Appraisal Aid for Job Judges
by: Joel T. Patz
Performance evaluations are a necessary part of doing business. They take time to write and they're often hard to organize. But Performance Now 2.0 can take some of the sting from this difficult task.
Performance Now's five predesigned review forms--Universal, Management, Clerical, Production, and Sales and Service--help you get started. If none of these fills the bill, you can design your own review form.
Each review form includes a list of performance criteria with evaluative factors that you rate on a scale of 1 to 5. Based on the ratings, Performance Now produces clear and direct text, including both the employee's name and gender-specific pronouns. An overall rating is also calculated, which helps you select summary statements for the evaluation. A built-in word processor makes it easy to modify any of the program's text passages.
Performance Now also provides lists of element-specific suggestions for improving performance or developing an employee's abilities.
Online help is available every step of the way. Dialog box Help buttons provide context-sensitive help for most review elements, and the Advice tool provides help on human resources issues. When you give a low performance rating for an element, a message is displayed to remind you to add supporting details.
You can maintain a log with notes of activities that occurred prior to an employee's evaluation. This information can be used as a reference or you can paste it directly onto the evaluation form.
Performance Now's Language Checker reviews an evaluation's language for suitability. It helps identify words or phrases that may be considered poor choices, discriminatory or subjective. A basic spell checker and print preview are also available. You can also export files in .RTF and ASCII formats.
Performance Now 2.0 offers an intuitive, well-structured and informative solution for busy managers, and helps ensure that evaluations are done responsibly and accurately.
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Performance Now 2.0
Price: $129; upgrade, $49; multiple, from $39 to $69 per license
Disk Space: 8MB (10MB with tutorial)
System Resources: 15%
RAM: 4MB
KnowledgePoint
800-727-1133, 707-762-0333
Data Disk Holds 100 Mobile Megabytes
by: James E. Powell
From the people who brought you Bernoulli Boxes comes a unique way to add storage space to your system in 100MB increments. The Iomega Zip Drive uses special disks that are about the size of 3.5-inch diskettes and come in 100MB ($19.95) and 25MB ($9.95) varieties.
I tested the parallel-port model, which offers a pass-through connection for your printer. It's lightweight (about 1 pound), palm-sized, and can operate flat or on its side. The unit comes with its own power supply and has a low-power mode to conserve energy.
The drive is slower than your hard disk. In Wintune tests, it was about one-quarter as fast as the hard disks on my Gateway 2000 486/33. But its 29ms average seek time for the 100MB disk is equivalent to the typical hard disks available five years ago.
A SCSI accelerator card, available for $49.95, improves performance by two to five times for the SCSI model.
The unit is quiet and cool running. A green light on the front tells you power is on, and a yellow light indicates when the diskette is being accessed. The included utilities format the disks, move files, catalog all applications on your system and run disk diagnostics. I highly recommend the Iomega Zip Drive.
by: Rich Castagna
It's only a rumor. PCMCIA does not stand for Pain, Confusion, Misery, Conflict, Insanity and Anguish. Using these pocket-sized peripherals has gotten a lot easier, and CardWizard Pro's PCMCIA management software just might make it a downright pleasure.
CardWizard Pro runs on top of PCMCIA card and socket services. It manages everything related to PCMCIA cards, without inundating you with technical jargon. But if techie trivia is your cup of tea, you can click away at CardWizard Pro's buttons to display nitty-gritty details like IRQ, I/O address and memory information.
First I inserted a hard disk card in my notebook. CardWizard Pro recognized it immediately. A click on the Wizard button opened a context-sensitive help window that indicated the card was configured properly and was accessible as drive D: . CardWizard Pro's help is often instructional, so some subtle PCMCIA tutoring comes your way while you get your cards working.
I pulled the hard disk and slipped a fax/modem card into the slot. This time, CardWizard Pro reported that the card required configuring. A click on the Wizard button offered details about an IRQ conflict and a couple of alternatives: Auto Correct or Correct. With Correct, I was given a list of available IRQs and prompted to select one. Auto Correct was even easier--it handled all of the reassignments necessary without bothering me with details.
A CardWizard Pro option lets you associate an application with a particular PCMCIA device, so when you insert the card the associated application starts up. Selecting Launch from the Options menu opens a dialog box that lists installed cards and lets you browse your directories to select an app. A Test button helps ensure that you've chosen the right .EXE. You can also check off an option that will pause for confirmation before kicking off the application.
CardWizard Pro makes PCMCIA a piece of cake with Plug-and-Play convenience, quick configuration and a little education thrown in for good measure.
