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    "Computer Corner"

    by Bob McGarvey

    Excerpted from the Newsletter of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.


         Should you let Microsoft managed your money?  Can you find great programs for free
    on the 'Net?  This month's column looks at Microsoft Money, Norton Navigator, and
    bunches of utilities (WinProbe, MagnaRam, SpeedyRom).  Some of this stuff is great
    most is rubbish and we spare no adjectives in our flaying of "junkware."  But we also point
    the way to some dandy "freeware," that is, software that is given away by the authors
    including a program designed to break through AOL's busy signals!


    MICROSOFT MONEY 97

    It is rare indeed that software can change the way you live. It has happened before, when I
    first started using WordStar 1.1 in 1979; that certainly changed the way I live. And I'm
    pretty sure that moving from DOS to Windows 3.0 changed the way I live.

    I think Microsoft Money 97 is =about to= change the way I live. That's strange for so
    small and outwardly simple a software application.

    I came to my test of Money 97 with an extremely jaded outlook. The simple DOS
    checkbook software I have been using was written for me by a friend in 1980. It made
    balancing my books and documenting my tax statements easy. I didn't see any reason to
    upgrade--because all of the vaunted money-management programs of the past decade
    asked me to complicate my bookkeeping to the point where none was worth the time (to
    me) of entering new data, much less enter all the old data a transition would have entailed.
    I have tried the so-called best for years, rid myself of all of it in short order, and not
    changed my way of keeping the books for my business.

    Fortunately for me, my corporate fiscal year ends on September 30, so I as able to begin
    my test of Money 97 with little more than a (slow) month's worth of entries. The data-
    entry scheme is simple. I plugged in my opening balance, then began entering deposits and
    payments. I was able to create new categories (Freight, Telephone, etc.) without difficulty.
    After I had entered a particular payee along with a particular category, Money was able
    to anticipate the connection the next time I began typing that payee's name (in fact, it
    enters the payee's name as I type just enough characters to match the name already in the
    database). It is also easy to create sub-categories (such as "Income - Editing" as opposed
    to "Income - Typesetting").

    Each transaction entry is registered on the visible check register, which shows as much or
    as little detail as you require. The math is completed as the transaction is entered. If you
    make a mistake--or notice one later-you need only double-click the entry, make the
    adjustment, and press Enter. Money corrects all the math if that's appropriate.

    The variety of reports Money 97 is able to deliver is the true gem of this facile, well-
    thought-out product. You can select from several types of views or reports (such as
    "Where My Money Goes"), and view pie charts, bar graphs, etc. If you want details,
    simply hold the cursor over the data point you need to view more closely, then click when
    you see the magnifying glass.

    Not one of Money 97's standard report formats gave me the printable data I needed in the
    form I needed. But with just a little trial-and-error, I was able to create several custom
    views of the data that not only gave me what I wanted but allowed me to want--and get--
    more than I had ever had before. I can watch my expenses over a 30-day period, or within
    the confines of a given month or months (any date to any date), or on the tax-vital
    year-to-date basis I require. In fact, based on what I saw on my first-month report, I was
    able to go back to the check register and massage the categories I had set up. When I
    combined "Misc. Income" with "Other Income" as "Other Income," Money 97 corrected
    all the misplaced references and updated the math so quickly that I was unaware the
    changes had been made until I brought up the revised first-month report.

    Money 97 can print my checks. And it can look across all my checking, savings, and
    investment accounts (if I want to enter all that necessary data) to provide me with several
    interesting and useful views of my entire net worth. It can also be set to remind me of
    upcoming payments--car, mortgage,etc. When it saw two payments to UPS in the same
    month, Money 97 =asked= me if I wanted to program in regular reminders! I'm not there
    yet, but it looks as though Money 97 can provide important tax documentation at
    the end of the fiscal year. (I already know that tax returns processed on a computer with
    IRS-approved software are far less likely to be scrutinized by IRS nitpickers than typed or
    handwritten returns.)

    All of the above is going to change my life; I know it. But Money 97's ability to speak
    with my bank via modem is =really= going to change things. I was able to download my
    bank's on-line-service parameters with a few clicks (it's a really big bank), and now my
    wife and I are poring over the details to see if online banking services are for us. If they
    are, it appears that Money 97 is an excellent medium for accomplishing online
    transactions.

