-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- PCM Online December 1994 REVIEWS Contents: [] Reviews: 13 reviews of business programs, utilities and other really neat stuff Entire contents copyright 1994 by Falsoft, Inc. PCM -- The Premier Personal Computer Magazine is intended for the private use and pleasure of its subscribers, and reproduction by any means is prohibited. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Reviews ~~~~~~~ <> 11 Million Businesses Phone Book <> All Music Guide <> ClickBOOK <> The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations <> The Cruncher <> d-Time10 <> Financing Sources Databank <> Good to Firm <> Kittens to Cats, Puppies to Dogs <> MoodMaker 2.0 <> SmartPad 3 <> Uninstaller 2.0 <> A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes -=*=- <> 11 Million Businesses Phone Book <> Let Your PC Do the Walking What if I said you could fit 5000 "yellow pages" phone directories on a slab of plastic about a millimeter think and 41/2 inches across? Would you believe me? Of course you would, because you're a computer-literate person living in the age of CD-ROM. The program in question is called 11 Million Businesses Phone Book, and the name pretty much says it all. This disc is a database of virtually every business in the United States and Canada, compiled from more than 5000 telephone directories. To use it, type in a business name, then tell the program to search. After a few seconds of churning, up pops a list of all the businesses containing the words you typed -- with city, state and ZIP code. If you select one of the businesses and ask for more detail, you'll get the street name (just the name of the street, not the number) and, of course, the telephone number. (Be careful about the businesses you ask for "detail" on, however, because they go on the counter: you are allotted 5000 and no more "details.") The program is a piece of cake to use. For example, if you type "Ray's Bar," you'll get 37 matches; this includes establishments like Ray's Cocktail Bar (White Haven, Pennsylvania) and Billy Ray's Bar-B-Q Express (Tulsa, Oklahoma). There are six exact matches for "Ray's Bar" . . . well, only three if you're particular about the apostrophe. (Why "Ray's Bar"? My dad always thought it was funny to answer the phone with a chirpy, "Ray's Bar & Grill." Was just curious if there were any. And there are -- exactly two.) You can also search by a phone number. Enter a phone number, and up pops the company's name (assuming that the number is used by a listed business). And you can restrict your search to a state (or Canadian province), a city or even a ZIP code. Other options include voice mode (English, French or Spanish), in which a pleasant female voice says, "The number is . . . " before reading out the number. (Psst. You can let the program autodial for you. Sound and autodialing are supported only using the Windows installation. You can also install the program to run in DOS.) Now, 11 Million Businesses Phone Book may not seem like the most practical business application out there, but it can save you money if you make lots of long-distance phone calls to directory assistance. So if you do a lot of canvassing or marketing to other businesses, it's handy. It's also a useful tool if you're planning to start a business and want to make sure its name will be unique -- in less than a minute, you could see if anyone else in the United States or Canada has already latched onto that name. I've come up with my own list of reasons why I like this program -- trivial pursuits. It answers questions like, "How many McDonalds are there in the United States and Canada?" (9683) For your viewing pleasure, a bit of franchise trivia: Business Total in U.S. & Canada Burger King 5555 Chevron 4953 Circuit City 236 Frederick's of Hollywood 196 Holiday Inn 1612 K-Mart 2652 KFC 5278 Kroger 1213 Lazarus 271 Piggly-Wiggly 723 Pizza Hut 7324 Radio Shack 6102 Subway 7342 Taco Bell 3665 Wal-Mart 2044 Walgreens 1828 White Castle 194 Winn-Dixie 930 More trivia. In the United States and Canada, there are: 51,053 businesses with the word "pizza" in their names; 23,349 with "computer" in their names; 67 with "Internet" in their names; and two establishments calling themselves "Bates Motel." American Business Information, the publishers of 11 Million Businesses Phone Book, also publishes a "white pages" directory of the United states, called 70 Million Households Phone Book ($69), which should be perfect for finding lost relatives and rounding up old classmates for that 20-year reunion. {11 Million Businesses Phone Book, American Business Information, 5711 S. 86th Circle, P.O. Box 27347, Omaha, NE 68127, (402) 593-4595; $49. REQUIRES: 512K RAM, DOS 3.3+ hard drive and a CD-ROM drive for DOS installation. Windows 3.1 installation is an option.