Accounts JAN 1996 Britain's favourite Personal Computer magazine 10 Packagessoftware compared 120 MHz Pentium group test Accounts software: 10 packages compared January 1996 £2.95 Overseas Price £3.95 WIN an NEC notebook, Germany DM 20,00 Italy 18,000 Lire Spain 1,225 PTS Malta Lm 2.85c Nikon scanner, Holland HFL 17,95 Belgium 364.00 BFr Finland FIM 49.50 Canada CAN$12.95 Smartsuite 96 p262 VNU Business Publications ● Six-speed CD-ROM drives FROM £1,886 ● Windows 95 utilities MHz ● Beer and wine guides on CD-ROM 120Pentiums 120HP’s OmniGo ● HP’s Omnigo page 60 ● Pagemaker 6.0 Six-speed ● Sound card add-ons CDs Faster and affordable Crystal ball gazers What 1996 holds Booze bonanza CD guides to beer IF YOUR CD-ROM AND 3.5" DISK and wine ARE MISSING ASK YOUR NEWSAGENT Pagemaker 6.0 Windows 95 utilities with HTML support ALL HARDWARE TESTED BY THE VNU LABS VOL19 NO1 FREE Trial - Exclusive on CD-ROM DOUBLE DISK PACK GO COMPUSERVE! THE ONLINE TOUR January 1996 PCW January 1996 Contents First Impressions 55 Regulars Hands On 18 Newsprint 56 Gadgets Comdex special reports. Novell to sell 120MHz Pentiums 196 WordPerfect. AMD buys NextGen. Miro clones Office software. SoftRAM 60 HP OmniGo 199 As hardware prices fall and Pentium power increases, users offered a refund — so are HP’s new hybrid pen and keyboard-based palmtop. high-performance PCs are more affordable than ever before. Access users as Microsoft admits 61 Adobe PageMaker 6.0 12Mb requirement. Microsoft new PCW compares 16 120MHz Pentiums to find the one worthy of The latest version of the high-end DTP package, Euro-probe. False cache scandal. Hard our Editor’s Choice. now under the Adobe wing. disk and ROM prices set to fall. Vendors roll out Pentium Pro systems 62 HP & CD Revolution CD writing kits as Compaq claims the new chip has a PCW Cover Photography by David Whyte Two complete CD writing kits for under £1,000 bug. 3D card puts PowerMacs into from HP and CD Revolution. workstation class. UK firm readies 285 Introduction Group Quark beater. 286 Windows 95 64 The National Lottery™ Tests 290 Windows 3.1 The official National Lottery package could help Cover Disk 31 News Analysis 292 OS/2 NEW! you win your fortune. • Tim Bajarin on mainframes and 294 32-Bit dinosaurs 64 Panasonic vs Plextor quad-speed 297 DOS or CD-ROM 108 Accounting • Clive Akass reviews an eventful year CD-ROM drives • Simon Rockman on AMD and NexGen 298 Word Processing Software The world’s fastest quad from Plextor, and 302 Spreadsheets ● Still relatively shrouded Panasonic’s quad in a retail pack. 35 Computations NEW! 306 Databases Graphics & DTP in mystery, accountancy 66 Microsoft Publisher 3.0 Rowland Morgan has fun with statistics 314 Multimedia ● software is a serious Entry level, but highly competent, DTP under 39 Sounding Off by Michael Hewitt 318 Cover Disk 8 business for those who 322 Sound Windows 95. 41 Homefront by Tim Nott 3D Cyberpuck — excellent smooth scrolling use it. David Carter puts 326 Visual Programming 70 Orchid NuSound PNP 43 Straight Talking by Barry Fox 333 Numbers Count action. the big players head to The world’s first Win95 plug and play sound card 334 Networks head, and explains how 45 Business Matters by Nick Beard from Orchid. 340 Comms ● PCW Interactive CD-ROM 9 knowing the drill can 48 Letters 73 Quarterdeck Web Server 344 Macintosh 650Mb of programs, music and animation save time and money. 347 Computer Answers Set up your PC as a web server under Windows 3.1 357 PCW Marketplace The best including CompuServe’s WinCIM 2.0 with or Win95 — NT not required. place to compare hardware and 351 Beginners Internet access. (CD-ROM Notes continue 74 Adaptec AIRport 2000 software prices. on page 167.) Upgrade your PC to join the infra-red age with the 358 Buyer’s Charter AIRport. 663 ChipChat Features 74 Avery LabelPro Have the best-looking labels in town. Beer and wine Sound card 76 Scan-IT CUTTING EDGE guides 98 add-ons 156 All-in-one scanning, OCR, storage and retrieval 231 Introduction Screenplay: Phantasmagoria by PAUL BEGG by STEVEN HELSTRIP application. Get into the Christmas spirit as PCW If your old FM sound card is out of tune 80 Map ‘n’ Go PCW Online rounds up and reviews the latest PC wine, with your needs, a General MIDI A complete road map of the USA on a single CD. 232 Focus: On-line gaming beer and cocktail guides. As a cautionary daughterboard could be the answer. 83 Nikon Super CoolScan 236 Net.answers Screenplay: measure, we also look at some hangover Top music makers Roland, Yamaha, Creative Labs and A high-quality dedicated 35mm film scanner. 