will also support them.
Poor little Visicalc. When it first came out around 1980, it revolutionized the personal
computer industry, turning a PC into an essential business tool. But Visicalc is largely gone
these days, replaced by Lotus 123 and a whole new generation of sophisticated spreadsheet
software. Today, we begin a special two-part look at spreadsheets on this edition of the
Computer Chronicles.
The Computer Chronicles is made possible in part by CompuServe, featuring an online reference
library, Wall Street reports, at-home shopping, airline reservations, games, and hundreds
of other services. CompuServe, helping people get the most from computers. Additional funding
is provided by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte. Byte's detailed technical articles on
new hardware, software, and languages cover developments in computer technology worldwide.
Welcome to the Computer Chronicles. I'm Stuart Shuffet, and this is Gary Kildall. Gary, this
is Visicalc, and it's a spreadsheet program. If I change the entry in one particular cell,
for example, all the rest of the numbers change to reflect that. How did it happen that Visicalc
was the first piece of spreadsheet software, but obviously Lotus 123 has now come to dominate
this field? Well, the Apple II was always accepted in education, and Visicalc really
brought the Apple II into the business market as well. Lotus 123 came out right after the
IBM PC, really used the power of the IBM PC, improved the spreadsheet model, added graphics,
database processing, and really became a standard before the competition hit. As a result of
that, it's become the center of a whole bunch of software add-ons. Gary, today we're going
to take a look at some Lotus 123 add-ons. We'll look at a low-cost alternative to 123,
and some high-end competitors. Now, one of the biggest things in spreadsheet software
right now is something called add-ins to Lotus 123, and we're going to begin with a report
on that. At the San Mateo, California, office of Dean
Witter, brokers rely on computers for a variety of tasks, from transmitting exchange floor
trades to managing financial portfolios. Investment counselor David Huggins uses one of the most
popular spreadsheet programs, Lotus 123, to manage his clients' accounts. Since numbers
can be added or changed by more than one person, Mr. Huggins has installed a notation program
called Notet, which attaches notepad windows to individual spreadsheet cells. The notes
can add details or clarify changes made by other users. Notet is one of a group of software
programs commonly called add-ins, which operate within the spreadsheet environment. Add-in
developers claim that these enhancements are different from pop-up memory resident programs
because they were developed in cooperation with the software developer, in this case,
Lotus. The add-in concept could be seen as a new
approach to integrated software. Instead of writing a word processor with math functions,
why not give a spreadsheet the ability to manipulate text? Along with Notet, the office
has installed Forward, a word processing add-in. Calling up Forward ships you to a word processing
screen with the added function of integrating numbers right off the spreadsheet. Changes
made to the spreadsheet are ported to the Forward document as well. One of the newest
additions to the add-in category is a spelling checker, which helps you weed out embarrassing
errors, although it won't correct your math. Add-ins may not have all the features of your
favorite software package, but as alternatives to a library of uncooperative programs, they
offer a clever way to add functions to your existing software at a very modest price.
Joining us now in the studio is Larry Gross, co-developer of HAL. And next to Larry is
Sam Savage, chairman of General Optimization. They make something called What's Best. Gary?
Larry, you and Sam both have a Lotus add-on. What is an add-on?
An add-on is a product that enhances the functionality of 123. HAL adds a way of getting new functions
out of 123. What's Best adds some optimization to 123.
There are several add-ons for Lotus that are out there and available to customers. Typically,
is this what they call a TSR, Terminate and Stay Resident? It's a RAM resident program?
HAL isn't a Terminate and Stay Resident program. HAL loads when you load HAL, it loads HAL
and 123. And then when you quit, it quits both of them as well.
Can you show us a little bit about how HAL works?
Yeah, sure. Here we are in 123. We can move around the worksheet like we always have with
the arrow keys. You can press the slash key and get the 123 menu up at the top. The difference
with HAL loaded is you can press the backslash key and get this request box up here. And
what you can do now is you can type English phrases in here and do operations. So if I
type get quotas, HAL will go ahead and retrieve the quotas file for me. If I wanted to go
ahead now with this file and total this column, I can say total this column and HAL will go
ahead and total that for me just like that, draw a line and put the at some formula in
the worksheet for me. If I didn't want to do that, I can press the backspace key and
HAL reverses its last action, which is real handy because it even reverses any 123 action
that you can do. So for instance, if I did slash worksheet erase, yes, and realize that
I just accidentally erased my whole worksheet without saving the previous one, I can press
the backspace key and it will bring it right back for me, a real time saver, a life saver
as well. I can also do graphics really easily with HAL, which 123 require a lot of setup
normally. I can just say graph this and HAL will go ahead and figure out all the ranges
for me and just graph all the data and label the accesses.