} -=*=- <> All Music Guide <> A Day in the "Record Store" Are you the type of person who can spend a blissful day browsing the aisles of a "record store" (read, "CD/cassette store")? Are you a music lover, a CD collector, a trivia buff, or just someone trying to pick out a good gift? Then All Music Guide should strike the right note for you. This Windows program is a music lover's guide to the best CDs, tapes and LPs of all time. Its database covers more than 35,000 recordings by 6000 artists -- in every major category! That's everything from Muddy Waters to Clint Black to Beethoven to the Shirelles to Aerosmith to Nine Inch Nails. If you're looking for any recording by any artist, your grail ends here. Browse the alphabetical lists of artists to get short biographies of each artist and see a list of all their albums. (You can also browse albums to find the artists.) You can click on any album to get a mini-review of it by veteran critics. They'll show you which albums are considered the best in the genre, and which of an artist's works you should consider buying first. If you don't know what you're looking for, that's OK too, because the program lets you do searches, and wildcard support means you don't have to be a perfect speller. One of the best features is All Music Guide is the inclusion of each album's publisher and stock number -- making it easy to order if your local record store doesn't carry it. Annual updates are planned. {All Music Guide, Great Bear Software, 1100 Moraga Way, Moraga, CA 94556, (510) 631-1600; $49.95. REQUIRES: a Windows 3.1 VGA system with 2MB of RAM and 11MB of hard-drive space.} -=*=- <> ClickBOOK <> Bookmaking: Legal, Fun -- and No DTP Required! A few years ago I had the bright idea of putting together a company cookbook. I formatted it in PageMaker for 8-1/2-by-11-inch paper (landscape), folded in half to make a handy-sized booklet. Just fold and staple -- and there would be printing on both sides, page numbers and everything just like that, right? Wrong! The pages didn't come out sequentially, they didn't get numbered automatically, and the index was messed up because the page numbers were wrong. (Here's what's going on, should you try this: PageMaker sees only one page where you see two, so you'll have to do everything manually, even page imposition. It involves lots of cutting, pasting and rearranging. Plan to waste a lot of paper.) Now that I'm older and wiser, and in the habit of checking to see what goodies UPS delivers, I use ClickBOOK for churning out booklets and the like -- with minimal hair-pulling on my part. When you want to use ClickBOOK, just select the ClickBOOK printer driver from within any Windows program, and "print." Up pops ClickBOOK with a variety of print styles up its digital sleeve -- side-by-side folded (this is the classic landscape, doubled-sided, folded booklet), four-up flip-book, wallet book, tri-fold brochure, standard address book and many more. Choose the style you want to print, and click on Print for real. Out come pages printed on only one side. So how do you get printing on the other side of the paper? By reading the instructions page. For every print job, ClickBOOK generates a page telling you how to put the paper back in the printer so that the back sides get printed correctly - - it tells you whether the pages should go back in the tray facing up or down, and which end goes in first (a large arrow points the way). You can't miss! When the pages come out of the printer, just fold and staple -- they'll be in the right order. I get the feeling I've made it sound more difficult than it is, but, really, the printouts themselves tell you how to proceed. And for the tiny "books," like four-folds, where cutting is required along with folding, you get instructions for that too. If your goal is to quickly print booklets, directories, phone lists, catalogs, etc., I recommend you back away from PageMaker and run with arms outstretched to ClickBOOK. It's not perfect; often the type sizes you've selected will be "shrunken" in order to fit on the page with the formatting you've applied. Sometimes the characters look squeezed. The printouts are never ugly, though (except for one test of a PageMaker document I did in two columns -- I discovered it was best to work from Microsoft Word). But if your project is for publication and everything must look perfect with graphics, typesizes and breaks in just the right spots, you'll have to sweat it out with PageMaker. ClickBOOK shines at quick printing and automatic formatting -- which means minimal stress on your part. {ClickBOOK 1.1, BookMaker Corp., 2470 El Camino Real, Suite 108, Palo Alto, CA 94306-1701, (800) 766-8531 or (415) 354-8166, $69.95; REQUIRES: a 2MB Windows 3.1 system, with printer.