Tele-System-Phone, Fax and TV
Jim Forbes
If your home office is beginning to look like an office equipment store's crowded display table or if you're running out of power plugs, then check out Compaq's new Presario 978.
The Presario 978 uses a 75MHz Pentium processor and ships with a quad-speed CD-ROM drive, 1MB of video memory with accelerated graphics, a 725MB hard disk drive and an integrated 16-bit Sound Blaster Pro-compatible audio adapter. The Presario 978 is housed in a mini-tower and has a PCI bus. The coolest thing about this system is its combination of unusual features: Its fax modem provides telephony capability, allowing you to set up voice mailboxes, in addition to connecting to online services and the Internet, and sending and receiving faxes. When connected to an external antenna or cable system, the Presario's integrated television tuner allows you to view shows in a window.
I really liked the Presario 978. My home office has slowly been lost to a clutter of fax machines, answering machines and other office automation equipment. The Presario 978 replaces those devices and the small, portable television I keep next to my desk to watch late-breaking news.
Setup is a snap. The system comes preloaded with Microsoft Works, plus a communications program, online services, Microsoft Encarta and Quicken. In fact, the Presario 978 comes with one of the best software bundles I've seen on a computer intended for the small office/ home market. Like other members of the Presario family, this computer includes DOS, Microsoft Windows 3.1 and TabWorks, a Windows shell that can be used instead of Program Manager.
The 15-inch monitor was adequate but in no way remarkable. The one interesting thing about it was the way the twin 4-inch speakers attached to the front of it by means of a bar that straddled its underside. The speakers sounded fine, though the audio cables aren't easy to locate at first.
It took me less than a half hour to unpack the machine, connect its communications card and plug a cable connector to its television tuner. While the idea of watching television on your computer may seem discomfiting, I found it worthwhile, particularly since I could tune in CNN and CNBC. Although the images on 15-inch monitors are not as sharp as those shown on your television, they are quite watchable.
I had no difficulty attaching to several cable systems, but not with an external antenna. Be sure you have a cable system available if the television capability is important to you. I've seen this technology used extensively by bond traders and others who rely on up-to-the-minute news reports.
The communication card and MediaPilot software Compaq supplies make this a remarkable computer. Although storing voice messages on your computer is a sure way to chew up space on your hard disk, the convenience is hard to beat. The telephony application lets you set up multiple, single or groups of mailboxes that can receive messages while your computer is left unattended. You safeguard the security of the stored data with passwords. I also came to appreciate the hands-free phone answering feature.
The Presario 978 produced respectable scores for a 75MHz machine on our WINDOWS Magazine Wintune 2.0 benchmarks: 81.3MIPS and 16.3MFLOPS for the CPU, 5.1 MPixels per second for the display graphics and a 3.75MB per second data-transfer rate on the hard disk. The disk score is slower than some notebooks I've tested. It was noisy, too. The Presario 978 took an average of 37 seconds to run our Word 6.0 macro and about 32.5 seconds for the Excel 5.0 benchmark.
Unless you really require blazing disk drive performance, it's hard to go wrong with the Compaq Presario 978, especially for home or small-office use.
--Info File--
Compaq Presario CDTV 978
Price: $2,099
In Brief: This computer offers a much better than normal software bundle and adequate performance, and is noteworthy in its support of self-contained voice mail, fax send or receive, and a television tuner.
Compaq Computer Corp.
800-888-5858, fax
713-378-1442
Management by the Books
Ellen DePasquale
Accounting is more than just issuing invoices and printing checks. A good accounting program should take care of those chores, but also be easy to use and produce information for making key business decisions. BusinessWorks 10.0 offers increased flexibility in its design, search and reports features, making it a great management tool.
Most new features in version 10.0 involve reporting and management options. For example, when taking an order for a current customer, you can view purchasing history for a certain item. And if you need to analyze your data by grouping by job type, the job costing module can handle it.
Each of the seven modules general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, order entry, inventory control and purchasing, and job costing has new features, but accounts receivable and order entry benefit the most. Their new options allow BusinessWorks to grow with your business. You can now list up to 250 sales accounts and sales representatives and 500 "ship to" addresses, and you can assign finance charges by customer instead of choosing from a predefined list.
Inventory control has a new Automatic Purchase Order option that generates purchase orders based on predetermined stock levels. Also, payroll allows the importing of time card information from time clock programs and the querying of general ledger accounts to find the source of the posting.
