Robtek
£49.95
In the
last issue I reviewed EZCalc the spreadsheet package from Royal
Software. Now Robtek have acquired the distribution rights for
Europe and renamed it EAZY-CALC. To their credit they have also
reduced the price to £49.95 and have included a graph program as
part of the package.
The program was not without its faults and this was
consequently reflected in my review. My main concern was that the
program didn't really match up to its name, and I still feel that
this is partly true. The other area I highlighted was the inability
to 'convert' VIP/Lotus 1-2-3 files files to EZCalc format correctly.
This seems to have been remedied but still it could not convert
templates 100% correctly. I had to make some small adjustments to
the conversion but this is probably a small price to pay for what is
generally a good facility.
With the graph program, Robtek have done themselves
proud. EZGraph sits in memory as an accessory and can be pulled down
at any time to take up half of the screen as a default, but, like
any other window, it can be sized to suit your own requirements. Bar
and Line graphs, each with four variations, single, stacked, overlay
and compare coupled with a Pie chart make up this impressive
accessory. Labels can be dragged from the spreadsheet to the graph
to make up your titles. Cells can either be dragged individually or
whole ranges ported at one go. Up to four full sets of data can be
displayed on the graph resulting in a highly visual and pleasing
display.
Graphs can be saved to disk and the retrieval time for 'saved'
graphs was almost instant. Printing the graphs does not provide any
problems providing you have an Epson compatible printer. Quality
dumps without any significant distortion were produced in under two
minutes.
Everything taken into account, the graphing program from EZCalc
really is worthy of the title easy, although most of my earlier
comments regarding the spreadsheet still apply. On reflection, what
was a program destined to collect dust on many suppliers shelves,
could now be a good buy.
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