Editor’s note: Dr. Steven Struhl is vice president and senior methodologist at Total Research, Chicago.
Last month, we promised you a fascinating look at new developments at Microsoft - fascinating, that is, assuming you’re interested in that sort of thing. We also started our last review with a discussion of the incredible proliferation of new software. Those of you who do not have the February Quirk’s readily at hand will have to take our word for it that it included weighty ruminations, and the usual dosage of facile sarcasm and poorly disguised accusations. We fully intended to focus on the Microsoft story this time. However, as you will see, still another worthy software title came to our attention - which proves how right we were about the rapid pace of software development.
The new product: ite from ISPC
The product that we discovered, and which many of you doubtless would find very useful, is called ite. This comes from a smaller, not-yet-famous London-based company, ISPC. Once you get the hang of using this program, it can do remarkable things with crosstabulated reports that could well add an extra dimension to the work you produce.
ISPC’s ite Professional actually is a linked set of programs that takes ordinary crosstabulations and makes them into something new and more useful. The many functions it performs include organizing, sprucing up, indexing, electronically formatting, and readying tables for distribution. It also generates a table of contents for your report automatically (or with your intervention), and puts data into a format that you can distribute on disks or over the Web. Beyond this, it includes search features, makes charts, and lets users select and paste output directly into word processors or spreadsheets without retyping. In the Web version, it creates hyperlinks between report pages, and allows users to bookmark interesting content or even to make scrapbooks of the pages they find most informative.
There’s more. In addition, the program is smart enough (with a little prompting from you) to process tables from nearly any source. These include statistics and crosstabulation programs (such as SPSS, SAS, Quantum, Microtab, Mentor, or PTT) or databases (such as FoxPro, Delphi, Access and Oracle). Its authors claim it even can handle the output from many "home-grown" programs written in FORTRAN, Pascal, awk, and so on. There is one small caveat here, namely that you must do a little pre-processing with tables from recent versions of SPSS. The program now creates tables as objects rather than as text, so you must first get SPSS to export the tables to the ASCII format before using ite to add all its extra features.
This program clearly fills a need, but how to categorize what it does is another matter. If you use the ite system, you can clear away those awful volumes of crosstabs (that seemingly accompany every study) from your desk and your clients’ desks. You also can put an end to the hours you typically spend searching through paper documents, by using ite’s efficient tables of contents, indexing and searching. In the bargain, you can save dozens to thousands of trees, depending on how many paper-based sets of tables you normally distribute.
Since ite’s maker ISPC is based in England, we are presuming that users there find meaning in this program’s subtitle, "the electronic fiche," that your reviewer does not. At the moment, the best description I can come up with is "electronic table organizer and distributor, with neat search, formatting, and Web features," or perhaps "Hondo, supreme boss of crosstabulations." I’m afraid, though, that these terms mostly show why I am not making my living as a creative writer. Maybe ISPC should open a contest to find a new descriptive handle for this program.
Very alert readers with highly retentive memories may notice some similarities between this program and the SPSS Smart Viewer discussed in the last issue. However, as ite accepts output from many programs, and it adds useful features like tables of contents and indexing, it clearly does more than view output.
If you wish to think of ite as a competitor to the SPSS Smart Viewer, though, then ite wins on price. This does not mean that the program is exactly free, though. The ite Publisher is not sold, but licensed for an annual fee of $1,800 a year. You also need to get the accompanying browser to send copies of the reports to anybody. You either can buy a single copy of this for $399 (as a one-time purchase), or do what ISPC clearly prefers, and get an "unlimited" distribution license for another annual fee of $2,200 a year.
The ite Web Publisher is sold as an extension to the regular ite Publisher and costs another $1,800 a year. When you consider that the Internet version of the SPSS Smart Viewer costs about $20,000 - and this does not include free upgrades to new versions, then you will start to see that ite is something like a mid-price solution.
Trouble in paradise: areas of DOS prompt operation and a "dongle" required
Just so you know this is a typical effort by your reviewer, here come some complaints about this program. While ite’s browser is strictly a Windows program, its main "publisher" runs from the MS-DOS prompt, using the old command-line format, complete with "switches" and required syntax. That is, when you start the publisher, you are staring at an empty DOS window waiting for you to enter commands. Many of you may have forgotten, blissfully, that such a thing exists - while others of you may even be young enough never to have seen one. Now, I know many macho programmers will find it very manly (or "existentially authentic") to type in complex commands. Your reviewer, however, could live very comfortably without ever worrying again whether the correct command is "itepub a:tables -r (5:125-132)&(6)&(8)" or some variant with square brackets, and/or dollar signs, and/or alternate spacing - or something else entirely.
Certainly, you can learn the syntax, but expect to thrash around a few times before you create your first successful document. My question to the folks at ISPC is a simple one: With all the power of Windows to create menus, buttons, selectors, etc., why ask users to go through this?
A more up-to-date program interface not only would be welcome, but would allow users to hit the ground running. Nobody likes to stumble on their first meeting with new software, and it seems many users would with ite. Its current command line-based structure can always be left as an option, but it seems to limit the program’s acceptability to new users if it is the only choice.
Finally, the loudest complaint goes toward the "dongle." This is an awful device that must sit directly on the parallel port of your computer for the program to run. In olden times, dongles appeared on a few other programs, but users rightfully hated them, and so they mostly have disappeared. These little monsters present several problems. If you have more than one program with a dongle, you most likely will have constant trouble, since each dongle typically wants to be first in line at the parallel port. You would need to be back behind the computer continually replacing these beasties so they did not conflict with each other.