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CardWizard Pro
Price: $69.95
SystemSoft
508-651-0088, fax 508-651-8188
Host Your Own TV Show
by: Rich Castagna
The big screen beckons. Your presentation may not be as gripping as 60 Minutes, but it can occupy the same space. PC on TV hooks a computer to a TV and turns the boob tube into a presentation monitor.
The kit includes all the cables you're likely to need to hook up to any NTSC or PAL TV. PC on TV can connect to a VCR, too, and supports S-Video and RGB Video. An included software driver lets you adjust the TV screen image. From a pop-up menu, you can reposition the picture and make other adjustments.
I tested PC on TV with a notebook computer and a standard 20-inch Hitachi TV. Presentation slides filled the TV screen nicely for a professional look, although colors took on odd hues at times. With text applications, the images were quite legible, but small fonts tended to lose some of their sharpness.
Images can appear simultaneously on the TV and the PC, so you can work at your PC and watch the fruits of your labor on TV.
All of the components tuck neatly into a 7.5 by 11-inch carrying case. The whole kit weighs only a pound, so you won't have any heavy equipment to slow down your road show.
PC on TV is perfect for pitches and well suited for training sessions.
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PC on TV
Price: $248 (direct) introductory price
SuperComputers
206-881-7500, fax 206-881-5015
Start the Presses!
by: Jim Forbes
Some things really do get better with time. ClickBook, a utility that lets you print in various booklet formats, is one of them.
ClickBook 2.0 makes it easier to create custom formats. Its operation within other applications has also been improved, and now you can print from multiple programs without having to return to ClickBook.
The program's templates, which are useful for many printing tasks, are its strong suit. Previously, it was less adept at developing custom formats.
Release 2.0 addresses this weakness. It's now easier to print custom booklets that mix graphics and text. With its new controls, you're able to print single pages from a document and specify page dimensions in your output.
The beta version of ClickBook 2.0 that I tested came with about 25 layouts, and the company says the shipping product will include several more. New templates let you create greeting cards, business cards and other special print jobs. The program's interface, which was already very good, is even better now. The Preview function now has VCR-like controls to move among a document's pages.
ClickBook works only with laser and ink jet printers, and installs itself in other applications' File menus. ClickBook printouts include borders and cutting instructions.
ClickBook is the kind of handy utility you buy to do one thing and end up using for dozens of jobs.
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ClickBook 2.0
Price: $69.95; upgrade, $20
BookMaker Corp.
800-766-8531, 415-354-8161
Jet Set Printer
by: Hailey Lynne McKeefry
I'll give you three hints: It's smaller than a breadbox, roughly the size and shape of a box of Kleenex, and weighs maybe half of what your notebook PC does. Give up? It's the Mannesmann Tally MobileJet.
This monochrome ink jet printer lets you take 300x300 dot-per-inch resolution printing and 3-page-per-minute print speeds with you. With batteries, the unit weighs just under 3.5 pounds. It can run on AC electricity, 10 AA alkaline batteries, or a nickel cadmium or nickel metal hydride battery pack. Depending on the type of battery used, it prints between 80 (for alkaline and nickel cadmium) and 140 (for NiMH) pages between charges. The unit ships with a 15-page sheet feeder and 15 resident fonts.
I found that the MobileJet, which measures 2.4 by 12 by 5.3 inches, nestled neatly inside my briefcase next to my notebook computer. However, toting the AC adapter (which my conservative nature forces me to do) adds considerable heft to the total package. I also needed to find and carry a standard Centronics parallel cable (which was not included with the unit). The MobileJet, despite its diminutive size, prints on letter, legal and A4 paper and can print in landscape and portrait modes.
This printer proved extremely easy to set up and use. In fact, loading the printer driver, snapping in the ink cartridge and hooking up cable took me less than five minutes.
The unit uses a 50-nozzle disposable ink cartridge that lasts for 220,000 characters. The printer provides HP DeskJet Plus emulation to print both text and graphics without special drivers. Everything you need to operate the printer is located on the front of the unit. There is a power-on indicator and a Form Feed button. Another button lets you switch between Economy and Laser Quality print modes, while the On Line button provides status information.
A sticker containing a key to some of the more common error messages (paper out, battery low, battery charging and so forth) and to some advanced functions (such as self test, set up and clear paper jam) was placed on the unit. While this would be a minor point if I was printing from the desktop, I appreciated the excuse to leave the manual at home.
The output proved to be clear and dark. When I printed large (15 points and over) or formatted (bold or underlined) text, the results were more noticeably fuzzy. However, when printing straight text documents, the output was more than passable, although not laser-perfect.
The MobileJet's $350 price tag makes portable printing affordable. While it's no match for a laser, its output is almost letter quality, so that you can create presentable documents wherever you are.
