marcus@wdl1.UUCP (Marcus J Louie) (03/30/89)
Has anyone out there tried the new spreadsheet/database/graphics package Wingz?
It seems pretty advanced and from the demo disk I received at MacWorld, it
seems like a good product. If anyone out there has tried or bought it, I'd
appreciate their comments. I want to make sure I'm getting a good product
before I invest my hard earn money.
Thanks in advance,
Marcus Louie
Ford Aerospace Corp.
marcus@wdl1.fac.ford.com
...{sun, sgi}!wdl1!marcusquinnt@rpics (Tom Quinn) (03/30/89)
In article <4210029@wdl1.UUCP> marcus@wdl1.UUCP (Marcus J Louie) writes: > >Has anyone out there tried the new spreadsheet/database/graphics package Wingz? >It seems pretty advanced and from the demo disk I received at MacWorld, it >seems like a good product. If anyone out there has tried or bought it, I'd >appreciate their comments. I want to make sure I'm getting a good product >before I invest my hard earn money. > I was lucky enough to win a copy of WingZ when Informix did a demo for the Albany-area Mac user's group (MECCA). It arrived last week, and so far seems to be pretty close to the demo version that is floating around, but with complete help files, additional examples, and, of course, the save function enabled. It also came with an instructional videotape that I haven't sat through yet. Anyone who has seen WingZ demo'd on a souped-up color Mac II (or better) was probably at least a little impressed with its capabilities - very powerful and colorful graphics, *many* built-in functions, and very customizable (they even give you the Hyperscript source file that drives the user interface; one demo actually implements Excel as a WingZ script). However, it is very slow on my one meg Mac Plus. This is especially obvious when you run the graphics-laden demo script. The speed of the delivered product is comparable to the speed of the demo version. Though to be fair, most of the simpler graphing functions and spreadsheet operations run fine. In other words, the slowdown is only an issue when using the more advanced features or heavy mathematics (not surprising). I've not used Excel, so I can't make any comparisons. By the way, two versions are delivered when you buy WingZ: a Mac Plus/SE version, and a Mac II version capable of using the 68881. I haven't used it enough yet to give a thorough review of it. The above are just my impressions after playing around with it. It certainly will take a long time to discover all the features it offers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas F. Quinn quinnt@turing.cs.rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Computer Science Department