★ APPLICATIONS ★ BUREAUTIQUE ★ MINI OFFICE PROFESSIONAL|800Plus) ★ |
| Mini Office Professional | Applications Bureautique |
The spreadsheet on Mini Office Professional is only a small part of a total integrated package that also includes a wordprocessor, database, graphics module and comms package. As such It is by far the cheapest available and it would be almost churlish to dwell too long on what is missing and rather marvel at how much it does manage to cram in. In many ways the spreadsheet is like a cut down version of Supercalc 2 with all the usual arithemical functions, replication and auto or manual recalculation. It cannot sort at all and as you can't import or export you can't do it any other way. You can't therefore use it as a database but as Mini Office has its own database this seems unimportant. Printing features are particularly powerful if you are using an 8000 series machines (or a 9512 with a dot matrix printer). You can put columns or lines in italics or even print sideways - an advantage over more expensive competitors. The sideways printing is particularly useful for big applications and as the program claims to be able to handle applications up to 320k (in the 8512 or 9512) this could be vitally important. The lack of import or export seems a major oversight in a program linked with a word processor but you can use information direct from the spreadsheet to create graphs in the graphics package - an easier method than in Cracker. As usual the section of the manual covering spreadsheets seems to have been written by someone who wasn't totally sure what a spreadsheet was used for but you should be able to work out most of the functions not fully covered by trial and error. Might also be worth reading the 8000 Plus Mini Office Professional tutorial carefully next month. Verdict - Certainly a strong possibility to anyone without a CP/M wordprocessor and/or a database. Despite its limitations it would still meet the needs of the average user.
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