BusinessWorks hasn't sacrificed ease of use for flexibility. But, as a midlevel accounting program that offers some serious accounting, it's not for accounting novices. BusinessWorks uses real-time posting as opposed to posting a number of entries in a "batch." It also uses the accrual accounting method, which lists payables as liabilities and receivables as assets. This differs from a cash accounting system where only money spent and cash received are listed on financial statements.
The data-entry and search criteria screens are clean and easy to read, but they do not resemble other popular accounting programs, such as QuickBooks or Peachtree. BusinessWorks' design is unique in several ways. For example, the data-entry screens (such as customer information, inventory parts and sales order entry) use buttons for all the options instead of a menu bar. The only missing button is one for cancel, an omission that should be remedied.
Also, each screen is a window in itself. In other words, the BusinessWorks main menu window does not have to be active in order to view the chart of accounts or a customer history window. This can be useful if you need to refer to these windows while working in another program.
Lastly, BusinessWorks' data-entry screens look like a database, so the invoice, purchase order and other forms are not WYSIWYG. This makes it somewhat difficult to visualize an activity's end result. Version 10.0 allows the custom design of these forms, but rather than designing them graphically using drag-and-drop field placement, you customize forms by entering locations on another database-like screen. For example, to add a box around the word Invoice, you would enter the upper left-hand row and column, the height and the width. To keep track of design decisions, you click on the Example button to view the form, but you can't alter it inside the viewing window. This process is clumsy and unintuitive.
But if forms customization is BusinessWorks' low point, then the manuals and excellent online help are its high points. Written in plain English and easy to follow, the manuals for each module are filled with screenshots and descriptive text for the module's options. The award-winning online help is excellent.
In short, if you want to crank out the numbers and view them in assorted ways, BusinessWorks is your best choice for the money.
--InfoFile--
BusinessWorks 10.0
Price: System Manager, $95; each module, $395; bundle with GL, AR and AP, $995; trial version, $19.95
In Brief: While BusinessWorks excels at offering various ways to view accounting data, its forms design tools need improvement.
Disk Space: 14MB
System Resources: 5-7%
RAM: 4MB (8MB recommended)
State of the Art
800-854-3415, 916-791-7730
by Jim Forbes
Fundamental differences often separate the most interesting new products from the most useful. A case in point is the PrinterPal, a dull but useful Hewlett-Packard device that lets you receive and print faxes using HP DeskJet and LaserJet printers.
I'm probably a good example of someone who really needs the PrinterPal. First, I own an HP printer and I'm tired of receiving faxes at a nearby stationery store. Second, my at-home work environment is cramped, and I'm more interested in living space than I am in surrendering my few remaining empty tabletops to yet another piece of office automation equipment. More importantly, I've reached the point where I can no longer put off buying a fax machine. I often need to see and approve material that must be processed on a short-turnaround basis.
The PrinterPal can be configured to receive only, or to send and receive. In a receive-only configuration, this device connects to your printer and computer with cables that attach to parallel ports. For installations where both send and receive operations are necessary, a separate serial cable (supplied in the box) connects your modem to the system. The PrinterPal mounts on the back of LaserJet printers and underneath or in back of some DeskJet printers. The unit has side-by-side RJ-11 connectors for both line and phone.
This device ships with signal discrimination software that recognizes whether or not incoming calls are voice or data, allowing you to use a single line for both voice and fax. I've seen gizmos in the past that did a very poor job of discriminating between voice and data calls, resulting in a piercing shriek in a caller's ear. But the PrinterPal's software worked flawlessly at this task.
It took less than 10 minutes to set up the PrinterPal on any of the three printers I tested it with. The supplied documentation is well written and relatively comprehensive. One of the few complaints I have concerns the cables packaged with this system. At home, my printer is separated from my computer by nearly 6 feet. PrinterPal's cables (including that used on its power supply) are much shorter.
Frankly, I have never felt comfortable with faxing applications that require me to leave my unattended computer connected to a live phone line. To begin with, the electricity to my apartment can always quit at an inopportune moment say, just as my computer is receiving a "you bet your job" fax. Plus, I just don't think leaving my computer turned on and connected to a phone line is a good idea. There's just too much that can go wrong. That's the reason I love this product: It lets me receive faxes regardless of whether or not my computer, or the printer, is turned on (or in use).