There's a certain set of default parameters when it is.
Yes, and it will just make the graph for me like that. If I wanted to do a database operation
or query, let me get a database up here called baseball and it's a bunch of baseball players
and their statistics. It could be anything though. If you wanted to find out who has
more than 30 home runs, you could just type that in, who has more than 30 home runs and
HAL will go ahead down at the bottom and give you a list of all the players that have more
than 30 home runs just that easily like that. If you wanted to find something real fast,
you could just say find 11 and HAL will find in your database the first occurrence of the
number 11.
Okay, now just for clarification, I assume that this doesn't take any, just any natural
language input. The format itself is a fairly specific one, so just not to be misleading.
Right, there's some syntax associated with this, but it's real easy to pick up because
it is so English like. For instance, if I wanted to just, I can clear the worksheet.
HAL is also great for building worksheets from scratch. Like for instance, I want to
make a worksheet with some months across, I can say put months across and HAL will just
put all the months all the way to December across. If I want to insert a column, I can
just say insert a column and I can abbreviate my request to just three characters of the
word. If I want to put some letters in, I can say put A to G and it will put it in.
I can say move this column down two and it will move it down. If I want to underline
this row, I can say underline this row and it will go ahead and do that. If I wanted
to put some more numbers in January, say I can say put 100 to 106 in Jan, it will do
that. I can project those numbers. I can say project Jan across by say 15% and it will
go ahead and just project all the way to December across. If I don't like the format of that,
I can say format this and HAL will format it to two decimal places. If I then wanted
to total all the columns, I can say total all columns. It will total all the columns
and if I finally want to just graph this, I can say graph this and it will make a graph.
Can you get out of HAL and I want to have Sam give us a chance to put what's best up
there. While he's doing that, Sam, give us a little introduction to what's best. What
does it do?
We've taken a mathematical technique known as linear programming that members of the
audience who have been to business school will probably remember with horror. It's a
very important algebraic technique used on mainframe computers mostly for doing things
like routing airplanes or producing things in factories from limited inventories, cash
flow management and that sort of thing. As I say, it's very algebraic.
Why don't you get the program up and actually show us what it does.
What we've done with what's best is really use Lotus 1-2-3 to penetrate the algebraic
curtain. It gets us to the other side so that the average manager can perform these things
on his desktop.
Okay, what's the problem here?
Now here we have a staffing problem. Imagine that you are staffing a police force and you
need 180 people on Monday, 160 on Tuesday, a non-uniform staff requirement. In addition,
the policeman has to be hired on a five-day basis so that if I go to Monday and hire 180
to start on Monday, you can see by the graph that they're working straight through until
Friday.
Now notice that I'm short on Friday. I need 10 there, so let's put in 10 more. Now I'm
short on Saturday. I need 130. At this stage, the good news is that I have my requirements
covered, but the bad news is the people who started on Saturday are now sitting on the
laps of the people following Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Now we can use Lotus to play what if with this, but it's really like Rubik's Cube on
a screen. You can work for hours without getting your cost down. Notice that our total cost
is $64,000.
Now I'll bring up what's best to solve this model. I hit the asterisk key and our help
menu appears over Lotus. We have now taken over the 10 function keys of the computer
and those are really the only commands in what's best. F1 is optimize. I'm going to
press that now and our program unloads Lotus 1-2-3. It now comes in and translates that
WKS file, the Lotus format file, and performs this linear programming technique on it, which
has been around on the mainframes for so long.
And optimize is what? Explain what we're trying to accomplish.
In this particular case, we're trying to minimize the total cost of staffing.
Get that $64,000 figure down.
And in fact, it's down to $44,000, but a picture here tells just a thousand words. In this
case, because we had a slightly doctored example, we got a perfect match, but you will always
get the mathematically optimal match.
And what's it really doing? Give us the underlying theory here.