} -=*=- <> The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations <> 18,123 Quotes to Inform and Amuse "One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well." A. Bronson Alcott 1799-1888 U.S. educator, social reformer "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher Collecting interesting quotations is a hobby of mine, and my favorites are those dealing with ironic quirkiness in human nature. I find good quotes in the oddest places. I've found them in everything from anthropology textbooks to gothic mystery novels. Lately my favorite place to shop for quotes is a Windows program called The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations. With 18,123 quotes, it's the motherlode. And the quotes are not the usual, run-of-the-mill, rehashed-until- wooden quotations. You get the expected Shakespeare and Twain (who will never become wooden) as well as the unusual, the current, the offbeat. Try British punk rocker Sid Vicious on love: "I've only been in love with a beer bottle and a mirror." Or Marlon Brando's take on the venerable profession of acting: "Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life . . . . The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis." Or Berke Breathed, the Bloom County and Outland cartoonist, on comic strips: "I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I'd bet I wouldn't lose 10 percent of my papers over the next 20 years. Such is the nature of comic strips. Once established, their half- life is usually more than nuclear waste." (That may be true, Berke, but I quit reading your strip three years ago. Take that.) Where do all these quotes come from? Columbia University Press. Journalist Robert Andrews compiled them, and Aapex software converted the text into one of the most intuitive electronic references around. You can search for quotes using an amazing number of criteria -- subject, author, source, biographies, citations, time periods and text contained within quotes -- all by pointing and clicking with your mouse. The program supports Boolean searches (AND, OR), wildcards and exclusions. You can copy quotations one at a time to the clipboard for use in other Windows programs, or you can "mark" many quotations at once for copying. The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations is the largest and most complete collection of quotations I've seen, and it's been hard to tear myself away from it long enough to write this review. There's no doubt this program could make itself useful for writers and those who have to give speeches. (If you're one of those unfortunates who has to talk in front of others, you may be interested to learn that a free sample of the Speaker's Idea File newsletter is included in the box.) I'll leave you now with a pertinent quote from Benjamin Franklin: "If you teach a poor young man to shave himself, and keep his razor in order, you may contribute more to the happiness of his life than in giving him a thousand guineas. This sum may be soon spent, the regret only remaining of having foolishly consumed it; but in the other case, he escapes the frequent vexation of waiting for barbers, and of their sometimes dirty fingers, offensive breaths, and dull razors." {The Columbia Electronic Dictionary of Quotations, Aapex Software Corp., 925 Greg St., Suite 101, Sparks, NV 89431, (800) 728-7650 or (702) 324- 4580; $89.95. REQUIRES: a 2MB Windows 3.1 system.} -=*=- <> The Cruncher <> Crunch and Munch on Math Problems A lot of adults secretly play their kids' arcade games more than the kids do. No big secret. But their educational programs? Davidson & Associates may have started a new trend with its release of The Cruncher, a spreadsheet for ages 10 and up. This kid's program is just the thing to cure crunchophobia, an irrational fear of spreadsheets exhibited by a certain subspecies of computer-using adults, who repeat the mantra, "I'm NOT a math person! I'm NOT a math person!" (A direct effect of this phobia is the underuse of software suites: the word processor gets all the work, and the spreadsheet never leaves the bench -- or even the shrink wrap!) It's true: you don't have to wear a pointy hat or a propeller beanie to use spreadsheets. So if copies of Lotus or Excel are gathering dust on your shelves because you can't tell a range from a refrigerator (pun intended), try The Cruncher. Not only is it a functional Windows