agv@s.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Murrell) (01/09/88)
Well, here is (at last) a summary of the responses I received
concerning Borland's Quattro. MUCH thanks to all who took the
time to reply -- your evaluations were indispensable. I found
the evidence convincing enough to go ahead and purchase Quattro
and I would add my praises to the product as well. As a disclaimer,
I have no connections with Borland whatsoever. The following
summary is distilled purely from responses offered by others (whose
names I have chosen not to disclose, so as to shield them from
e-harassment).
With this posting, I "wash my hands" of the subject -- meaning
I do not wish to engage in long e-mail or net debates concerning
these contents. I will, however, provide clarification if I
feel the need is justified.
===============================================================
The following are notable replies I received which reviewed
Borland's Quattro spreadsheet package. I make no guarantees as to
their accuracy. I have edited these to save space while retaining
the gist of their content.
* "...I had been using 1-2-3 with HAL, and Quattro seems like a
perfectly functional replacement.... Quattro draws much nicer
graphs, runs a lot faster, has much more usable menus, macros,
etc. etc., and is 100% compatible with 1-2-3. I love it.
I should say that I'm currently an MBA student at [a notable
university] and I use it a whole lot for MBA case analysis stuff
- everything from financial analysis, to pro-formas, market
analysis, and even statistical process control charts. All of my
1-2-3 spreadsheets work fine.
I've used it on both an AT&T 6300+ under Simultask, and on a
Leading Edge Model D with Hercules graphics. I highly recommend
it!"
* "...As far as its performance, I'm impressed. I have been using
Lotus 1-2-3 Version 1a for about 3 years for home finance and small
business applications (invoices, tally sheets, load amortizations,
checkbook register and balancing, and others). The graphics are
superb (on a VGA), the speed is noticably faster, the interface is
intuitive and familiar enough to be readily usable. It has two modes
of operation; normal, and 123-compatible. Some of my more complex
123 templates (I do contract template and code writing as a consultant
on the side) barfed in normal mode, but worked fine in 123-compatible
mode. The difference was that some of the jobs to be done (like
printing a range) required a different set of keystrokes to activate
when in normal mode. In compatible mode, no problem....
Its two drawback both relate to size. Quattro takes more memory to
run than L123, so when I have my TSR stuff loaded, I have less room
for spreadsheet. Also, it takes up more room on disk than L123
(especially if you've gone through the L123 files and deleted the
conversion programs and superfluous drivers)....
Haven't found any problem to complain about yet. It even had a hi-res
driver for my Epson LQ-800 24-pin printer, which produces near-laser
quality graph prints when pushed hard enough. Quattro pushed it!"
* "I just received a copy of Quattro and installed it. My initial
impression is that I will stick to LOTUS. There are nice features
such as the customization of the menus, the improved graphs, and
some additional '@' functions. It did read in my current LOTUS
files, but I found at least a couple of cases where I had to
change some macros to make it work. Also it had the same (or
slower) speed in doing the recalculations of the worksheet.
(Now I know all the arguments about which 'benchmark' is used). The
LOTUS compatible mode is slower in responding to command than 1-2-3
and the macros executed slower.
Overall, if you don't already use 1-2-3, then Quattro is a good
investment. If you already have a large investment in exising
worksheets, you might want to stick with 1-2-3."
* "I received mine on Friday, 11 Dec and it looks like a very nice package.
The main disappointment I have after very limited use is that it uses a
lot (~165K) more memory than 123. That may not be too surprising,
considering all the extra features, but it does limit the size of the
spreadsheet more than 123, even with an EMS card. The special offer
flyer I received from Borland indicated that Quattro required a system
with at least 384K of memory, but the manual that comes with the program
states that it requires at least 512K. I have a 640K system and load
Superkey and Sidekick with MS-DOS 3.2. When I run Quattro, the Default
Hardware screen (cf. 123 /WS screen) tells me I have a little over 80K
of conventional memory available for the spreadsheet....
I have encountered only two 'problems' so far. Quattro does not recognize
the 8087 on my Leading Edge, Model M (123 and other programs do). It
does recognize the 8087 on one IBM PC I tried. The other 'problem'
(feature??) is that the PR indicator for protected cells disappears if the
cell has other than the global format. I think this is a (noncritical)
bug, since PR shows for non-specially formatted cells and the U indicator
shows for all cells.
One other difference I noticed is one I did not like at first, but after
some thought I think I like better than 123. In 123 unprotected cells
show up with bright attribute on a monochrome TTL monitor. In Quattro,
these cells show up with the underscore attribute. It took me a little
while to get used to this, but the advantage is that one can see *all*
cells which are unprotected rather than only the ones which have entries.
This is also probably more intuitive, since usually one uses unprotected
cells for data entry, and the blank underscores seem to be a natural
metafor for indicating places to make entries."
* "...I've used 1-2-3 since Jan 1984, and have used 20/20, Multiplan,
Supercalc and a few others. I think Quattro is fantastic and will
probably never use 1-2-3 again....
In one sense Quattro is different, in another the same. One can read
a 1-2-3 *.wk1 file directly into Quattro without any conversion. In fact,
a large file that I used for testing Quattro (3000 rows by 8 columns)
actually read in to Quattro as a *.wk1 file in about 1/3 the time it took
1-2-3 to read it. Now as if that alone wasn't enough, most all 1-2-3
macros work as is in Quattro. Finally, the real plus, Quattro has a soft
user interface which allows the user to elect a menuing structure that
totally replicates 1-2-3, or you can use Borland's menus, or even write
your own.
Incidentally, these are slick, pop-down menus that also remember what you
did last and are very intelligent....
Here's a few of its more exciting features:
- menu command short-cuts
- 100 built-in functions; most are just like 1-2-3's
- Support for virtually any graphics board and it's all
automatic (including IBM's new VGA)
- Graphics printing capability is in the main program
- Support for Postscript output
- Keystroke record mode for automatic macro creation
- unlimited macros
- single-step macro debugging
- matrix operations
The graphics in Quattro are astonishing in both speed and range of
capabilities. You can easily change fonts colors and hatching
patterns on-the-fly and instantly view the results.
Most importantly it's a real speed demon. My tests show about a
200% improvement over 1-2-3. Everything is fast. You can even start
it up right out of the box by just copying files to a directory and
typing 'Q'; no installation routine is required.
It's filled with special features that you have to add to other
spreadsheets, like the auto-record macros, an intelligent recalc
that only recalcs changed cells, built-in sideways printing, and
confirmation on commands that might affect your data, like reminding
you to save before exiting.
Finally, one of the best feature is it's transaction log. Once turned
on, you can literally pull out the power cord, then restart the
machine, read in your 'unsaved' worksheet, and THEN invoke the
'transcript' facility and re-create any lost operations from the
last time you saved the spreadsheet. Of course, this also has an
'undo' facility which is quite handy in itself."
* "It's a little early, I just got my copy the middle of last week,
but Quattro get a few pluses already -- (1) its lots cheaper,
(2) you can change drivers on the fly, (3) I love the Framework
style 'popup' menus, and (4) it seems to be slightly faster on the
spreadsheets I have tried it on (all relatively simple compared to
the ones accounting use at work). So far I haven't seen any
negatives, though I think the auto-configuration has the potential
to screw up in a machine with novel video or printer setups. On the
other hand, I didn't do anything to bring up my EGA/Epson system
other than tell it I have a 200 line monitor (it should have been
able to figure that out too!)."
--
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