Also, dongles can cause printer and scanner timing problems. Many newer printers and scanners (that still use the parallel port) need to communicate in both directions with the computer. Dongles can disrupt the timing of communications, or stop them entirely, thereby rendering your printer and/or scanner useless. Finally, there is the space problem. Dongles protrude from the back of the computer, which can (for instance) cause the computer not to fit onto a shelf or into some other space any longer.
The people at ISPC say that if you hate the dongle even half as much as I do, they will give you a copy of the program that does not require one. Since dongles, like all security devices, can be defeated (and there is plenty of free software on the Internet that does precisely this), they serve mainly as a punishment to honest users. In your reviewer’s opinion, it is time for ISPC to abandon these awful and outdated little devices.
If ISPC feels it is mandatory to have security to protect themselves from market researchers who would otherwise abuse their software licenses, then they should put "drop-dead dates" into their programs (as SAS does). This is simply a small piece of code that prevents the program from running once its license period is finished. A drop-dead date can be defeated fairly easily, but if users are determined to cheat, then they will find a way to cheat the dongle as well.
A quick overview of ite
This program serves a truly worthy function, as it creates electronic reports that go well beyond traditional paper-based crosstabulations. In fact, ite shows us the next step in what traditional crosstabulations can become. It can do remarkable things, such as indexing your tables and creating a table of contents for them. Also, it can put the same electronic documents on disks or on the Web. It has many other capabilities that make it highly worthwhile, functionally. Once you learn how to use this program, you should find the results really pleasing.
Still, this program needs some work. To create the reports, you must contend with a command-line-based DOS box, and so must learn, or relearn, the art of typing in commands with fairly complex "switches" and syntax. In the Windows environment, this looks and feels like an anachronism, especially as the browser that comes with the program takes full advantage of the power that Windows can offer. In short, you must have some patience to get the full strength of the program working for you. Then, finally, there is the dongle. If you buy the program, insist on having a version that does not require one to run.
ISPC has the basic ingredients of a really fine program here. They have some ambitious plans for the future, such as adding statistical testing where possible to tables that do not have this -- which would certainly be a major breakthrough in making output more useable. This is one program that encourages very high hopes, and deserves careful attention. If ISPC can just remove some small rough edges, ite could become an essential for market researchers and all others who need to distribute crosstabulated data.
One last surprise
As a postscript, ISPC had a chance to read this review before publication and, amazingly enough, have pledged themselves to make product improvements in response to two of the suggestions made here. Specifically, they will set to work immediately on giving users the choice of using a full Windows interface in all parts of the program. Even better, they promise to eliminate the need for the dongle.
What can we say about this? Perhaps a good start is: "Thank you for listening and responding." These skills are rare anywhere - and are particularly so among software companies. We are truly impressed.
You can reach ISPC at their toll-free number 888-833-4243. (Remember there’s a five-hour time difference between their London headquarters and Eastern Standard Time.) You can also visit their Web site at www.efiche.com or send them e-mail at info@efiche.com.
On to Microsoft
Here we bring you to the focal point of Windows software development: none other than Microsoft. We’ll be looking at their major products of today, and trying to gaze ahead to Windows 2000 and Office 2000, which may be closer than you think - or want.
Apparently when you ask Microsoft its own question, ("Where do you want to go today?"), the answer is "everywhere." Microsoft continues its push to get smaller versions of Windows into everything with more processing power than a toaster. (Don’t laugh now, because I’m sure that by 2002, only appliances like vacuum cleaners will still come with standard Pentium, or 586, processors.)
On the other side, Microsoft is developing furiously an integrated Windows product line that will work both on regular desktop PCs and on huge, centralized servers. Microsoft understands as well as anybody the great vulnerability inherent in the PC-centered model of computing that they now dominate. Having been among the vanguard that caught IBM sleeping at the dawn of the PC, they do not want to be overtaken now.
Connectivity a key
Looking at Windows 98, we also can see the great importance Microsoft places on connections between the PC and the outside world. For one thing, everything in Windows 98 looks like a Windows Explorer window. This includes (for instance) the Control Panel that lets you fiddle with the settings on your PC. For those of you who somehow missed Windows 95, the Explorer is the Windows file manager, and also looks a lot like the Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browser. This way, no matter where you go or what you do with your PC, it looks like you have never left home.
In any event, we can see that Microsoft envisions connectivity as the next big change in computing. They apparently are planning for the day, in the not-too-distant future, when you will have a nearly seamless integration of content residing in your PC, on the Internet, and on any other computing device in the world.
Solutions allowing greater connectivity may be closer than you think. The big thinkers on the subject of course disagree on the nature of the problems to be solved, but many simplify them into two major components. One is the so-called data backbone, or overall capacity of the world to handle the increasing flood of messages that will inevitably follow once we all get connected. In the U.S., at least, this problem has just about been solved. For instance, Qwest, a company that you most likely have never heard of, is just now finishing a backbone across the U.S. that will have roughly 20 times the bandwidth (or capacity) of AT&T, MCI, Sprint and WorldCom combined. Similarly, Motorola has just launched an unprecedented private network of 66 low-altitude satellites for data communications.
These are just the beginnings. These massive build-ups, together with the "packet switching" technology that made the Internet possible - and that allows many communications to share one data line - will give us ample capacity to fill our entire existences with computer messages.