spreadsheet program with graphing ability, it's also a tutorial. And because it's a kid's program, you're treated to colorful graphics, cute animation, voices and sound effects. You must admit, when cells, ranges, formulas and functions are demonstrated by purple bongo beaters, they lose some of their power to intimidate. While the tutorials are rather youthful -- helping users to manage school candy sales and convince the folks that a new puppy wouldn't be that much of an expense, etc. -- they are brilliantly designed, layering new skills seamlessly right on top of the old. The tutorials run the gamut from simply adding a few digits to running a range of numbers through a function. They do a terrific job of building the user's skill and confidence in using spreadsheets. One of the tutorials, the recipe adjuster, is downright handy. Using it you can figure out how to proportion ingredients for two servings or two hundred. And adult sports buffs may have fun noodling with the baseball and basketball statistics projects. Of course your kids will like The Cruncher too! They'll enjoy the "stickers" (little pictures that can be attached to worksheets) and the text-to-speech feature, which reads numbers in the worksheet -- and even reads any notes typed in the notebook (an attached mini-word processor that makes easy to write down in English exactly what the worksheet does, in case you forget). We highly recommend The Cruncher to kids and adults alike! But to Lotus and Excel users, we must add that The Cruncher cannot save its worksheets in your flavors -- only as text files. {The Cruncher, Davidson & Associates, Inc., 19840 Pioneer Ave., Torrance, CA 90503, (800) 545-7677 or (310) 793-0600, $59.95; REQUIRES: a 386+ Windows 3.1 VGA system with 4MB of RAM and 9MB of hard-drive space.} -=*=- <> d-Time10 <> Boost Your CD-ROM Drive to Hard-Drive Speeds? That's what d-Time10 (imagine the "10" is superscripted) from Ballard Synergy proposes to do. d-Time10 is a CD-ROM cache accelerator that claims to boost your CD-ROM's performance and thereby "decrease your wait time by a factor of 10." In other words, make discs running under DOS or Windows as fast as a disk drive. The program's trick is to combine system RAM with disk space to create a "virtual" CD-ROM designed to offer performance equivalent to the disk drive. (Even CD-ROM programs hold to the general rule that 20 percent of the material will be accessed 80 percent of the time.) In theory, the result is high-speed data transfer much faster than even that of double-speed CD-ROM drives' 300K/second. d-Time10 has another feature not found in other accelerators: it saves CD-ROM frame ID and data in system RAM and subsequently writes it as a disk file, called a Timelog. Think of a Timelog as a Windows Swap file, only you can have one for each CD-ROM program you like, up to 255. So, does d-Time10 work? Yes, it definitely speeds up disc access. You'll notice the most difference with disc-based encyclopedias and reference works. When we ran 11 Million Businesses Phone Book (a CD-ROM equivalent to the complete Yellow Pages of the United States and Canada) without d-Time10 installed, it took three seconds to search the CD for all instances of "Taco Bell" and about 16 seconds to post the first screenful of them for display. With d-Time10 installed, the search still took three seconds, but getting that display up there took only five seconds. Reading the promotional materials, I envisioned turbocharging my 33MHz 386 computer at work, with its older single-speed CD-ROM drive, up to the level of my double-speed 486 system at home. Well, that didn't happen. The test disc in question here was QuickTime: The CD, which is a two-disc set of the 1994 QuickTime Film Festival winners (published by Sumeria, 415-904-0800). The title played beautifully, both with and without d-Time10, on the double-speed CD-ROM 486 system. On the 386 single-speed system, without d-Time10, we were lucky to get a static frame now and then, and snatches of sound once in a while. With d- Time10, running a video the first time through got no better results. However, when we tried the same video again, the cache effect kicked in, resulting in a few seconds of fluid animation, and some sound. Though the results were by no means optimal, it was an improvement. Ballard Synergy claims its program is a great way to let older hardware play the latest-technology games, and that applications which almost work, but don't quite sync the sound to the video, will be transformed. We tried d-Time10 with Access Software's Under a Killing Moon on that rather slow 386/single-speed CD-ROM system and still got skips. (The video looked good, but the sound didn't match.) In all fairness, though, Access Software recommends that Under a Killing Moon be played on a 486 system with a double-speed drive and 16MB of RAM. We can recommend d-Time10 for enhancing reference-type discs. But, for speeding up CD-ROM games, we'll hedge by suggesting you try d-Time10 with them on a case-by-case basis. {d-Time10, Ballard Synergy, 10715 Silverdale Way, Suite 208, Silverdale, WA 98383, (206) 692-4565; $64.95. REQUIRES: a 386+ CPU, DOS 4.01+, disk drive with uncompressed space (20MB or more is recommended), a CD-ROM drive and MSCDEX 2.1+.