The underlying theory is based on about 40 years worth of applied mathematics that you
really don't want to know about. And I think it's very technical stuff that we try to hide
from the user.
Okay, that's very impressive. Thank you, Hal. And what's best, in just a minute we'll meet
Adam Osborne and find out about VP Planner. So stay with us.
With us now is Adam Osborne, well known in a variety of contexts, but right now is president
of Paperback Software, the makers of VP Planner. Gary?
Adam, you know, it seems like everybody's accepted Lotus as being the standard spreadsheet.
Now you have VP Planner that has similarities with Lotus. Can you tell us a little bit about
it?
Yes, actually, VP Planner is a database program. It has a multidimensional database and it also
has Dbase file capabilities. The spreadsheet portion of VP Planner is the user interface.
It happens to be a Lotus work-alike, which means that if you have any Lotus templates,
worksheets, macros, et cetera, it will run under the VP Planner spreadsheet. However,
VP Planner has some very, very powerful and unique database capabilities, which are probably
what I should really concentrate on showing over here. What I'm going to do is show you
a multidimensional database that we have for a typical computer store. In this particular
case, the store is keeping its accounting information by time, obviously, but it's dividing
it up by product and also by salesperson. So here we have our various dimensions to
start with. Time, we have the months, then we move on to accounts. In accounts, you'll
notice that in fact we have budgets, we have actuals, and we have variances. Moving right
along, we keep all of that information by product line with subtotals. So you can say
by all IBM-compatible, by software, et cetera. And then finally, we've also got it by salesperson.
Wrong one. There we are, salesperson. You can keep building all the logic as well. It's
not just a dumb entry. You can actually put in all the equations you need. I'll just show
you one of them here because everyone recognizes the four quarters and the year, and then automatically
consolidate all of this information in the database, not having to do it in the spreadsheet.
Therefore, if you use VP Planner, you never again have a problem of linking spreadsheets,
and you never have a problem with large spreadsheets. You see, Lotus really doesn't have a database.
The only data you can keep in Lotus is what you can put into a spreadsheet. In this case,
all of the data is out in a multidimensional database, and what we do is we will just write
spreadsheets that will do specific tasks connecting automatically with that part of the multidimensional
database it needs. So effectively, instead of having a spreadsheet in memory, it really
basically flows onto the disk, in a sense. Basically, that's right, yes. Well, now I'll
just bring up a spreadsheet. I'll try that one over here. This is a totally Lotus 1-2-3
compatible spreadsheet. It'll run anything that Lotus will run. In addition, of course,
we do have a DBase file interface. You can create DBase files. You can retrieve by field,
by record. You can do joins. You can do virtually anything you can normally do in DBase. The
result is that VP Planner allows you to break up big spreadsheets into lots of little ones
with all of your data sitting out on disk, just bringing in whatever you want into any
particular spreadsheet at the time you need it. Very different. Adam, you've shown us
a lot of powerful features of VP Planner. From the user's point of view, one very powerful
feature is the price. It's only about $100. How can you sell this for $100 when the competing
products seeming to have the same thing are $500? Well, we do it a completely different
way. You see, my belief is the best programmers work for themselves. They don't work for other
companies. We have developed none of this software. Outsider authors bring it all to
us. We write the manual. We help them make the interface right, but then we pay them
a royalty, which they use in order to keep updating and improving the software in the
future. The result is we run our company on 35 people. They have 1,000. And that's the
difference in price. In just a minute, we're going to take a look at Javelin and Silk,
two highly rated competitors in the spreadsheet marketplace. Stay with us. With us now in
the studio is Eric Gere, Vice President for Marketing with Daybreak Technologies, the
makers of Silk. And also with us is Robert Furman, Chairman and CEO of Javelin Software.