The main barrier is the so-called "last mile" problem. This involves getting the data over the relatively short distance from the local switching station, over the standard copper telephone wires, and to you, the user.
You likely will not be surprised to find that Microsoft expects to do this for you as well. At least, a consortium proposing a new communications technology exists, consisting of none other than Microsoft, Intel, and whatever remains of the Bell companies after they finish devouring each other. This group has devised a new method of data transmission called variously ADSL, DSL, or G-Lite (and probably many other official names).
DSL (or ADSL, or G-Lite) works over existing phone lines, and promises to deliver data at something between 340Kb and 1,500Kb per second, as opposed to the 56.6Kb possible with a new modem. This technology definitely works, and it even has appeared in a few select markets.
You can find a wide variety of other contenders squaring off against the "Microsoft-Intel-Bell" group. (Incidentally, that’s one name you definitely can say has a "ring" to it.) (Ouch! - Ed.) Primary among these competitors is AT&T, which just bought cable-TV giant TCI, and which is working furiously to convert their entire cable network to digital signals. This ultimately will give AT&T access to about 40 percent of U.S. households, via the technology it is backing, the cable modem.
The cable modem promises an unlimited open line to the Internet, just as the cable box on the TV provides open access to cable TV. (This may seem unusually dull, but we should point out that you do not need to dial the cable provider every time you turn on your television--and that the Internet just is not the same yet.)
Cable modems look really promising, with the only unknown being actual transmission speeds once the lines get heavy use. Apparently, heavy Internet traffic will do little, if anything, to slow down ADSL, but cable modems can be expected to suffer from slower performance as the lines get busier. At least, that’s the story for today.
Other, even more unusual technologies are being announced every few months, or even weeks, and upgrades to both cable modems and ADSL seem likely. At least, both sides have sent out press releases promising still-better technology. As anybody who has dealt with the industry knows, with software, an announcement of a product as practically the same as having the actual product.
This battle should be quite interesting to watch. It seems entirely unclear which of today’s big competitors, if any -- in the name of connectivity - finally will claim the right to vacuum all the spare change out of our pockets.
About Windows 98
If you are now running Windows 95, you may well ask if you need the upgrade. The answer is a definitive "yes." While Windows 95 does most things that Windows 98 does, remember that its newer sibling reflects three more years of development. Also, and as importantly, Windows 98 reflects three more years of updates, patches, and plain bug fixes.
In addition, Windows 98 adds a highly useful feature, the 32-bit file allocation table (or "FAT 32," as the software industry has so charmingly called it). This not only works better and faster than the old 16-bit file table (or FAT 16, as you might expect), but it actually gives you back disk space. Expect the new allocation system to give you back some 30 percent or 40 percent of hard drive space that you have lost due inefficiencies in the old system.
Beside all this, Windows now can run all sorts of disk maintenance activities efficiently at night, when you are not (or at least should not be) working. Under Windows 95, the scheduler for these activities never seemed to work quite right, at least for your reviewer. Windows 98 has made vast improvements in running computer maintenance without your active assistance.
Now, you can simply leave the PC alone and it will do the cleanup while you rest. It will defragment (or clean up) the hard drive and test for, and repair, any defects in the surface. Microsoft’s new task scheduler also runs software from other manufacturers, like Norton’s anti-virus sweep. Windows 98 even does a good job switching off the PC’s monitor if the monitor is new enough. In short, you can finish your work, walk away, and never need to turn off your PC if you so choose. (People still argue about the merits of "powering down," but it seems to work just fine to leave the PC on to do the dirty work at night. As long as the monitor goes off, the PC does not draw much power, either.)
A major Windows 98 warning
You need only exercise one precaution before installing Windows 98, but this is an important one. Namely, if you have any anti-virus software running, you must completely disable it, if not uninstall it, before starting to set up Windows 98.
If you do not completely disable the anti-virus software, it may well "wake up" as you install Windows 98 and then block the rest of the installation. This happened on one of your reviewer’s machines, and it was not pretty. Microsoft could not offer any good solution to this problem, nor even a reasonable "work-around." Ultimately, fixing the resulting mess required eradicating the Windows registry. The registry is an enormous, unfathomable area that keeps track of all your hardware and software so that Windows can find them. Its destruction, then, meant reinstalling every piece of hardware and software on the PC. Not fun.
Now the good news
Aside from the one installation problem with anti-virus software that Microsoft should have warned about and did not, Windows 98 has behaved quite well. It has added several useful features to its Explorer file manager - or at least got the old ones to work correctly - and seems to operate a little more smoothly than Windows 95. It has more flexibility, and lets you have more control over what appears on the desktop (which still looks like the background of the screen to me).
Windows 98 gives you more and better information about your system, and does a better job than Windows 95 in resolving conflicts in the computer’s hardware. (These can happen, for instance, when two or more added devices - like scanners, fancy sound cards, modems, digital cameras, etc. - demand to use the same "IRQ" or address space in memory.) In fact, Windows 98 sailed past a problem that continuously eluded Windows 95, involving the modem and sound card that came installed with my PC (no brand given to protect the innocent from legal action). Oddly enough, Windows 98 gave me a message saying that I would need to fix the conflict "manually," but then took care of it anyhow.