} -=*=- <> Financing Sources Databank <> Entrepreneurs: Find the Financing You Need According to research quoted by DataMerge, 80 percent of U.S. businesses are currently looking for financing, and 80 percent of those cannot secure traditional bank loans. The entrepreneurial market is bound to get only tighter in the months ahead as displaced and "down- sized" ex-corporate workers try to go into business for themselves. If the banks won't finance them, along with a majority of other budding entrepreneurs, who will? DataMerge's program Financing Sources Databank was written to answer that question -- it's a database of alternative lenders around the country, lenders who finance on less stringent qualifications. Financing Sources Databank contains detailed information about lenders: its profiles contain contact names, lending criteria, investment preferences and submittal procedures. If your business needs start-up or expansion capital, search for compatible lenders. Have you stumbled across a fantastic real-estate opportunity but lack the capital to get going? Maybe Financing Sources Databank can connect you with somebody willing to make money by helping you make money. Financing Sources Databank actually comes in two versions: Entrepreneur 3.2.4 ($139) and Professional 4.5 ($499). The Entrepreneur version focuses on 2500 sources for small-business and venture-capital financing, and most of its sources will finance $100,000 or less. The Professional version features 5000 alternative lenders, which range across all major categories of debt -- equity financing, leasing companies, venture capitalists, commercial finance firms, IPO underwriters and more. Another difference with the Professional version is that it lets users print mailing labels and export data in ASCII for mail merging with a word processor. The Entrepreneur version is "read- only." Updates are released every four months. The menu-driven program is easy to use. The user sets five criteria - - type of lender, type of financing, amount of financing, industry and geographical location -- and Financing Sources Databank searches its database for a matching list of lenders. Profiles include such information as whether to approach the lender by phone or mail, which materials to send, estimated turnaround time, and more. Financing Sources Databank had its roots in a Denver law firm that needed a quick way to help clients find financing. DataMerge doesn't cull its lists from printed directories that may be out of date. Rather it uses an in-house research team to call each lender for screening. For the protection of its clientele, DataMerge claims to have weeded out brokers who pretend to be lenders, firms that charge large up-front fees, firms that are no longer lending, and a variety of companies posing as lenders. I confess I didn't really use this program for its intended purpose - - I never called or wrote to try to get a business loan, although I spent a lot of time performing searches and daydreaming entrepreneurial what-ifs. I'd like to be my own boss someday, but for me that day is pretty distant. However, the time may be ripe for you to test the entrepreneurial waters. If so, I advise you to jump with both feet into Financing Sources Databank. {Financing Sources Databank, DataMerge, Inc., 4521 E. Virginia Ave., Suite 201, Denver, CO 80222, (800) 580-1188; $139 for Entrepreneur version, $499 for Professional version. REQUIRES: 640K, DOS 3.3+ and a hard drive.