| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ DISQUE ★ MAX DESKTOP ★ |
| MAX Desktop v1.0 Excel Software et A.M.S Ltd (CPC Revue) | MAX Desktop (Amstrad Computer User) | MAX Desktop (Amstrad Action) | Sampling the menus (Popular Computing Weekly) |
Duncan Evans tries out AMS's MAX, an icon driven desktop system for the Amstrad CPCs, designed to give the machine that Macintosh feeling. key control and sensitivity Also displayed are Ihe current controls for Execute. Move and Cancel If you have an AMX mouse then functions are assigned to the three mouse buttons The odd things is that if you're using a joystick, the fire button becomes Execute while the others need to be defined on the keyboard Obviously a clumsy system, one that could have been in some ways helped by only having one key for Execute and Move. Any changes to the initial set up can be saved on to the MAX disc for the next time the software is run. The display now consists of a column of icons down the right side of the screen and three main pull down menus along the top. Execution The first couple of icons represent disc drives A and B Press Execute while the arrow is resting on them and a window containing a catalogue of that disc's contents, in icon form, appears quite quickly You can only have one window per drive though, and there's no such thing as folders for storing files. Combine that with a crude resizing and moving windows facility and you have a perfectly adequate system, but it compares (inevitably) rather badly with' the desk tops of the ST and Amiga. MAX tends to surface that this juncture. Namely, you may not be able to load and run the file you want, because MAX has eaten up the memory space it would have used Now. this is unavoidable on a small memory eight bit machine, but it does tend to ruin the idea of a Wimp system The other utilities on the desk top include a printer dump, a disc formatter, a standard disc sector editor, the control panel, and a trash can. This latter item is nicely implemented in that once the trash window is opened and a file is dragged into it. it is not actually erased until you empty the trash can at the end of the day. So, if you make a mistake or change your mind over a file you can still reclaim it later The first microcomputer to feature drop down menus was the Apple Macintosh, but now this handy facility can be seen on your Amstrad The big advantage of course of pull down menus is they stay out of sight until you want to use them Four such menus are presented here. Mouse. File, Disc and System. The Mouse menu contains options for the control panel, pnnter. save the control panel, and quit. Nothing that isn't available in icon form in other words. The File menu provides a useful service in that details on a file can be called up. a file can be locked or unlocked, hidden, erased sides over a disc copier, format and verifier, the sector editor (yes it's the same one as mentioned earlier), the directory editor which allows you to change filenames and locked status directly, and finally an option to speed up disc access, although some drives may become unreliable so its usefulness is debatable.
Useful functions The final menu merely concerns selecting the current user number which is used for all MAX operations. Its preset is zero. So, that's it. While the system looks pretty and does provide some useful functions, the desk top aspect simply does not work well enough, and on the utilities side, this very magazine has published more powerful listings. MAX is a reasonable product, but given the inherent problems that a disc-based, as opposed to Rom-based, system has. its potential for constant use is limited. Product MAX Micro Amstrad CPC range Price £19.99 Supplier AMS, 166/170 Wilderspool Causeway, War-hnoton WA4 6QA. PCW |
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