The PrinterPal contains 512KB of memory, which according to HP should be enough memory to store up to 20 pages of text transmitted at medium not high resolution. This device consistently received up to five pages of mixed line art and text when the printer was turned off. An audible tone alerts you to the presence of incoming or stored text.
HP also gets high marks for allowing me to print my incoming faxes on plain paper, which eliminated the extra step of photocopying material printed on thermal paper. Another nice touch is the ability to configure the PrinterPal from a remote location through the use of a Touch-tone phone, a process PrinterPal's documentation clearly explains.
I tested the PrinterPal on a new DeskJet 660C, a DeskJet 500 and a LaserJet 4, and had no difficulty installing or using it. Given that HP is the largest supplier of ink jet and laser printers, this could be a very popular product.
--Info File--
Hewlett-Packard PrinterPal
Price: LaserJet version, $229; DeskJet version, $199
In Brief: This unit, which effectively receives and prints faxes using existing HP LaserJet and DeskJet printers, allows you to print faxes on plain paper and eliminates the need to purchase a separate fax machine.
Hewlett-Packard Co.
800-752-0900,
408-246-4300
Easy Expenses for Road Warrior
by Rich Castagna
The worst part of a business trip isn't the jet lag, the meals on the run or the endless workdays. The worst part is filling out a travel expense report when you come home. Quicken ExpensAble can't turn back the clock, prevent indigestion or give you the day off. But it can take the sting out of tallying up the expenses you incur on the road.
ExpensAble's first clever conceit is the envelope metaphor it uses as a repository for expense items. This isn't only an accurate imitation of life think about those travel department envelopes that end up stuffed with your receipts but it's a practical, effortless way to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. I tested a late beta version of ExpensAble.
For each trip, you create a new ExpensAble envelope. Whenever you spend some of the company's money or your own just jot the entry and drop it into the envelope. If you take a cash advance before embarking, let ExpensAble know and it'll figure it in and adjust your reimbursement accordingly.
Entering expense items is quick, and it gets faster as you enter more items. ExpensAble's main screen has a spreadsheet-like grid at the top and a work area below where you enter individual expense items. When you complete an item on the bottom, it gets plugged into the grid on top.
You don't have to type dates or dollars pop-up calendars and calculators let you point and click. And wherever feasible, ExpensAble offers drop-down lists for quick entries. For example, a list for expense types includes airfare, meals, taxis and so forth. The neat thing is that the lists remember. Type in an airline that's not listed, and it becomes part of the roster. Update the lists on the fly or by selecting Lists from the main menu.
In some respects, ExpensAble goes beyond a typical expense report. For each expense item, you can indicate the payment method credit card, check, cash, company paid and categorize expenses as reimbursable, nonreimbursable or personal. And better yet, this program is smart enough to know that a company-paid expense is nonreimbursable.
Five buttons on the work area's right side let you enter and delete expenses, and clear the worksheet's decks for the next entry. The Details button lets you define foreign currency and the applicable exchange, add notes and assign billing responsibilities. Click on the Split button to divvy up a single expense item to charge it back to several accounts.
The Hotel Genie sounds like a supernatural being who turns your blanket and leaves a mint on your pillow. Actually, it's ExpensAble's super and natural way to handle hotel expenses. Few people bother with hotel expenses on a daily basis. It's easier when the final bill is in hand, so that's how the Hotel Genie works. Type the hotel's name or pick it off the list and indicate the room rate with applicable taxes and your payment method. The Hotel Genie prompts for other likely hotel charges, such as meals and phone calls.
ExpensAble comes with 20 predefined expense-report formats. You can make only minor modifications to these forms, such as replacing column and row labels and changing fonts. If your company doesn't have an official expense-report form, or replacing it is practical, then ExpensAble's choices should suffice. Otherwise, you'll have to transpose the information, or export it to Quicken or an Excel spreadsheet, a feature that wasn't yet working in the beta.
Analytical reports are also included. The Summary Report groups reimbursable and nonreimbursable expenses by type with totals, advances and amount due to the employee. A Transaction Detail report shows each day's expenses with the details you provided. One report lists items by payment method, while another shows who you paid for what. You can do some basic filtering of these reports by date range and other criteria.
Assuming you're not chained to a standard company expense report, ExpensAble can unfetter you from the drudgery and details of expense reimbursement.
--Info File--
Quicken ExpensAble
Price: $49.95
In Brief: ExpensAble is a very easy-to-use business expense reporting program that integrates with Intuit's Quicken.