240 Net.news cures for the morning after. Orchid compete to upgrade your hardware. Magic 84 Xcad 3.1 (incorporating Net.surf) Carpet 2 Fully-featured, low-cost 3D design package. 245 Net.newbies 246 Focus: HTML part 1 Crystal gazing 144 SoftWindows 2.0 170 86 Canon multimedia speakers by THE PCW TEAM by GEORGE COLE Speakers to improve any PC sound system. If you want to use a Mac but need to run Windows programs, PCW Futures We take on Mystic Meg with our own 86 Opti LCD monitor Insignia’s SoftWindows is often the best solution. The new 253 Innovations predictions for the new year. And, we look A notebook-style flat display for your desktop PC. Horizons back at the news and events of 1995. PowerMac-only version 2.0 claims to deliver full 486 255 performance. 87 Logical Decisions 4.0 257 Bluesky Let your PC and Logical Decisions take the strain. 259 Retro Computing Six-speed CDs 150 Windows 95 utilities 174 90 Lorien TextHELP by GORDON LAING Have your PC read out text aloud — ideal for PCW Media by TIM PHILLIPS They just keep getting proof-reading or for those with reading disabilities. 260 Books Windows 95 is a great improvement on 3.1, but there’s still faster and cheaper. 268 CD-ROMs plenty of room for improvement. PCW checks out the first 93 Minitab 10 Xtra PCW takes the latest One of the most widely used statistical packages batch of utilities designed to fill the gaps. PCW Fun Focus: On-line gaming six-speed CD drives for receives an improved interface and a wealth of new 265 Kids’ Stuff a spin and looks at the features. 262 Competition: Win a notebook, monitor, CD-ROM first eight-speed model, Delphi Tutorial: Part 3 186 drive and laser printer, courtesy of NEC and Nikon which is almost as fast by TIM ANDERSON Long Term Tests Part three of our Delphi programming tutorial explains all about 273 Screenplay (with Leisure Lines, page 276) CD-ROMs: as a hard disk. 96 First Class menus and dialogs. Robert Mapplethorpe 97 Escom 486 DX40 6 7 PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD PERSONAL COMPUTER WORLD JANUARY 1996 JANUARY 1996 PCW Cover Disk This month we amaze you with Cyberpuck, a rollicking and ravishing 3D action game with a twist. David Price explains. yberpuck is designed to challenge even IMPORTANT Installing and Cthe quickest reactions and is If you have problems with the Cover guaranteed to quicken your pulse rate. You Disk such as receiving a “Cannot read running the PCW find yourself in a futuristic games court from drive A”, error, please return the revving the engine on your sports buggy disk to the duplicator: TIB plc (PCW), Cover Disk when suddenly the puck drops into the TIB House, 11 Edward Street, Bradford court and all hell breaks loose. BD4 7BH (who may be contacted on You must out-pace your opponent who 01274 736990) together with a stamped o install the programs, insert tries to wrestle the puck from you before addressed envelope and two 25p the disk in drive A: or B:, and you get a chance to blast their goal... stamps. Where it is a duplication fault, Tfrom Windows run the file the postage will be returned along with a PCW.EXE in the root directory of that replacement disk. drive. All of the program will then be If your problem is not due to a faulty installed onto your PC and a disk, and a phone number is shown for Windows Program Manager icon will the publisher of the program in question, be created with which you can run the then it will probably be quicker for you to game. call them first as they will be able to pro- However, please remember that vide direct assistance on their own pro- not all Windows setups run DOS grams faster than might otherwise be games very well so if you have prob- possible. lems with Cyberpuck you are recom- Alternatively, ring our Cover Disk mended to exit to DOS and run it from hotline on weekdays between 10.30am there. In addition, the game requires and 4.30pm on 0891 715929. Calls are at least 570Kb of DOS memory to charged at 39p per minute cheap rate run. If you have less it will inform you, and 49p at all other times. and then exit. In which case you The PCW cover disk is virus checked could try running MEMMAKER (if you at every stage of production. However, have DOS 6) to increase your low PCW will not accept liability for any prob- DOS memory, or REM out some lems arising from the use of the disk. lesser-needed lines from your Installing or running any of the programs AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS on the disk indicates your agreement to files.