Royal Software
Spreadsheet programs are fast becoming an
essential feature to any business currently interested in keeping
simple cash flow analysis and financial projection. For most users
of business computers, Lotus 123 is the industry standard, often
bought but rarely used to it's fullest capabilities. To many home
users, V.I.P professional (the Lotus 123 clone) seems to be out of
reach because of it's price so, with this in mind, software houses
have been producing affordable spreadsheet programs and E-ZCALC
falls into the range of mid-priced software.
Making use of the Gem environment, E-ZCALC has
mouse control, drop down menus and full use of all ten function
buttons. Now don't get ahead of yourself, not all commands can be
achieved by using the mouse and many need manual insertion to fully
work. Extra features of E-ZCALC include a 10 key calculator and a
handy note pad as desktop accessories. There's also a separate
program to convert either Lotus 123 or V.I.P files to E-ZCALC
format. The manual is a forty page mixture of tutorial and reference
sections. The tutorial is a very simple financial template, which is
adequate to get first timers going and gets you moving steadily
along without being patronising.
E-ZCALC has just about all the general features
required in a spreadsheet program including Loading and Clearing of
files, Appending from cursor position, Save and Partial save. The
Partial save will save a range of cells previously defined.
Templates can be saved with Labels and Formulas intact. Save Text
will save the file to ASCII format, however this cannot be re-loaded
into E-ZCALC. Erase file and Rename file act as you'd expect. There
are 264 columns and 999 rows in which to enter data and the columns
can be sized either globally or singly but this has to be activated
by using the drop down menu and not as you'd expect with the mouse
by dragging the top cell to the required size. E-ZCALC doesn't have
Macro capabilities, so consequently many keystrokes are needed to
perform these functions.
If you wish to define a large group of cells for
use with commands such as Replicate, Global Width, Comma, Dollar,
etc the procedure is one of 'rubber banding'. This has to be done
before you choose your option, then you select the required choice
from the menu and click. Usually this will take you into a dialog
box at the bottom of the screen which will ask for confirmation. You
can also define cells by placing the cursor at the start cell and
selecting an option from the menu bar which, again, will take you
into a dialog box where you'll have to define the range manually.
This is where you'd expect the Gem handling to be at it's best but
unfortunately, unlike V.I.P/Lotus, where you would 'Anchor' the
starting range and scroll down/across the sheet to the required cell
and fasten everything down, E-ZCALC will not let you pull a cell
into the dialog box. I found this most disturbing but only because
I'm used to the standard method of defining a range.
Using the mouse to 'Goto' a cell is obviously fast
and if you wish to copy a cell then move the cursor to the cell you
wish to copy and click while the Alternate key. The contents of that
cell are copied to the edit box and pressing RETURN will place the
contents in the new cell. Virtually the whole program takes on this
kind of procedure, i.e. part mouse control and part manual keyboard
insertion. It's this two handed system that makes a mockery of the
title E-ZCALC. If you can't operate the program single handedly then
what's the point of having a mouse!
Other facilities are. Freeze Titles - this keeps
the row/column titles on the screen as you scroll through the
spreadsheet. Insert will put blank row/column into the spreadsheet
between existing cells.
Mathematical functions included are; Absolute
Value, E to the power, Integer, Natural Logarithm, Logarithm and
Square Root. Trigonometric functions are PI, SIN, COS, TAN, ASIN,
ACOS and ATAN. Statistical functions supported are; SUM, MAX, MIN,
COUNT, and AVERAGE. Financial, and Data Management functions are
supported along with error trapping functions, these include Net
Present Value and Lookup. The print menu has a fairly good selection
of utilities and the print range can be selected by 'rubber banding'
or from the print range dialog box. Headings and titles can be
toggled on or off and grid follows the same format. Type styles
include compressed, Elite, Pica and, if your printer supports it,
N.L.Q.
Sixteen help boxes are available from the menu
bar, once you load one of them from disk they'll all sit in memory
but don't get the impression that they are intended as a substitute
for the manual.
The conversion program from V.I.P to E-ZCALC
worked a little strangely, it would only convert files and not
templates. Any look-up formula in V.I.P wasn't converted and many of
the mathematical functions were incorrectly converted. The majority
of figures were rounded up to the nearest integer and the percentage
formula was so mixed up that it would have meant financial ruin for
anybody who dared to convert from V.I.P to E-ZCALC. There wasn't any
provision to dump the contents to disk for graphical analysis nor to
import data
from other sources.
If you are looking for a stand alone spreadsheet
program at a middle range price (approx £65) then E-ZCALC may be on
your list, if on the other hand you think the capabilities of E-ZCALC
are limiting then look at V.I.P where you'll get a whole lot more
but at a price.
top