Windows 98 also comes with a nice surprise added to it, namely, what appears to be the entire Windows 98 Resource Kit. In book form, this runs about of 1700 pages, and officially is priced at $70. It includes everything you ever wanted to know about Windows 98, and more, and is loaded with extra little utilities and other add-ons that may be just what you want.
Windows: still sticking in a few places
Unfortunately, this new Windows has not entirely eliminated problems inherent in its predecessor. Windows still relies on three definitely restricted memory areas (or heaps) called respectively, "User," "System," and "GDI." These areas remain the same size, no matter how much memory you add to your machine. As you run more programs, these areas get more taxed.
Most unfortunately, many programs seem to leave "garbage" in these areas after they close. This means that the memory available to use in these areas slowly gets depleted as Windows runs. When memory gets too low, Windows stops running. The only way to replenish these areas is to restart Windows.
Whether Windows 2000 resolves these problems remains to be seen. This is an open request to Microsoft, then. We all understand that Windows is so complicated that no group of 10 people can understand it all. However, we honestly believe that you can solve the problem of taking out programs’ garbage - if you set your collective minds to it. Show us that there indeed is a Santa Claus, and put an end to this problem. Thank you.
Help with - but not a solution to - the memory problem
Windows at least includes a nice little utility in its "system tools" called the resource meter, which doesn’t solve the memory problem, but can warn you of upcoming trouble. You can set this to turn itself on at start-up time, and then it will give you ample advance warning about when the system is starting to run low.
You need to do this in several steps, so take a few deep breaths and then try to follow us on this expedition. First, you go to "Settings" in the "Start" menu, and choose "Task Bar and Start Menu." You then choose the "Start Menu Programs" tab, and click the "Advanced" option button (although one of the other choices probably would work also). You will then see a display of all the programs listed in the "Start" menu. So far, this is not too bad, right?
Now you will need to find the resource meter’s icon - it’s buried well down, beneath two submenus. Click on "Programs," then go to "Accessories." Once there, go down another level to "System Tools." The icon for the resource meter should be there, unless you somehow missed installing this when you set up Windows 98. If the icon is indeed there, then you can drag it to the group called "Startup."
If the resource meter icon is not there, you may need to rerun the installation program for Windows 98, and specifically request that this be added. This may seem like a nuisance - and to an extent it is. The new Windows, though, does not insist on reinstalling many parts of itself just to insert a feature or two, and this makes adding things you omitted relatively painless.
Once you have the resource meter, it gives you a quick visual reading on the state of the three critical "heaps." The meter changes from all green when everything is fine, to yellow when Windows is getting fatigued - and then to red when "resources" are dangerously low. (This means it’s definitely time to restart.) Even without the meter running, Windows will send a message to you when it is terribly low. By then, though, it is sometimes too late to save your work from the impending crash.
More about the resource meter and the "trays"
The resource meter sits in a special area of the screen called "the tray." This actually should be called the "right tray," since you now have a left tray (which doubtless has some other official name) that includes programs you can run immediately. The figure shows you the "task bar" gracing the bottom of the screen on one PC (we’ll let you guess whose) with its tray areas.
A look at the task bar illustrates the many things Windows 98 can do at once. Most of the items in the right tray are running, or dormant, in the background. At the left edge of this tray, we find Norton’s (as in Norton Anti-Virus) and Microsoft’s task schedulers. (Norton’s scheduler could probably go away, but it ain’t bothering anything, so I’m not bothering it). After these two, we have the audio controls, Norton Crash Guard (which often resuscitates programs just as they are about to fail), the speaker volume control, and our new friend, the resource meter.
Following all these, we have another neat Windows utility called Quickres. This is another nice feature that may or may not come installed, but it is definitely there on the Windows 98 CD-ROM, waiting for you to find it. Quickres lets you change the resolution and number of colors displayed on your monitor, on the fly, without needing to restart Windows. (This control is good to have if, for instance, you want to work with nearly infinite colors in a graphics program, but also at times need to use older programs that cannot exceed 256 colors.) Without Quickres, any change in screen resolution or in the number of colors displayed requires you to restart Windows, so this is a fine addition to consider.
To the right of this, we have a nice freeware utility called "KillTimer," which AOL users will love. It works only with AOL, and disrupts some of its most obnoxious behaviors. This utility dispatches all those stupid AOL messages asking if you are done yet, and also prevents AOL from logging you off involuntarily. (You can find this with many other free or low-cost software goodies on a Web site called "No Nags." I get to this site at this address: www.noguska.net/nonags/index.html.
However, No Nags has - as of the time of writing this article - a lot of local transmission points, so you may want to check its main page to make sure you are accessing it at its point nearest to you. Using a closer location tends to speed download times, which you will find highly desirable once you see all the free software - tested and evaluated - stockpiled at this site.
We wind up at the right side of this tray with the fax software controller, and another nice utility called Quick View Plus that lets you get a fast look into almost file without opening its accompanying application. Quick View Plus is shareware, meaning that you are supposed to pay a small sum for it if you use it and like it. Your reviewer finds it well worth the modest outlay required.
The left tray has more pre-installed items than the one we just discussed. That is, these are present when you start Windows 98 the first time, or shortly thereafter, and you need to decide whether they stay or go. From the left of this tray, we have a nice button for starting our old friend AOL. (To all you cynics out there, I am sorry to say that AOL has been working more reliably than several other services with more cachet that your reviewer has tried and dropped.) Following this, we have Launch Outlook (the all-in-one scheduler/calendar/e-mail reader program), and "display the desktop." Completing this left tray, we have the very useful "start Windows Explorer," and a not-so-useful program that’s supposed to clean out memory, but doesn’t help much with the resource problem (but anyhow, that one was free).