    If it works for me--a business owner with both math performance anxiety and a true
    loathing for bookkeeping--it's gotta work for anyone with a small business to run. What
    more is there to say?

    The software discounters sell Microsoft Money 97 for $25-$30.



    HERE A BETA, THERE A BETA
    by Rick Hammel ([e-mail])

    Bob McGarvey and I are in complete agreement: In the end, we're all beta software
    testers, whether we want to be or not.

    For many of the personal computer's not-so-many years, the service life of a software
    product could be measured in fairly long cycles--two years, or a year at the least. Now, for
    a plethora of reasons, the service life of a given software application is, depending on how
    you look at it, either months long or never-ending. That is, if you view announced
    upgrades as episodic, then only months separate must-have updates from new must-have
    updates. Or you can argue that all software is in a constant state of flux, with upgrades
    spinning out all the time--because software is never finished, never set in stone, never
    something you can look at and say, "This is it. It's finished."

    The explosive growth of the Worldwide Web over the past twelve months has added to
    the acute sense of disorientation suffered by me and fellow long-time computer users.
    Because there is a Web, and access to it is not only easy but expected, software
    developers facing extinction as adversaries rush new products or merely new wrinkles on
    products to market are pressed to release their software upgrades before they're ready.
    The Web aids and abets this tendency, because it is easy for developers to offer upgrades
    and fixes as free downloads, and easy for us users to accept the downloads as some sort of
    advantage in our own headlong rush to acquire The Best of Everything, Right Now.

    Well, we're being scammed. We're getting half-baked software =and= the illusion that the
    developers care enough about us to create and offer a string of fixes and upgrades. Were it
    only true! We're getting unstable crap that is rushed to market to beat out other unstable
    crap that's being rushed to market, and thank god the Web is there for the developers to
    use to save their dishonest butts--and our overeager butts. The term "just in time" never
    had more meaning than the confluence of Web useage for broadcasting software fixes and
    the market forces that make this whole sorry situation happen.

    So, there is a new software product that marries the two streams described above to your
    advantage. It's called OIL CHANGE, and Cybermedia is offering a beta version  (ha!) free
    at its website: www.cybermedia.com.

    This is a brilliant tool. When you log on to the Net and open Oil Change, just as you
    would your browser, the program inventories all the applications and utilities on your hard
    drives, compares the version numbers of what it finds with Cybermedia's own database,
    and offers to download patches and upgrades that the developers of your software are
    offering free from their various Web sites. Indeed, Oil Change will download the proffered
    files and, in some cases, will even install them for you.

    I thought I was good at checking for net-stored upgrades and fixes, but Oil Change found
    four such that are linked to important applications I use all the time. I downloaded three of
    them last night and installed all of them today, painlessly. And the three programs I
    upgraded or fixed all seem to run better, some with new features I find useful.

    This leads to my review of Symantec's NORTON NAVIGATOR 95, one of the three
    programs I upgraded with an Oil Change download. Symantec's Web site, which I visit
    often, is so poorly organized that it took me ten minutes to actually locate the files I knew
    were there, because I had already downloaded them via Oil Change. They'd been there
    since June, and I've been looking there for updates and fixes every few weeks since
    January. (Symantec is one of many major developers that rushes betas-in-all-but-name to
    market in order to beat the competition.)

    History: I fell in love with DOS XTree 1.0 the first time I tried it, in the early or mid '80s.
    It made file management on klunky old DOS machines a dream. I upgraded every time an
    upgrade was offered--three or four times in no less than three or four years. I love XTree
    so much that I continued to use it when I migrated to Windows 3.0 and 3.1; it did the job
    better than the beastly file manager that comes with older Windows versions, and it is
    so facile that it was easier to use than its own Windows upgrade and subsequent Windows
    versions. I =never= used the upgrades, even the excellent Win31 PC Tools descendent of
    Xtree (which I recommend for those readers who have opted to stick it out with Win31. If
    you can't get XTree, get PC Tools' file manager.) Alas, Win95's long filenames feature
    defeated good, old DOS XTree, which chokes on them. I stilll use XTree when I work in
    DOS, which is often, or even when pruning my hundreds of directories of Windows-based
    files (in DOS!) That last, however, is an adventure in blind swordsmanship I do not
    recommend to the faint of heart or merely mildly cautious readers of this review.