Intuit
800-816-8025, 415-322-0573
Pilots Help Pubs Take Off
by James Bell
Desktop publishing doesn't have to be hard. Page Magic, an entry-level DTP program, has long appealed to new and occasional users. With Page Magic 2.0, which I tested in beta, NEBS has overhauled the program to further simplify the layout process and add capabilities for more experienced DTP users.
Page Magic introduces Page Pilots to jump-start new document creation. Akin to Microsoft Publisher's Wizards, Page Pilots automatically generate customized documents based on your responses to a series of questions.
Page Pilots are included for brochures, letterheads, business cards and envelopes. Additional Page Pilots for newsletters and flyers are provided when you register your copy of the program.
The Page Pilots I tried worked well, although more customization options would have been welcomed. But help abounds for new users. When a Page Pilot document is completed, the program immediately displays a Cue Card help screen with detailed instructions on how to modify, print and save it.
Page Magic also ships with 170 templates for common business documents, including many intended for use with NEBS' line of Company Colors preprinted papers. The Company Colors templates have on-screen guides to show where the preprinted colors and graphics will appear to minimize trial-and-error printing. Page Magic accomplishes this by adding special background and foreground frames that show up on screen, but don't print. You can also use these special frames to generate watermark and stamp effects.
The program's interface has been greatly improved. The main work area is now a pasteboard, where you can temporarily set aside text and graphics. The program's view controls have been enhanced with a variable magnification tool and the ability to display facing pages. Toolbars can be expanded or condensed, and can float or be docked along the pasteboard's edge.
Like most DTP packages, Page Magic uses a frame-based layout process where you create frames to hold text or graphics. Adding frames and importing text and graphics into them is easy. The program has numerous frame controls in a tabbed dialog box and you can apply paragraph styles to typed or imported text. This operation is logical and includes new options to override paragraph styles and to adjust a style to match another section of text. Tabs now can be set and interactively adjusted using the tab ruler.
The program has mode tools for frame creation, text entry, paragraph styling and drawing objects, with the toolbar options adjusting automatically as you switch between modes. Page Magic also has right mouse-button menus providing various controls for the selected object.
PowerText lets you add special text effects. It can handle up to 256 characters at a time, and adds new shadow and warping effects to existing options for rotated, curved and circular text.
Page Magic 2.0 also provides extensive color support. You can create and save color palettes using RGB, HLS, CMYK and Pantone (Coated, Uncoated, SWOP Process and Process Simulator) colors and tints. Print spot and process-color separations, preview separations on-screen and preview color publications in monochrome. Other printing enhancements include scaling, negatives, thumbnails, crop marks and booklet printing. You can display a printing boundary to ensure that your design doesn't run off your page's printable area.
A clip-art browser is included with 200 pieces of clip art; another 200 are provided when you register. The black-and-white clip art is grouped by business categories. Use the browser for your own clip art, too. The program also has 35 TrueType fonts, a font organizer, a PhotoCD browser, a screen-capture program and a utility for adding special characters to a publication. Page Magic supports TWAIN-compatible scanners.
Page Magic 2.0 is ideally suited for small businesses, especially when it's used with NEBS' preprinted paper stock.
--Info File--
Page Magic 2.0
Price: $69.95; upgrade, $39.95
In Brief: Designed with small businesses in mind, NEBS' desktop publishing package lets you make slick business documents with very little sweat.
NEBS
800-882-5254, 603-880-5100
Remote Possibility
by Rich Castagna
It's a long arm that can reach back to your office PC when you're on the road. And that arm needs deft fingers at both ends to manipulate files and applications effectively. Carbon Copy is one of the handful of venerable entries in the remote-control/access field. Version 3.0 enhances Carbon Copy's worthier features and adds Windows 95 compatibility to its mix of supported operating systems.
The first thing you'll notice about this new version is how easy it is to install. Carbon Copy not only conducts most of this process, but also offers guidance along the way. For example, you don't have to tell the software what kind of modem you have and which comm port it's using. Carbon Copy will check your system and find and identify your modem. When it finds your modem, it probably will correctly pin a name on it because it consults a list of about 300 modem brands and models. It had no trouble fingering a Zoom V.34 in one machine and an Intel PCMCIA 14.4Kbps modem in a notebook.
After confirming its discovery with you, the program then puts the modem through its paces to determine the highest data-transfer speed that it can handle working with Carbon Copy.