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Mannesmann Tally MobileJet
Price: $350
Mannesmann Tally Corp.
800-843-1347, 206-251-5524
CMOS Setup Survives Spent Cell
by: Rich Castagna
It's going to happen. That little dry-cell disk that trickles just enough juice to keep your PC's CMOS settings intact will quit on you. You can jot those vital CMOS stats somewhere and hope you find the piece of paper when the power fails. Or you can tip the scales in your favor with an ounce of prevention called BatteryDisk.
CMOS safety couldn't be easier. Just pop the BatteryDisk floppy into your A: drive and type "setup." The program peers into your PC and pulls out the configuration information from its setup files, noting essentials such as disk type, heads, cylinders, and sectors and tracks. The process takes less than a minute. Then slip BatteryDisk back into its plastic case, which you can stick on the side of your PC.
When your battery bites the dust, insert BatteryDisk in the A: drive and turn on the PC. The CMOS settings are restored, and you're back in business. Maybe the best part of BatteryDisk is that you don't have to run down to the electronics store immediately to get a new battery. Use BatteryDisk to boot until you can replace the dead cell.
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BatteryDisk
Price: $19.95
Disk Space: NA
System Resources: NA
RAM: NA
International Systems
800-248-4217, 312-222-1364
Little Black Book Goes Electric
by: Ron Bel Bruno
Your little black book is fine if you're just jotting down a couple of phone numbers for your contacts. But with home offices, faxes, modems, cell phones and e-mail, your handwritten address books just can't keep up. Day-Timer AddressBook is a better black book for the electronic age.
The program, which I tested in beta, is a scaled-down version of Day-Timer's PIM, and it's a welcome WYSIWYG departure from its database-centric competition. Yet, like a database, it lets you sort entries by last name, company, zip code and a user-defined follow-up date. You can tailor printed output for envelopes, labels, Rolodex cards or Day-Timer pages.
In addition to its conventional address book capabilities, Day-Timer can be a helpful assistant for projects. Say, for example, you receive a dBASE file with a list of contacts for a business meeting. You can save the dBASE data in ASCII format, import it to Day-Timer and create a database exclusively for that event. Then you can use Day-Timer's dialer and log to make the calls and keep a record of each one. If you tend to get chatty on the phone or bills are too high, you can use the program's timer to help limit the length of your phone calls. For follow-ups, the Sort function arranges names on the list according to the call-back dates you indicated.
I particularly liked Day-Timer's nod to telecommunications progress. Most electronic address books have recently added "miscellaneous" data fields or a single field for e-mail data. Day-Timer, on the other hand, provides dedicated fax and cellular phone fields, plus four e-mail address fields per name or company. In another trendy yet clever move, Day-Timer's Tools/Caller ID menu selection lets you search your personal phone book to find the name attached to the phone number identified by the telco's caller ID service.
Day-Timer AddressBook is a single-minded program free from distractions of calendars or other PIM paraphernalia.
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Day-Timer AddressBook
Price: $39.95 (direct)
Day-Timer Technologies
800-225-5005, 610-266-9000
Quick 486 Is like a Bolt from Big Blue
by: Jonathan Blackwood
In these days of souped-up Pentiums with triple-digit clock speeds, is there still a place for a 486 desktop system? The answer is a resounding yes. For ordinary business applications, the Alaris Leopard VIP-BL100 (the BL100 is for its 100MHz IBM Blue Lightning 486 processor) is a joy to use, and Alaris has endowed the VIP line with chameleon-like versatility.
An example of this versatility is the motherboard that has VESA and PCI local-bus slots, in addition to standard ISA slots. My test unit Leopard VIP came equipped with a 500MB hard disk, 16MB of RAM, an IIT math coprocessor (the Blue Lightning chip, though equipped with a 16KB internal cache, has no on-board floating-point unit), 256KB of Level 2 cache, a Mitsumi quad-speed CD-ROM drive, a sound card and Labtech speakers. The Alaris-made motherboard looked like a fine Swiss timepiece.
The VIP's scores on WINDOWS Magazine's Wintune benchmarks fell in the range between a DX2/66 and a DX4/100 machine: 57 MIPS for the CPU, a lowly 5 MFLOPS for the separate coprocessor, 7.02 million pixels per second for the video and 5101KB per second for the hard disk. The Word 5.0 benchmark macro clocked in at 39 seconds, while the Excel macro was expected in 36 seconds.
While you'd likely be disappointed with the VIP as a CAD workstation, it'll make a fine corporate workhorse for standard business applications.
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Alaris Leopard VIP-BL100
Price: $1,914 (as configured plus a Lexmark 101-key keyboard)
Alaris
800-317-2348, 510-770-5700