} -=*=- <> Good to Firm <> Join the Gentry: Raise and Race Thoroughbreds PCM is produced in Prospect, Kentucky, which adjoins Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby. We're also about 70 miles northwest of Lexington, the heart of horse country. Movie stars, the old rich, and even royalty turn their thoroughbreds loose in our fabled fields of "bluegrass." In fact, Queen Elizabeth pops in regularly to check on her four-hoofed investments. So it's only fair that, should we receive a horsey program from Britain, we give it our full attention. We are. It's called Good to Firm, and it's a simulation no thoroughbred fan can afford to miss. The goal is to make it big on the British flat racing season. You'll start out with 1,000,000 pounds and an empty stable. First things being first, you attend auctions and fill your stable with the most promising colts -- after examining records of sire and dam, of course! You also set training schedules (the length and duration of workouts) and select jockeys. Finally, you race, and you keep racing through all the big races, including the English Classics, all the while betting and buying better horses. Good to Firm is strictly a simulation -- your decisions are based on the spreadsheet-like reports -- although it does offer a touch of animated whimsy: you get to watch the races TV-camera-style! {Good to Firm, Wizard Games of Scotland, Ltd., P.O. Box 498, Wilmington, MA 01887, (800) 487-4625 or (508) 658-2209; $37.50 by direct mail only. REQUIRES: 580K and VGA.} -=*=- <> Kittens to Cats, Puppies to Dogs <> How Much Trouble Is That Doggy in the Window? Arf-arf! Probably not as much as you'd expect, at least if you follow the expert advice found in Villa Crespo's Puppies to Dogs: "a CD-ROM Guide to Raising the Perfect Dog." Puppies to Dogs, which is "hosted" by animal behaviorist Ann Childers, helps you decide on the kind of puppy to select, and it tells you what kinds of general behaviors you can expect from your pet as it progresses from an irresistible bundle of fur to a loyal, loving companion. Puppies to Dogs gives you dos and don'ts, training tips, diet/nutrition information, grooming advice, and suggestions on ways to break puppy's bad habits -- like chewing on your favorite shoes. The program, a multimedia spectacle, can be viewed as a one-hour QuickTime "video," complete with voices and sounds, or you can go to the glossary to jump immediately to the advice you need. The program also offers a breed directory, with detailed descriptions and full-color pictures, and a "pet notes" area you can use to keep track of vet visits and other milestones. Yes, there is equal time for cat fanciers. Villa Crespo also publishes Kittens to Cats, which does for felines what Puppies to Dogs does for canines. As an added bonus, both programs come with a VHS videotape that is the equivalent of its program's QuickTime movie. The videotape is a kind gesture, because QuickTime movies are not known for brilliant resolution or smooth motion. If you had planned to watch the "video" straight through, you'll definitely want to go with the videotape. {Kittens to Cats, Puppies to Dogs , Villa Crespo Software, 1725 McGovern St., Highland Park, IL 60035, (708) 433-0500; $49.95 each. REQUIRES: an MPC system (386+ CPU, Windows 3.1, SVGA, sound card and CD-ROM drive).} -=*=- <> MoodMaker 2.0 <> Setting a Mood With Your CDs Time flies -- you never imagined your 30-year class reunion would catch up to you this fast. And the gang's flying in from all over to meet at your place the night before the big event. Party time! You and Marge have the decorations all figured out (if you could just find the lava lamp), but what about the music? You could dig out the LPs for old times' sake, but fortunately you've re-created your collection on CDs and you own a carousel CD player, so you can program hours of music at a time. But which albums? Which songs? The music should be bouncy early (Jerry Lee and Elvis, because Marge likes them) and more introspective as the evening wears down (Beach Boys, late Beatles). But it will take hours to play DJ in advance and plan all that stuff. "No, it won't, Phil," says Marge, wiggling her eyebrows behind your John Lennon specs, "because I've been playing with MoodMaker." And what is MoodMaker, you want to know? The answer is that it's another one of those programs that catalog your CD collection, letting you store and retrieve information about songs (with such fields as artist, composer and type of music), print detailed reports, and more. The kicker is the more. MoodMaker lets you organize your music by mood as well as by all the other info. This means that the program can kick out lists of music you consider romantic, especially danceable, nostalgic, etc. Had a bad day at work? Try some relaxing music. Granted, you'll spend time at the beginning entering all that data, but later it'll be a breeze to churn out playlists. There's something else special about this program. It's from Kenwood, same company that makes audio equipment. MoodMaker comes into true fruition if you own Kenwood's multidisc CD player model DP-M7750, because you can interface the player to your PC and let MoodMaker automate the CD playback. (I don't own a Kenwood CD player myself, but I can certainly see the advantages of combining one with MoodMaker.) Whether you let MoodMaker "program" your multidisc CD player or you do it manually from a playlist, MoodMaker will save you time -- less time spent hunting for a particular song in a mountain of discs means more time you can spend enjoying music. And if you're hosting a party, MoodMaker can help keep the good music pumping with minimal effort. Wouldn't you like to have more fun at your own parties? {MoodMaker 2.0, Kenwood U.S.A. Corp., 2201 E. Dominguez St., Long Beach, CA 90810, (310) 639-9000; $49.95. REQUIRES: a 20MHz or better 386 SX system with 4MB RAM and Windows 3.1.