As I See It...

An occasional commentary
by James E. Felton

April 21, 1997

When I bought my first PC (in February 1995) the "general purpose" aspects of it were very appealing to me. With that in mind, I considered the "bundled software" that comes with a PC to be an important factor in my choice of PCs. After all, the bundled software included with many PCs would cost $1000.00, or more, if purchased separately.

One of my original justifications for buying a PC in the first place was that I needed a fax machine. I also needed invoicing, and accounting capabilities for one of my small businesses. A PC with the right software, I was told, would provide all of these capabilities, plus dozens more. Not to mention the wonderful multimedia capabilities that looked so great in the store!

The PC I bought came with a dozen "productivity applications" including a "Call Center" to answer the phone, a fax program to send and receive faxes, and several Microsoft programs (including Microsoft Works) that included templates for invoicing, accounting, and etc.

The "Call Center" worked great (though it isn't much good once you start using your PC for Internet activities). It was reasonably easy to set up, and operate. But the fax program, Faxworks, was another matter. Faxworks wouldn't do grey-scale images so everything I sent with pictures arrived as solid black pages (I also tried Microsoft fax with similar results). Apparently I needed a better fax program I was told, so I paid $90.00 for FaxWorks Pro. After installing FaxWorks Pro I found that my Call Center no longer worked. A hundred hours later, after numerous calls to both the PC manufacturer, and the software maker I resolved to just buy a freakin' fax machine. That immediately ended my fax problems! And if you consider your time to be worth anything the fax machine was actually far cheaper than the time I spent screwing around with the PC.

Well, one of the few things that my fax machine doesn't do well is create cover sheets. Oh sure, it will do cover sheets, but who wants to type comments using the 10 numeric buttons for the 26 alphabet characters (hit 2 three times for c)? So, yesterday I thought I'd revisit some of those wonderful Microsoft productivity applications that came with my PC to create a custom cover sheet. I had deleted most of my bundled software long ago so it took a few minutes to reinstall it. Finally, I opened Microsoft Works (4.0), and sure enough there was a cover sheet template. But, the problem with Microsoft Works templates (I had forgotten) is that they are all built on top of the spreadsheet application. Well, that's great for tabbing your way through a form, but what if you want to include comments? To include comments you have to type them in a "cell". Anything that exceeds the size of the cell gets chopped off. Once you realize the limits of the cell you can't just backspace to the end of the last sentence. You have to start over. The next line goes in another cell. And so on. So, three hours later I printed a reasonably attractive cover sheet with my comments on it. That's great except that in my primary occupation I average $30.00 per hour. So, from that perspective, this custom cover sheet cost me $90.00! And that, my friends, is pretty much the story on every aspect of using a PC as a "productivity" tool.

In the two years since I bought my first PC I've tried almost every productivity application (for Windows) there is. And about the only truly productive application I've found for normal people using PCs is Netscape Navigator. I can find all the information to design a golf course in 15 minutes on the web! I can find, and read about the history of ancient civilizations in less time than it takes drive to the library. If I want to I can download, and save it. Or I can just print it. Yes, if you look at things in terms of cost vs gain the Internet is by far the most productive use of computers for average people. And I'll put the web up against your "Encarta", or your $2000.00 set of hardback encyclopedias any time!

Powerpoint? That has to be the biggest joke in the productivity software. Who, in their right mind would use Powerpoint to create a presentation? I can create a much better presentation much faster with RealVideo (or with Navigator Gold for that matter). And MY presentation will run on almost every platform. I can post it on my web site, and you can view it at your convenience. Try that with your freakin' Powerpoint!

You want to play games? Go buy a used Sega Genesis for $50.00 (or a Nintendo 64 for $200.00)! You want effective, inexpensive productivity tools? Get a pencil, a calculator, an answering machine, a fax machine, and maybe an NC (or WebTV)! You want to waste a whole lot of time? Buy a multimedia PC with Windows 95, and a bunch of bundled software!

Have an opinion you'd like to share? Send it to me!

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