All too often, using remote-control software results in some aprs connection headaches. These programs often replace your system's drivers with their own. Consequently, when you're not hooked up in a remote session you end up forfeiting functionality. Not so with Carbon Copy. It keeps its hands off your video, keyboard and mouse drivers. And as long as you stay in Windows, Carbon Copy doesn't load any TSRs.
The program's interface is essentially the same as version 2.5's. It consists of eight large buttons that you click on to make a call or wait for one, to transfer files, to start remote control and to open a chat session between the connected computers. Three of version 2.5's less intriguing buttons Password Table, Phone Book and Exit have been relegated to menu options and replaced by Remote Clipboard, Remote Printing and Remote Drive.
These new buttons reflect some of version 3.0's new features and do what their names suggest. Remote Clipboard is a handy feature that lets you copy text or graphics to Clipboard on one machine and then paste the copied material into a document on a remote PC. It also works very quickly. With Remote Printing, you remotely access and use a printer connected to the host PC, so you could send files from the guest PC and have them print back at the office. Remote Drive lets you map the host's drives to the remote PC so they appear as local drives.
Linking two PCs with Carbon Copy 3.0 was about as easy as installing the software. I did have to make a minor adjustment to complete a connection dropping the communication speed at the host to match that of the remote. I tested the program on PCs running Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and a beta of Windows 95. It operated flawlessy under all three operating systems.
Carbon Copy 3.0's file-transfer function is easy to use and quick. You can drag files between the directories on the split-screen display to transfer them from one PC to the other. I moved a 300KB file in less than 15 seconds. It took only a couple of seconds longer to scoot a 1MB file between machines. When a file transfer finishes, the directories on both ends of the connection are automatically refreshed.
Remote control is pretty peppy, too. As with most remote-control programs, the response isn't fast enough to entice you into running apps remotely on a regular basis, but for occasional use it's acceptable. From the guest PC, I started Excel on the host. It took about 14 seconds to get the app up and running only a few seconds longer than a local launch. There was a more substantial difference opening files, however. Locally, a 50KB Excel file opened in a lickety-split 1.5 seconds. The same file when accessed across Carbon Copy's remote bridge took about 13 seconds to appear. Screen refreshes were also speedy enough to work comfortably.
Carbon Copy 3.0 is a solid remote-access and control performer. Although other programs' speed may rival or even surpass Carbon Copy's, its easy, noninvasive installation and intuitive interface make it an excellent choice to extend your PC's reach.
--Info File--
Carbon Copy 3.0
Price: $129 (street)
In Brief: Carbon Copy 3.0 is a very capable remote-control program with an easy, unobtrusive installation.
Disk Space: 8MB
System Resources: 1%
RAM: 4MB
Microcom
800-822-8224, 617-551-1000
by Michelle Tyrrell
Zeos' Meridian 850C and 850A are two of the most aesthetically pleasing laptops around. They're sleek, with no extra buttons and knobs so the keyboard hardly seems cramped at all, and the Pentium processor is quick enough to keep things moving as rapidly as you do.
They ship with either a 75MHz or a 90MHz Pentium processor. The gems I tested were both of the 75MHz variety, and came with a standard setup of 16MB of RAM (expandable to 32MB), 256KB synchronous SRAM cache, an internal 1.44MB floppy disk drive, local-bus video with 1MB of video RAM and integrated 16-bit stereo sound. The back of each unit has a flip-down panel with mouse and keyboard connectors, a parallel port and serial port, and audio in/out jacks. A side panel reveals a PCMCIA slot that holds two Type II cards or one Type III card.
The midrange model I tested (the 850C) had a dual-scan display and a 810MB hard disk. The high-end model (the 850A) had an active-matrix display, a 1.3GB hard disk, a set of external Sony speakers, a 14.4Kbps PCMCIA fax modem and WinFax Lite software. Both came with two rechargeable nickel metal hydride batteries, preinstalled MS-DOS 6.2, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Microsoft Office Professional software and a removable hard disk.
The brightness/contrast controls on the dual-scan monitor were quite effective and the 10.3-inch screen was fairly easy to view with minimal eye strain. But, if your budget can handle it, the active-matrix screen will surely win you over. Although it's a bit smaller (9.5 inches), the difference in color and clarity is obvious. It's well worth the difference in price ($800) if you'll use it for presentations or if you just want brilliant colors.