Robert, your particular software package had an unusual price change. It recently went
from $700 down to $100, and I guess back up to $200 now. Can you give us a little bit
of background behind that? Well, our major obstacle in marketing this product is the
entrenched user base with spreadsheets. And to get around that, we decided to cede the
market at $100 for two and a half months. That worked exceedingly well. We now have
one of the larger installed bases, we think, worldwide. And now we've settled at $200 as
our longer term price. Eric, now you have a product called Silk. This is again Lotus-like
based on that idea. Can you tell us about Silk? Silk recognizes the dominance of Lotus
in the marketplace and the fact that the installed base is very large. So we use a similar user
interface and we perform the same functions, about 99% of the functions of Lotus, and then
took the technology further than that to establish it as an advanced product. Silk is one of
the newer spreadsheet products. We just recently came out. Show us what it does. Well, Silk
is a straightforward spreadsheet, and the most common application is, of course, a time
series model. And what we do is we use a series of windows with the product to help the user
through. So he always knows where he is. Time series model is the most common application,
and what we do is build the time series model with essentially four keystrokes. Define the
period, and then define the fields. You can define the fields in English, and all the
relationships are automatically linked. We have a number of very interesting features
in regard to a time series model, and they're integrated features that have to do with the
help screen that follows you around context-sensitively throughout the program, but allows you to
work in the worksheet simultaneously. And to our knowledge, there is no other help system
of this type. Additionally, we have a way of validating the spreadsheet. So if I were
to change the numbers because the relationships are built in here and made the cost of goods
sold to be only $100 here, and then I went back to the worksheet and I validated it,
and I want to know all the errors and warnings, the worksheet is basically telling me I have
a problem, and the cursor is limited in the problems. Now, of course, I can't get out
of there until you solve the problem, basically. Unless I go out of validation. I can always
escape out of that, but if I hit the help key, it's telling me what the problem is
and how to fix it. And basically, we have an inappropriate relationship here. So I have
to basically fix it. So you enter the number which is out of the range of criteria you've
established for that particular kind of data. Indeed. So it's kind of a spelling checker
of spreadsheets. In a word. It is a unique feature in that way. You know, I can do other
things as well, of course, with the help system, including helping commands. It eliminates
the need for extension. You've got a recovery function, which is kind of impressive. Demonstrate
that. If we assume by simply warm booting the computer that the plug was pulled, or
I forgot to say that. You're in the middle of a big spreadsheet. And we've got some real
problems at the moment because we have no, we've never saved any of our data. So what
I'm doing basically is rebooting the computer again, which is taking us, of course, a couple
of seconds here. And it's sending me back to the operating system. If I go back to where
Silk is and go back to our access system, I have a number of choices here. We were logging
everything we had done previously. So I'm just going to recover. Hit F2. And basically,
I've got fast forward and recovering every keystroke in the previous work session. I
can stop it at any time hitting any key and then use the spacebar. So it automatically
logs and keeps track of every keystroke. And if disaster strikes, it's all still there.
Absolutely. Can I ask you to get out of Silk because I want to take a look at Javelin in
just a second, Eric. And while he's doing that, give us a little introduction to Javelin,
Robert. Well, Javelin is based on the idea that the important thing in doing any business
analysis is not calculating numbers, but being able to understand your business and being
able to communicate your analysis to someone else. On the screen right here, I have a worksheet
on the top screen. It shows cash and cash balance. On the bottom, I have a graph, which
is automatically generated as I move through this worksheet. And you see these different
items are being graphed as I go through them. Now, to support the contention that you have
to understand your business to be able to model it, I'm going to show you a diagram
view, which shows the cash flow as a function of these two items coming into it. And we're
going to go back through that and see that, in fact, cash flow itself is derived from
this curve. Cash does not all come in at once, but in fact comes in over several months.
I drew that in in just a few seconds. If we go back a little further, we see that car
sales is the ultimate input variable for these things. Why don't we do a chart view of what
we call pre-tax income and go up to the other window and do a chart view of foreign sales
as a percent of pre-tax income. And we're going to do something that formerly only used
to be done in CAD CAM and engineering, as I move the data in the top graph, as you see.
So you're using the cursor key to change the shape of the graph.
That's correct.
And the numbers are following.
And you'll see that the numbers changed in the outcome, which was the pre-tax income.
Okay. Javelin also has the capability to have as many totally automatically dynamically
linked worksheets as you can build. And they each take very little memory. This one is
a monthly worksheet showing sales. I'm going to insert columns simply by hitting the insert
key. That's all I have to do to do that. And add in quarters. So I've added in two quarters
there and now I can do the year without doing any kind of formula work. I've automatically
generated these numbers. So I've saved time and I've saved errors. Javelin's presentation
graphics, of course, are really quite nice and extremely quick. That's a bar graph. That's
one of seven. And just to show you one other one, we have, we think, the roundest pie chart
in the business. The principle, again, of Javelin is the point of modeling is to understand
your business. Javelin is completely geared to help you understand it and communicate
your model to other people.