The overall view of Windows 98
In short, we strongly recommend Windows 98, but don’t expect that all the pitfalls in previous versions have been resolved. Go out and get it - it’s that simple. It just works better.
Note that we have not tested this as a "server" program, and only with individual PCs, so we cannot comment on its ability to handle network-administration tasks.
Getting more out of Windows 98 on your PC
The absolute number-one reason that you will find Windows 98 running slowly is too little PC memory. You really need to have 64MB of RAM, or more, to do true "multitasking." (By the way, we should note that 64MB is exactly 24MB more than the entire capacity of the hard drive on my first PC about 10 years ago. That hard drive cost about $800 at the time, and the PC was a real killer machine, with 1 whole MB of memory.) Anyhow, now RAM is cheap, sometimes less than $1 per MB, so it pays to upgrade.
If your PC cannot accommodate more than 64MB of memory, perhaps it’s time to upgrade the whole machine. Most older PCs have a market value of about $0, so perhaps you can donate the machine, or find an 8-year-old to take it. (Your author’s oldest PC now resides with his 8-year-old, and it - not the 8-year-old - is happily running Windows 95, maxed out with a 486-upgrade processor and 8 whole MB of RAM.)
Another upgrade that may help an older machine is a new hard drive. With extended IDE drives in the 6GB to 8GB range going for about $150 at the time of this writing, it also pays to upgrade. We cannot suggest much use for the old drive except as a paperweight, or for giving to the 8-year-old. Do not leave the old disk hooked up for sentimental reasons. Just having an aged and sluggish hard drive on the system tends to slow your entire PC considerably.
Incidentally, there is some fine and inexpensive software out there that will help you over the considerable hurdle of switching hard drives. Just check your local PC superstore for more details.
Office 97 update
Office 97 has now had its second "service release," or set of patches and bug fixes. These patches almost always fix things that could affect you at the worst possible time. If you have not done so already, go to the Microsoft site and find out about getting this service release today. You either can download this release, or get it free via CD-ROM from Microsoft. As this release runs to about 21MB, you may not have much luck downloading it. (Your author tried three times, with the file transmission failing irreparably at between 11MB and 13MB in each instance.)
Please note that if you did not install service release 1, you will need to do this before you can proceed to service release 2. If you have not made the first upgrade, the CD-ROM is your best solution, as it has both service releases. The first release alone addressed some 600 bugs or problems - although this figure seems worse than it is, because many bugs arise only with specific combinations of hardware and software running. Given the thousands, if not millions, of possible ways in which you can combine PC components and PC programs, maybe needing to fix a few hundred possible problem areas is not so bad. You decide.
By the way, service release 2 still has not cured all the problems that Office 97 can develop. We will have more about this later.
What about Office 97? (Sorry I assumed everybody with Windows has it.) If you do not have this yet, seriously consider getting it now. Microsoft’s Web page (www.microsoft.com) has an announcement posted that anybody buying Office 97 from now on will get a free upgrade to Office 2000, once it comes out.
Office 97 mostly adds many good features to its predecessor. It at last allows you to join cells in a spreadsheet or a Word table both vertically and horizontally. (Older versions only allowed horizontal merging.) PowerPoint files are not nearly as enormous as they used to be, since they now have a new format.
Actually, all the file formats are new, as most of you doubtless know. This has caused many headaches in sharing files with people who do not have this new version. Microsoft has added various patches that make sharing across program versions somewhat less burdensome, but the proliferation of file types is a real pain.
Excel now has a real Visual Basic editor in back of it. This is a vast improvement over its old system for handling the programming of controls and special features that you can add to your spreadsheet - if you have the interest and inclination. Excel actually generates program code in Visual Basic when you "draw" any of its pre-defined controls on the Excel screen. Now it’s much easier to see what you have done, by looking at the code in the editor. It’s all very nicely laid out for you. Help for Visual Basic is truly extensive, although some explanations are in something only faintly resembling English.
Excel unfortunately has taken away a good feature while adding other nice ones. In older versions, with little bother, you could add a menu specific to one workbook. Now if you add a special menu, it appears in all your workbooks every time you run Excel. If you want a special menu in one workbook, you have to write code eliminating all the old menus as the workbook opens, then substituting all new menus, and then at closing, restoring all the original menus.
If anybody at Microsoft is listening out there, please bring back the old, simpler system. Many of us miss it.
Excel also has lost some speed in opening for some mysterious reason. Even on a fast Pentium machine with loads of memory, it spends some time calling up an essential module called "funcres.xla." I hope that a fix for this is in the works.
More Windows 98: it practically updates itself for you
Microsoft also has automated updates for Windows 98. You simply get onto the Internet, then select the item from the "Start" menu that says "Update Windows 98." Many of these upgrades give you more system security, since thousands of people are out there trying to punch holes in Windows (there’s an unintended metaphor in that, somewhere). You probably will want to make a habit of calling this feature into use every week or two.
While you are there on the Microsoft site, you probably will want to check for patches and upgrades for Office 97. As we mentioned earlier, this too is still a work in progress. Upgrades and patches for Office have appeared on the Microsoft site at least every weeks.
Office 2000 and Windows 2000 loom closer than they seem
Just as we promised at the beginning of this article, we will read the tea leaves, and try to predict what Microsoft will do in the near future.