There were a few things I disliked about these machines. For one thing, if you don't buy the external speakers, all you'll get in the way of sound are the standard beeps and chimes you normally hear with Windows. Also, the eraser-style TruePoint pointing device located below the spacebar was a bit jerky and hard to maneuver on both models. No matter how I changed the settings, I couldn't easily get the cursor exactly where I wanted it.
The most bothersome thing about these machines? The power-saving features didn't seem to make much difference in the battery life. The nickel metal hydride batteries should last two to three hours with all power-saving features turned on. The first time I used the machines with all of the power-saving features turned off, I got about an hour of battery life. The next time I used the active-matrix display, I enabled the power-saving mode and set it on "medium," and I got only an hour and five minutes of battery life. The battery is very easy to install and recharging time is about 90 minutes.
But the ups surely outweigh the downs. On the WINDOWS Magazine Wintune benchmarks, both exhibited their Pentium bloodlines, each scoring 80.8 MIPS and 16.3 MFLOPS. The scores on the video torture tests were 6.6 million pixels per second for the midrange model and 6.9 million pixels per second on the high-end model. The hard disk access scores were 10.9MB per second and 9.7MB per second, respectively. In Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0, the scores were 40 seconds and 8 seconds for the midrange model and 32 seconds and 9.3 seconds on the high-end machine.
Weighing in at 6.8 pounds without peripherals and measuring 2.1 by 11.7 by 8.9 inches, the Meridian is neither the heaviest nor the lightest laptop available.
Zeos provides excellent documentation and setup is as easy as unpacking the unit and turning it on. They come with an AC adapter with a 13-foot cable and a carrying case.
All in all, the Meridian 850C and 850A are speedy laptops with excellent software at a good price. But keep that extra battery handy.
--Info File--
Zeos Meridian 850C and 850A
Price: With dual-scan screen and 810MB disk, $3,795; active-matrix screen, 1.3GB disk, fax modem, speakers, $4,995; 90MHz Pentium, add $200; 2X CD-ROM drive, add $329
In Brief: The ZEOS Meridian is a speedy Pentium notebook with good software and a nice price.
Zeos
800-828-0413, 612-362-1234
CAD Packs Punch, Low Punch
Ranjit S. Sahai
Put away your T-square and triangle. Prop up your PC on your drafting table and load it with QuickCAD, the latest entry in the low-end two-dimensional CAD market. Whatever your design needs from drafting a building plan to laying out a home office or even creating a landscape design this new CAD package is not only affordable, it's also powerful enough to tackle demanding design projects.
QuickCAD is based on the same core graphics engine found in Drafix CAD Professional, its sibling application. QuickCAD boasts a refreshingly mature interface that is nicely complemented by a comprehensive feature set.
QuickCAD is essentially a trimmed-down version of Drafix CAD Professional. It offers its more substantial sibling's basic features, but it lacks Professional's macro programming language, customization features and the thousands of predrawn symbols. QuickCAD has a new scalable toolbar that switches between Beginner, Advanced and Expert modes. Also new is the AutoScale feature, which automatically sets up a standard scale for your drawing based on your input about the real-world extents of the specific object you wish to draw.
When you start QuickCAD, you're asked to enter an experience level in a dialog box. The three choices are represented graphically by icons that are similar to the international skiing symbols: a greenBeginner, a blue square for Advanced and a black diamond for Expert. Depending on the level you select, the QuickCAD tool palette adjusts appropriately. For instance, in Beginner mode, the tool palette offers only one method each to draw an arc and aExpert mode, it offers three ways to place an arc and six ways to draw amatter which level you first select, you can switch the palette to another level using the menu that pops up when you right-click on the palette. You access all QuickCAD features from the menu bar, which always remains the same regardless of the currently selected palette level.
The other elements that comprise QuickCAD's interface include a Property Bar located directly under the menu bar, an Edit Bar, a Status Bar along the bottom edge of the application window, and a tool palette of drawing, editing and viewing commands. The Property Bar provides easy access to active attribute settings such as layer, color, line style, width and hatch pattern. The Edit Bar provides editing options for selected commands or properties of highlighted entities. And the Status Bar prompts you with helpful messages as you select commands.
In addition to all the standard CAD entities such as point marker, multilines, polygons, curves, text, associative dimensions and hatch patterns, QuickCAD offers features you wouldn't normally expect to find in a low-end package. Its symbol library manager with preview capability, integrated nongraphic data tagging facility with flexible reporting, and selection set modifier with Boolean logic reveal the software's sophistication.