Okay, gentlemen, two impressive demos, Silk and Javelin. That's the first half of our
look at spreadsheet software. We'll be back next week with more, so make sure you're there
with us. Right now, stay tuned for this week's computer news.
In the random access file this week, spreadsheets in the news. First of all, Microsoft is taking
on Lotus by releasing the PC version of its Excel spreadsheet, originally written for
the Macintosh. The PC Excel has a graphic interface, which takes advantage of the new
graphics capabilities of the PS2 computers. Some critics say the PC version of Excel is
not as fast nor as robust as the original Mac version. Lotus is fighting back by saying
it'll come out early next year with 1.2.3 for the Macintosh. Lotus is promising details
on the Mac 1.2.3 at the January Mac World Expo in San Francisco. And Lotus is also protecting
itself against Quattro, the new Borland spreadsheet for the PC. Lotus says it now has an enhancement
called Speed Up, which does recalculations faster by only recalculating cells in which
there is a change. That is one of the features of Quattro. Lotus says Speed Up also remembers
keystrokes, thus making macro writing easier. 1.2.3 users can get Speed Up free from some
dealers or directly from Lotus for a $20 fee. Despite all the talk of the new assault on
1.2.3 by Borland, Microsoft and others, one Lotus fan says for a new spreadsheet to replace
this, it'll have to cure cancer, taste like chocolate and sell for a dollar. Despite a
somewhat shaky reception, IBM says sales of PS2 computers are doing well and that the
one millionth PS2 computer will be shipped sometime this month. IBM says PC sales are
up 40% from last year, though analysts say IBM's share of the PC marketplace is still
falling due to the continuing assault of the clones. Epson, which came out with one of
the first laptop computers back in 1981, has re-entered the laptop field with a 640K MS-DOS
portable called the Equity LT. It has a backlit screen and suggested retail price of $18.95.
Epson is also offering a hard disk version at $29.95. Time for this week's software review,
and here's Paul Schindler. People who bill other people for their time, accountants,
lawyers, consultants, spend a lot of their time wadding up their money and throwing it
away if they can't keep track of who they talk to for how long about what projects.
In a big company, there's systems for keeping track of time and billing for it. Well, now
a sole practitioner can do it too at a reasonable price with TimeSlips. The $100 price is a
real breakthrough. Now, TimeSlips is another of the increasing number of programs which
make good use of color to help you see what's going on. Here, what's going on is the clock
is ticking. You can decide later whether to bill at the rate for the consultant involved,
for the particular customer, or for the activity. You can even choose whether to bill for the
activity or not. And although it doesn't show on the screen, the program's memory resident
so you can flip into and out of it while working on something else. TimeSlips generates a bewildering
variety of useful reports too. It's the best, cheapest professional time billing program
we've seen. TimeSlips is $100 from NorthEdge Software in Hamilton, Massachusetts. For the
Computer Chronicles, I'm Paul Schindler. The House Telecommunications Subcommittee has
begun hearings on the FCC's proposal to raise telephone access charges for users of online
services. FCC Commissioner Dennis Patrick testified in favor of the rate hike, saying
online users would simply be paying the same rates as long-distance voice users. Massachusetts
Representative Ed Markey testified against the rate hike, saying it would inhibit the
growth of online services and would mean only the wealthy could afford to access information
services. October is Computer Learning Month, a celebration of the use of computers in the
classroom sponsored by the Software Publishers Association. There are contests for students
and a variety of print support materials. If you're interested in getting more information
about Computer Learning Month, write to the address on your screen. Finally, if you're
into decision support software, here is the ultimate program. It's called Ask God. It's
purportedly an AI program that accesses the entire King James Version of the Bible and
lets you conduct a dialogue with the software to find out what advice the Bible has about
a particular area of conduct. Ask God is made by Integrated Systems and Information of Kirkland,
Washington. That's it for this week's Chronicles. We'll see you next time.
The Computer Chronicles is made possible in part by CompuServe, featuring an online reference
library, Wall Street reports, at-home shopping, airline reservations, games, and hundreds
of other services. CompuServe, helping people get the most from computers. Additional funding
is provided by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte. Byte's detailed technical articles on
new hardware, software, and languages cover developments in computer technology worldwide.