    Boxed in, I made my peace with Win95 and learned to do all my file management with
    Symantec's Norton Navigator 95. I have always felt it was slower going than DOS XTree,
    but it was the best game in town, so I worked with it.

    By some weird convergence of events, I was thinking about a positive review of Norton
    Navigator 95 when I stumbled on Oil Change. One thing led to another, and voila, I'm
    here to laud Norton Navigator 95b, to which I just upgraded. (I completely missed the "a"
    upgrade.)

    I'm not entirely sure what the largely automated half-hour patching process did under
    Navigator's hood, but I discovered that it definitely gave Navigator the ability to work
    under the direction of good, old DOS XTree key commands--a much faster interface than
    move-and-click mouse manipulation.

    What's weirdest is that it took an hour of hand-eye drills for me to get my mind and fingers
    to =use= the XTree key commands with the now-familiar Navigator 95 I see on the
    screen!

    What does Navigator do that Win95's free, built-in Explorer can't?  I used Explorer only
    long enough to load Navigator on the very day I migrated toWin95 from Win31, but when
    operating as a full Win95 shell, Navigator replaces Win95's own desktop with as many
    different desktops as you feel you need (one, say, for everyday work, another for graphics,
    another for Internet stuff, etc), all color coded and all completely customizable. Also,
    the Navigator file management program, which is always one-click away on the resizeable
    Navigator taskbar, is completely customizable. (My new XTree key commands are an
    option, not a requirement.) All the right-button pop-up menus can be customized, and
    there are features galore, all in easy reach, that you cannot undertake in Explorer. The
    Navigator Start button offers more useful options than Explorer's, and Navigator allows
    16-bit applications loaded in Win95 to use long filenames. It's easy to create new
    files and folders in any directory on any disk, and zipping and unzipping files is close to
    automatic. "Works the way you work" is a hackneyed phrase in the personal-computer
    world, but more and more, it's truer and truer with Norton Navigator 95.

    Bottom line: Microsoft has never been good at creating highly functional file-management
    tools, or even useful system shells. But all of Navigator's forebearers were great at giving
    DOS or Win31 a needed boost, and Navigator is right up there. This isn't the difference
    between a stick and automatic, it's the difference between waiting for a bus and being
    there. From a discounter, with rebate from Symantec, Norton Navigator will cost you
    about $45.00. It's money well spent, or you'll be facing time misspent with
    Explorer.  Eric Hammel ([e-mail])

    SpeedyROM

    Everybody complains about the speed - that is, the lack of same - of the World Wide Web.
    But the alternative for delivering volumes of information is the CD-Rom and that is truly
    slow technology.  Doing a simple search in "Encarta" - admittedly a grand digital
    encyclopedia - can take many, many minutes.  Quarterdeck's SpeedyROM ($39.95)
    purports to provide a fix and claims to speed up CD-Rom drive performance by a factor of
    two or three in many cases.  Twice as fast access to data?  The secret is that SpeedyROM
    caches - stores - chunks of the CD-Rom disk on the much faster hard drive.  Of course
    that is a potential problem.  If drive space is tight, forget SpeedyROM.  Another hitch -
    although it claims to work with compressed drives (which use a more complex data
    storage scheme), with SpeedyROM installed I encountered numerous problems with files
    becoming "cross-linked."  That's easy enough to sort out with a good repair utility - such
    as Norton Utilities - but it's annoying.

    Do you need SpeedyROM?  If you have a large hard drive, don't use disk compression,
    and make frequent use of CD-Roms, it is a good buy.  The increased speed is real and
    substantial.  But that's a lot of "if's."  Personally, I've deleted it from my drive - to reclaim
    the space and to end the cross-linking of files.  Besides, I rarely use CD-Roms - that's a
    technology the Web has just clobbered.   RM