QuickCAD can read and write .DWG, .DXF, IGES, .WMF, HPGL, .PLX, .HOM and DC2 file formats. It also supports Windows' Multiple Document Interface for editing several drawings concurrently and the OLE 1.0 specification for letting you embed QuickCAD drawings in other Windows applications.
QuickCAD offers excellent drawing and editing commands, especially for a product in its price range. However, its undo facility is a little weak. It can undo several steps of entity deletions, but it can only undo your last edit. The software is network-aware and can run from a server. However, it does not support file referencing, a high-end feature important in a professional workgroup CAD environment.
If you are on a tight budget or you just want a nonprogrammable two-dimensional CAD package, QuickCAD is a well-designed and capable alternative.
--Info File--
Drafix QuickCAD
Price: $99 (street)
In Brief: The QuickCAD package is a well-rounded, noncustomizable, two-dimensional CAD program that belies its low-end price.
Disk Space: 7.5MB
System Resources: 21%
RAM: 4MB
Softdesk Retail Products
800-231-8574,
816-891-1040
Power-Hungry Portable
by John Perry
The SVELTE StepLite won't weigh you down much which is a good thing considering the number of trips you'll be making to the electrical outlet. Weighing a mere 4.8 pounds with 1.5- by 10.5- by 8-inch dimensions, this compact subnotebook is hampered by its poor power management.
Although the 84-key keyboard had a nice touch, I found it a little noisy for my tastes. The quick and quiet trackball is well placed exactly between your hands, but the cursor scurries across the screen too fast for the human eye, requiring a trip to the control panel to adjust it.
A host of options is available through the blue icons (Shift+function keys) embedded in the keyboard. You use them to make adjustments from reversing screen colors, to adjusting screen contrast, to resetting CMOS options. I was impressed with the Save to Disk utility. It closes out quickly and securely, and even better, it sets up and retrieves in a hurry as well.
The LED indicator, consisting of only one green light, conveys a plethora of information by the speed and number of times it blinks. If you're really interested in what these blinks and blurps mean, you'll have to pull out the chart in the manual and take it with you, because you'll never remember them all. All you really need to know is that when it starts blinking you need to start charging.
When it comes to power consumption, the StepLite is anything but conservative. This is not to say there aren't enough power-saving choices. The first of the three power conservation options stems from APMv1.0 compliance allowing your software to closely monitor your system and make energy-saving shutdown decisions for you.
You can also choose the level of energy savings you want using those blue icons embedded in your keyboard. Finally, you can let the CMOS handle it all by choosing the various areas you want monitored and how stringently they should be monitored, although most are simple enable/disable choices.
The StepLite uses a 75MHz 486DX4 processor.
If you don't plan on mixing multimedia presentations, working with CAD applications or retouching photos, then the StepLite is an affordable and productive alternative to a traditional desktop system. The 9.5-inch color STN LCD panel will keep your graphics at a modest 640x480 resolution, though the high-speed Super VGA controller will give you 1024x768 resolution should you use an external monitor. The screen is bright, with vivid colors.
The usual connectors external video hookup, keyboard, serial, parallel and PCMCIA (two Type I or Type II and one Type III) round out the StepLite's offerings. The parallel port has four different modes varying from unidirectional to extended or enhanced mode. The modes are transparent to you your application activates or deactivates a mode accordingly. The floppy disk drive is an external unit that you have to carry with you if you need it on the road.
A couple of extremely nice options provided with our test unit were the TC-Card PCMCIA Ethernet adapter and the Megahertz 14.4Kbps PCMCIA modem. Purchase these two peripherals and you won't be out of touch, at the office or on the road.
The StepLite did well for a 486 on the Windows Wintune test, clocking 41.2 MIPS and 8.3 MFLOPS. The video didn't fare so well at 1.7 million pixels per second, and neither did the data-transfer rate of only 3.1MB per second.
The StepLite cuts the frills to give you an affordable laptop. It comes bundled with the software you need for a productive session, but don't look for bells and whistles or you'll be disappointed.
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IPC Austin StepLite
Price: $2,343
In Brief: The Austin StepLite's price and package open interesting office opportunities for a subcompact not quite ready for the road.
IPC Technologies
800-874-7182, 512-339-3500