Yes, indeed, Virginia, new versions of Office and Windows are on the way. You author was even offered a late "beta" (or test) version of Office 2000, but as he has something of a regular life, has declined it for now. I did take a close look at the one entirely new application in Office, called PhotoDraw. Otherwise, comments about the program rely somewhat on Microsoft’s Web site, and more importantly, on the many critics who have dissected early versions of this product.
An Office 2000 preview
Most indications are that this new Office will be even bigger, with still more features than the current version. As mentioned just above, its major change will be the inclusion of a new PhotoDraw application. This is one piece that has been conspicuously absent from the Office Suite. We will discuss this new application right after this general overview of the new Office.
One new feature promised in connection with Office 2000 is "use-sensitive menus." That is, items that you do not use will either move down the menu, or disappear entirely after time. The descriptions that your reviewer has seen do not make it clear if items actually will vanish - and if so, if we can turn this innovation off and leave it that way.
I can see moving rarely-used items down the menu, but disapprove heartily of their vanishing. Just because you do not use a feature for a while does not mean you never will use it. Learning exists as a possibility in this world, but removing choices entirely from the menu seems to imply that it does not.
You may also be able to load features into Office 2000 as you need them, which would be fine if you could somehow know what they did for you, and when. I believe that Microsoft has to do more to make its products understandable if this is the direction in which they are going. For instance, I cannot find any way anywhere to get a printed listing of all the macro keys assigned in Word, and what they do. (Perhaps some clever reader knows this; I’m sure this is the kind of tip we all would like to have.)
One piece of good news is that Microsoft promises we will not have yet another set of "backward-incompatible" file formats, as we did with Office 97. Thankfully somebody at the software giant realized that not everybody upgrades, and that the three file formats now required for all Office users (of various vintages) are enough for anybody.
Many other features promised are small, but useful. All the applications will show you what a font looks like - and not just its name - when you look through the pull-down font menu. The figure following gives you an idea of how that would work, showing the menu from another piece of software that already knows how to do this.
Word also promises to add the ability to wrap text around the table. In versions to date, tables always force text above and below, even if there’s ample room on the sides. This new feature should help documents look more professional.
PowerPoint is expected to introduce a three-paned window, with the slide outline to one side, and a space for adding notes on the bottom. This seems like a basically well-intended idea, but we probably will all need to go out and get 21" monitors to see all the details in all the panes.
Throughout the suite, toolbars should become easier to customize. Now you need to go through several steps to add a new button (performing some function that you want to access quickly) to the toolbar. Office 2000 promises to make this process simpler. In one step, it will show all the buttons you can choose, and allow you simply to check the ones you want and uncheck the ones that you do not.
The new PhotoDraw 2000
Microsoft here has made a brave entry, creating a single program that can handle both photographs and drawings, applying all sorts of touch-up magic and special effects to either. It may not seem like a huge accomplishment to handle both photographs and drawings in a single program, but these have special meanings - and limitations - in the world of computers.
We will step back for a few moments here, and review the differences between "bitmaps" and "vector-based images" on the computer. A few years ago, the distinction seemed quite simple. Bitmaps were collections of dots. As you magnified a bitmapped picture, the rough edges in the dots became apparent. The jagged, square-looking image of a magnified bitmap came to stand for all things generated by a computer - or at least all bad things - for some time.
Vector-based pictures are based on lines, polygons and other shapes, and fill patterns. Early vector-based work tended to look fairly primitive in its own way, as the shapes you could use were limited, and special effects like shading, textures, and special lighting (such as shadows and highlights) usually were not even possible.
The best thing about vector-based illustrations is that their quality does not degrade as they expand. A smooth line remains smooth at any magnification, and the higher the resolution of your printer, the better the results tend to look. For instance, the True Type fonts provided by Windows (and the equivalent fonts provided by the Macintosh) are based on vectors. (You may not think of typefaces as artwork, but to your computer that is precisely what they are.) As you use printers with higher resolution, these fonts look better and better. Coming from a professional-quality machine, they will be indistinguishable from the text in a finely produced book. This advantage holds for all vector-based illustrations.
The artistic distinctions blur
Artistic types, and practical working illustrators, of course felt dissatisfied with the limitations in both basic types of image. Soon enough, the software development community found some ingenious ways to expand the capabilities of both bitmaps and vectors.
Corel Draw was the first PC-based program (gaining wide adherence) that bent the boundaries, giving vector illustrations more of the good features of bitmaps, and vice versa. For instance, even early versions of Corel Draw had special methods of filling vector-based "objects" with realistic looking textures. These textures included such "looks" as different types of stone, paper, fabric, and purely fantastic objects like "cosmic noise." The better the printer, the more realistic (and detailed) these textures look. (We should note that Corel Draw is just being used as an example here, because it has the largest share of sales of any high-end illustration program. You can find many other remarkable graphics programs, some of which even do things that Corel does not.)
Gradually, graphics programs like Corel added many other features. For instance, some give you the ability to change flat objects into three-dimensional ones with many different types of shading and perspective. Some programs even allow you to generate a shape, specify how it becomes three-dimensional, rotate it on all three axes, change the perspective, and so on. You also can fill vector-based objects with bitmapped images in all sorts of ways. In addition, rather than just drawing simple lines, you can create effects that look like various brushes, pencils, pastels, and so on.
