, algebra,
shape and space, and data-handling (£19 single user, £49 site licence);
SportsDay & SportsPeople are two separate programs at £22.50 each that
help with administration of a school sports’ day, the first deals with
teams competing against one another and the second is for named athletes
competing as individuals. Add £2 p&p +VAT to all the prices.
8.2
•  Special Access Systems have a range of keyguards aimed to help users
with hand tremor. They are available for Acorn machines previous to the
A3010 for £36 +VAT +p&p, and also for PC keyboards. They also sell
expanded programmable keyboards for the earlier Acorn machines and AT
compatibles, at £475 +VAT +p&p. Discounts are available for bulk
purchase.
8.2
Products Unavailable
8.2
•  ISO Pascal Extensions − Due to the discontinuation of Acorn’s ISO
Pascal, Smith & Wiggins have ceased to provide this product.
8.2
•  PD-CD Nº1 not available − not from NCS. We have discovered that the
first PD-CD from the Datafile contains some ‘soft-porn’ JPEG images. We
were not aware of this when we said they would be available through
Archive. Dave McCartney of the Datafile said he hadn’t really registered
the nature of the JPEG images and would not be including any such images
on future PD-CD discs.
8.2