    WinProbe

    Just before WinProbe, Quarterdeck's under $50 Windows troubleshooter, finished
    installing...it crashed and took down my system.  This is never a good sign and, worse, I'd
    previously tested WinProbe 3 and found it a pleasant enough GUI, but basically pointless.
    Even so, I persisted with WinProbe '95 - and it still is basically pointless software that
    appeals to those who like to worry about disasters.  WinProbe might even tell you a
    disaster was about to strike - its forte is doing system diagnostics, where it searches for
    conflicts among components.  But would you know how to resolve an IRQ conflict
    between a scanner and a modem?  Neither would I, so telling me a conflict is possible is
    neither encouraging nor useful information.  WinProbe does provide a jazzy "cockpit"-
    style status panel that gives the skinny about RAM, system resources, and so forth - but
    Norton Utilities does all of that much better.  As for the WinProbe "crash preventer" -
    well, I'm not persuaded, a skepticism underlined by the crash upon installing.  Vertisoft
    System's Fix-It (a program now distributed by Quarterdeck) is more reliable at preventing
    crashes.   Ordinarily I like utility programs, but WinProbe remains the exception to that
    rule.    RM

    MagnaRam 97

    Win 95 is a RAM glutton - it wants ever more - and MagnaRam 97 is in theory a cheap
    (under $50) utility that will trick your computer into thinking it has more memory.  But in
    installing MagnaRam '97 I learned the value in the old saw that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
    For many months I've happily run MagnaRam '95, so I figured MagnaRam '97 could only
    be better.  The older version gave me, in effect, four extra megabytes of RAM (a memory
    compression algorithm more effectively manages RAM to work this wizardry) once I
    installed the Win/95 patch (free from www.qdeck.com).  No crashes, no hitches, no
    problems.  But when I installed MagnaRam '97, chaos took over.  The box kept
    crashing...until I deleted MagnaRam '97 and re-installed MagnaRam '95.  Now all's happy
    and I still have the extra RAM.

    The larger point is that, with so much RAM and so many programs operating under Win
    95, installing virtually any program opens up the possibility of crashes.  When that
    happens, best policy is to delete the newcomer and throw it away - a good reason always
    to look for "demoware" downloads on the Web before buying (since software often
    cannot be returned - a stupid retail policy but one many stores follow).  If you cannot
    install the demoware, save your money and don't buy.  Simple.  And lots simpler than
    tinkering with WinProbe.  Besides, RAM is cheap nowadays -- as little as $5 or $10 per
    meg.  At those prices, it's nutty to muck around with RAM booster software.  Just buy the
    genuine article, snap the new RAM into place (it literally takes seconds), and off you go in
    a newly hot-rodded box.  FYI: minimum RAM for running Win '95 is 16 MB no matter
    what Microsoft says about 8 MB.  24 MB is better and 32 MB is ideal (if you don't run
    big graphics programs -- in which case buy all the RAM you can afford).  RM

    Freebies (or Near Enough)

         The 'Net is awash with downloadable software but most programs frankly aren't worth
    the bother.  But there are exceptions.  A great tool is NavEx which converts MS Internet
    Explorer "favorites" into Netscape Navigator bookmarks and does the job fast, perfectly.
    The cost - zip. The author is simply giving away NavEx.
         Another terrific tool is Clipboard Plus (clipbdpls), which dramatically extends the
    power of Windows' clipboard utility and allows for multiple clipboards to be maintained
    simultaneously. Again, this is freeware.
         A third freeware winner is DECEXT, a tiny utility that decodes mime and various other
    encoded documents.  It works with a single mouse click.  The author does ask for $5 if
    you really like it.
         Higher priced but wonderful is WinDict, a 25,000 word electronic dictionary for
    translating English into German and vice versa.  Installation is speedy and ease of use is
    high.  Note: this is a dictionary, not a translation program.  But if you frequently need help
    with odd bits of German (and I do), WinDict's help can be had with a mouse click.  The
    Switzerland-based author asks for $20.
         Still more freeware is AOL Redial, a little gem that keeps dialing AOL access numbers
    until it breaks through the busy signals.  It only works with AOL 3.0, the latest 16-bit
    version, but it is an invaluable tool as some 9 million users (at this writing   probably many
    more by publication) clog the lines to partake of the $19.95/unlimited access deal.
         Where to find these programs?  Look in the software library at www.zdnet.com or
    www.shareware.com, except for AOL Redial which is in AOL's software library.  RM

    Copyright 1997 by Robert McGarvey.  All rights reserved.  For information, contact:
    [e-mail].