If you would like to see how sophisticated vector-based artwork has become, just go down to your local computer superstore, and look at Corel Draw 8’s carton. The image you see there, which looks remarkably like a photograph of a famous film star of the 1930s and 1940s, is in fact an entirely vector-based drawing. (The star in question is Hedy Lamarr, who sued Corel for using her likeness without compensation to sell their program.)
Getting back to bitmaps, options for manipulating these have increased dramatically also. For instance, several programs allow you to "trace" this type of image, turning even very complex photographs into vector-based art that you can push, pull, and tweak in many ways. Most programs let you add special effects to any image. These typically range from the basics (such as touching-up the color balance, brightness, sharpness and contrast) to some really wild ones, such as making the image look like it is embossed on paper or engraved in various metals. (These effects are really convincing, by the way.)
Some programs even have automated procedures for fixing common flaws in photographs, such as the dreaded "red eye" caused by photo flashes. Most can remove the "speckling" or benday dot patterns that appear in newspaper pictures, remove scratches from images, and so on. In short, there’s a whole world of tools out there, many of which you will never use unless you are a professional artist.
About Microsoft’s PhotoDraw
After that lengthy introduction (perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about illustration), let’s go on to the new Microsoft program. As you now may realize, Microsoft is treading into highly competitive terrain here. They have priced their new product (assuming you buy it alone, without the rest of Office) about in the middle, at $99. At the top end, you have programs like Corel Draw (about $250 for an upgrade from an earlier version or competitive product), Adobe Photoshop (about $200 for an upgrade version), and other more specialized programs that can range over $1,000.
At the low end, you have several surprisingly powerful contenders, including a remarkable program selling for about $40, called Micrografx Windows Draw 6. This program comes, unsurprisingly, from a company named Micrografx, which has been making fine and reasonably priced graphics software in relative obscurity for years.
You likely will not need the full range of effects that a program such as Corel Draw can produce - although it is fun to play with, especially for a former technical illustrator like your reviewer. Therefore, the more pertinent comparison would be between Microsoft’s PhotoDraw and a lower priced competitor, such as Micrografx’s Windows Draw 6.
The Micrografx product, Windows Draw, actually consists of three modules, one for drawing (Windows Draw), one for editing photographs and other bitmaps (PhotoMagic), and one for editing 3-D objects. Therefore, it lacks the "all in one" feeling that Microsoft’s PhotoDraw has. And, as the figure shows, you can do many "cool things" with PhotoDraw.
However, when we compare these programs feature-for-feature, Micrografx most often has the practical advantage. For instance, the Micrografx product (PhotoMagic) wins easily at editing and touching up photographs or screen-captured images. (Neither of these programs captures images from the screen; that task requires yet another piece of software, for instance, HiJaak Pro.)
Your reviewer assiduously tried using both programs to touch up a scanned photograph that had been pasted, slightly askew, into a Word document. Microsoft’s PhotoDraw mysteriously attached a large area of blank space to the top of the image, and then would not allow this to be removed. Because of the extra area on top, I never could successfully straighten the picture. With the Micrografx product, I could resize the image exactly as I wanted, using its crop tool. Then I could rotate the image, in increments of 0.01 degree, until I had it as well aligned as possible.
Micrografx also offers a superior cloning tool that allows you to pick up a portion of an image and copy it elsewhere. In their product, you have two brushes, one that copies a portion of the image, and another that deposits what you have copied. You can change the size and relative positions of these brushes, as well as the transparency (or opacity) of the image you copy, and how the edges of the copied area blend with the original image.
In fact, the illustration showing the PhotoDraw 2000 logo at the heading of this section quickly was reworked with the Micrografx product. It allowed for the seamless removal of a large banner in the image reading "30-day free trial version." (All right, so your reviewer is a little on the cheap side.) Trying to do similar surgery on the image with Microsoft’s product ended in repeated failures.
Both drawing programs (which handle the vector images) have plenty of sophisticated features, although not all the same ones, and are probably about evenly matched. Both should do a good job of creating original artwork and modifying (vector-based) clip art.
This leads us directly to one final advantage of the Micrografx program. Namely, it comes with excellent collections of clip art and fonts that differ from - and therefore add to - the choices already available with the other applications in Microsoft’s Office Suite. PhotoDraw simply uses the clip art that you already have with applications such as PowerPoint.
Overall, then, expect Microsoft’s PhotoDraw to add new capabilities to the Office Suite. You can in fact do many new tricks (or "cool things" in Microsoft’s terminology) with this program. However, it lacks both features and capabilities for editing photographs and other bit-mapped images, even when compared with a lower-priced competitor. If what you want is a way to add some new touches to your drawings, and a program completely integrated with the rest of Office, this would be a good choice for you. However, you can find more value for the money in other programs, with one strong example being the Micrografx Windows Draw 6 program.
On to Windows 2000
Windows 2000 promises to meld the technologies in its "consumer" operating system (Windows 98) and its "server" operating system (Windows NT) into one integrated - if huge - entity. Microsoft also promises that this new version of its operating system will mostly rely on the core structure or architecture of the NT product, but inherit the best of both Windows.
It will be quite intriguing to see exactly what gets into the final mix. We will wait, but not with bated breath. One thing we know for certain is that Windows 2000 will be delivered late.
Most recent press releases suggest that the product will emerge first in a server version, and then, at some time later, as a desktop (or consumer, or end user) product. The desktop version would be the one most Windows users will want. The server version should be still larger and more complex than the desktop one, with many features beloved by network administrators, concerning security, firewalls, installation on multiple PCs, and so on.