} -=*=- <> SmartPad 3 <> Toolbar Integration for Any Windows Program Word for Windows will spoil you for toolbars. It gives you toolbars of icons to click to do everything from opening new documents, to saving, cutting, pasting and printing envelopes. Makes you not want to wade through menus anymore. Wouldn't it be neat to be able to add similar toolbars to programs that lack them? Like File Manager and Windows Write -- or even a DOS session in Windows? You can with SmartPad 3, which lets you link custom toolbars and floating "pads" so tightly with the target application, it looks like the original programmers put them there. SmartPad comes with "prebuilt" icons you can add to toolbars, to do common things like opening and saving files. But you can choose from many colorful and cleverly designed "empty buttons" to assign custom menu actions. And you can delve further into toolbar automation by assigning macros to buttons. If your application has its own macro recorder and player, that's great. If not, use SmartPad's macro recorder to record keystrokes and mouse actions. You can also include program-launch buttons on your toolbars, which means any Windows program can act as the Program Manager to launch applications. Do you work out of a contact manager or PIM like Lotus Organizer? Why not make that your central Windows desktop? Just make a toolbar for it that can launch other applications. The version of SmartPad we received was the PageMaker edition, and if any Windows program ever cried out for toolbar automation, it's PageMaker. The premier PC desktop-publishing program sure is powerful, but it lacks the cosmetic toolbar touches that have become so popular. With this version of SmartPad, all the work of designing toolbars is done. Almost every feature you need to dig for in PageMaker -- from Page Setup to Text Wrap to Line Styles -- is made available to you from toolbar buttons. The toolbars wrap around the screen, almost boxing it in. From that description you might think they consume too much screen space, but they don't. Died-in-the-wool PageMaker users might resists at first, but the aesthetics and ease of use will win out. If they keep resisting, the special characters palette will convert them -- imagine being able to insert a trademark symbol with a simple keypress! The PageMaker edition of SmartPad, while it's obviously PageMaker- centric, lets you set up toolbars for other programs, just as the "Standard" edition of SmartPad does. Another version of SmartPad is available for programmer-types who want to delve into scripting, linking different applications together using a Visual BASIC-style language: the "Developer" edition. {SmartPad 3, Softblox, Inc., 1201 W. Peachtree N.E., Atlanta, GA 30309, (404) 892-0202; $79 for PageMaker Edition, $99 for Standard Edition, $179 for Developer Edition. REQUIRES: Windows 3.1+.} -=*=- <> Uninstaller 2.0 <> Uninstaller Recovers Disk Space From Unused Files Ah, the tangled web we weave when installing Windows apps is what we achieve. An icon here, a directory there, a subdirectory under the Windows directory, a new .INI file, a new section in the WIN.INI file, a few .DLL files -- installation programs find devious ways to install program tidbits in many places on your hard drive. This isn't a problem if you keep using a program. But it sure is a problem when you try to get rid of it and reclaim disk space. Where are all the pieces? Enter Uninstaller 2.0, a program that helps you uninstall Windows programs. Just call up Uninstaller and click on the image of the offending program's icon, and it uses its "SmartLink" feature to track down all parts of that program: .INI entries, directories, related icons, .DLLs and more. It can also help clean out the garbage left by programs you deleted manually. If you're unsure about deleting something, Uninstaller can archive the "deletions" and let you test the system for a few days. Uninstaller is a must-have utility for the Windows tool box, and it works with replacement shells like Norton Desktop too. {Uninstaller 2.0, MicroHelp, Inc., 4359 Shallowford Industrial Parkway, Marietta, GA 30066, (800) 213-8923 or (404) 516-0899; $69.95. REQUIRES: a Windows 3.1 system with 2MB of RAM.} -=*=- <> A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes <> Rhyme Time Becomes Sublime You've got to love a program whose manual begins like this: "Don't read this guide! Really good software shouldn't need documentation. So put down this User Guide, install the application onto your hard disk and start having fun . . . . You're still here. Perhaps this isn't really good software -- or maybe you just can't follow directions." I was so intrigued I kept reading anyway and was tickled to learn that Neil Radisch and David Goldstein, the songwriting/programming team behind A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes, also wrote a musical -- The Don Juan and the Non-Don Juan, which opened off-Broadway "to mixed reviews, though the New York Daily News did praise ‘the elegant sophistication of the lyrics,' and of course David's and Neil's mothers both loved it." You've got to love the program too. A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes is a limerick waiting to happen. If you haven't guessed from the title, A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes is a rhyming dictionary on disk, but it offers more than you'd expect. In it you'll find slang terms, cartoon characters, even Rodney Dangerfield -- everything to construct rhyming social commentary. If it can't find a rhyme on the word you've entered, the program will strip off prefixes and suffixes and find words to match the root. The authors point out that not every word can be rhymed. Orange is perhaps the most famous example of one of those rhymeless words -- so is silver. The program is so easy to use, you really and truly do not need to refer to the manual in order to explore. All you have to do is type a word in the box where the blinking cursor beckons and press ENTER (or click on the FIND button), and A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes quickly pulls up lists of rhyming words. It offers further bonuses in its Hints and Syllables features. Hints, for example, remind you to also try -icks words when searching on -ix words. And the Syllables button lets you constrain your search to words of a certain number of syllables -- perfect when you need a three-syllable word ending in -ite. The program also keeps track of the last 16 words you searched, so you won't have to repeat a search when it's time to write the ending of your limerick. Remember the authors' stern warning, "Dictionaries don't rhyme, people do." Ignore the initial advice to not read the manual: it's full of tips on rhyming and near-rhyming, things you'll need to know about in order not to embarrass yourself. A rhyming dictionary probably seems a very impractical piece of software to install on the computer -- after all, how many people do you know who write limericks, jingles, poems and songs? Probably not as many as those who would secretly like to! Give A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes a chance. It's an indispensable niche tool for poets, ad writers, speech writers and writers of all kinds. It could be a godsend to the teacher who's charged with scripting the first-grade pageant. And, well, wouldn't you like to give your significant other an unforgettable anniversary poem? Of course it can help you write your own limericks! Which brings me to my project. I'm planning to skewer Alexander Pope, author of Rape of the Lock. The smug misogyny in that poem has rattled feminine sensibilities for centuries, though until lately we've been too polite to say so. Perhaps now the time is right. A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes has inspired me to pick up the sword and give that diminutive and dead chauvinist a well-deserved swat with my epic-to-be, Rape of the Jock. (Rest easy, no Lorena Bobbitt-style antics here -- just innuendo and good, clean puns). A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes has me off to a pretty good start with the epic question, an invocation to the muses, etc., etc. What do you think? What anger resides in residue lust? Calliope help me to write this or bust! Or should I appeal to Eroto in this -- complications arisen from one misplaced kiss? Right. I'll keep my day job. {A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes, Eccentric Software, P.O. Box 2777, Seattle, WA 98111-2777, (800) 436-6758 or (206) 628-2687; $39.95. REQUIRES: a Windows 3.1 or higher system.} =------------=- T-H-E E-N-D F-O-R N-O-W -=------------=-