This server version looks like serious overkill when measured against typical daily user tasks - such as writing a letter to aunt Minnie, firing up an expense report, sneaking questionable content off the Internet, or creating a virus that will bring down the global telecom system.
How much of a lag can we expect between the two versions? "Six months" seems to be the modal response. Six months is special computer-talk code for "Your guess is as good as mine," or "We just might have a problem here." We have deciphered this secret code based on observing that the next version of any product always is "two months away."
Whatever the timing of the final versions of Windows 2000, what they contain should prove to be fascinating. Mixtures and inheritances almost always are. This in fact reminds your reviewer of an anecdote that you might find moderately amusing, if your interests include some of the fine arts. The story goes that Isadora Duncan, the noted dancer, approached George Bernard Shaw, the noted playwright and crabby old man, with a innovative proposition. She told him that they should do all that was needed to have a child together, because it would be a kind of ubermensch (or in politically correct English, superbaby), combining his brains and her body. "No," said Shaw. "Think of what would happen if it got my body and your brains."
Let’s hope, then, that Microsoft hits on the right mix of features for each of its key audiences. Windows NT has always been described and promoted as the system of choice for heavy-duty uses. It also has a reputation as relatively crash-proof (at least compared to regular Windows). However, it suffers from a more awkward look and feel, and limited ability to hook up with different types of hardware.
Also, Windows NT has a reputation for being quite hungry for memory. I suppose, though, that Microsoft thinks this latter problem is going away, since even modest Pentium-class machines generally can hold up to 128MB of RAM - and some newer machines can accommodate over 1 gigabyte (1,024MB). That second figure, at least, should be plenty for a couple of generations of operating systems.
Regular Windows (of the Windows 95 and 98 varieties), by contrast, will get by on a paltry 32MB of memory quite nicely. At least it can if you are using no more than three average-size applications at one time. As we discussed earlier, regular Windows also tends to get tired and/or crash in no more than 40 hours (by my estimates) with moderately intensive use. With regular Windows, though, you can run many, many types of hardware, and all of your favorite older programs, going right back to the primitive days of DOS if you want.
Certainly, nobody could find much to fault in regular Windows’ appearance - or as the industry likes to have it, its "look and feel." (All right, it’s moderately foolish to have "Shut Down" on the "Start" menu, but if that’s the worst we have to live with, we’re fine.) Microsoft promises that Windows 2000 will both look nice and behave properly.
More size and more features do a new operating system make
No doubt, still more features will get into the Windows operating system for regular end users as well as for the server crowd (network administrators, ISP operators, and related types). A few months ago, we saw some mentions of voice recognition becoming part of the operating system. This is interesting, and can work fairly well, but requires plenty of RAM to work smoothly (probably at least 128MB, if current voice recognition offerings give any hint). Also, your author can tell you from personal experience that the computer still does a bad job recognizing you if you have a cold or the flu. Finally, if you manage to get pneumonia, you might as well hang up the voice recognition microphone until the next season.
Over the last month or two, though, mentions of voice recognition in the upcoming release of Windows have diminished. Maybe this is fading in importance as Microsoft’s program developers realize what a daunting task they have in front of them, in trying to stitch together two systems that are not yet truly compatible. Perhaps Microsoft was never that serious about voice recognition in the next iteration of Windows, in any event. Maybe they just hoped to steal a little thunder from Corel’s Word Perfect Suite, which comes with the highly competent Dragon System’s "Naturally Speaking" as a standard feature.
Don’t be misled, though - somewhere out there, visionaries are busily creating a world in which we will be urged to issue voice commands not just to computers, but to all sorts of other objects. In the future, we can expect to have everything listening to us, including cars, appliances, and even clothing. (Yes, I did see an apparently serious mention in print by somebody - presumably not on a visit from another planet - of that last possibility. Still, I remain somewhat mystified about what type of conversation I am supposed to have with my boxer shorts.)
In any event, it looks like computer manufacturing economies are going to make sure we all have at least one incredibly powerful machine in the near future. Intel is predicting that by mid-2000 (as in six months before 2001), the average PC - someplace in the $1,000 to $4,000 range - should be running a Pentium III in the 600MHz to 733MHz speed range. (The Pentium II is about ready to join other old processors in the PC museum. The scheduled debut for the III is March 17.) Even "value" PCs--those selling for less than $1,000 - in this scenario could have Intel’s Celeron Pentium, running at 500 or more MHz.
As of February 9, a company named Free PC emerged, with the promise of delivering PCs costing nothing for those willing to "share information about themselves" and promising to view a certain amount of "advertising and communications" on the Internet. This sounds revolting, but it too should pass. If prices drop any more quickly than they have, we might expect PCs to be given away as promotions in boxes of breakfast cereal.
Whatever the upcoming scenario, more computing power seems to ensure that Windows will remain with us, at least for the near future.
Your reviewer recalls, way back in the days of the 386 (about 1992), that some software developer at Microsoft said speed was not an issue, since the 586 processor would handle Windows easily. In those ancient times, I foolishly thought we wouldn’t see anything like this available and affordable for at least 10 to 15 years. Now, my-12 year-old is complaining that the 586 PC, handed down to him two years ago, is too "pokey." And so, the inevitable trail of hardware and software upgrades continues. It may not be much, but at least it gives your reviewer something new to write about at any time.