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I FEATURES

MAY 1988

VOLUME 10

NUMBER 5

ISSUE 96

REVIEWS

Fast Looks

Ticket to London

Ed Ferrell

Border Zone

Scott Thomas.

Taking It on the Road

Six of the best battery-powered laptop computers surveyed.

Arlan Levitan „_^-

Kids, Computers, and Summer Vacation

Dozens of ideas and activities for

a fun-filled computerized

suramsx, I Fred Dlgnazio 22

Our Favorite Games

Twenty great computer games you

shouldn't be without.

Editors 12

The Automatic Shoebox

What to look for in personal & finance management software, A Conversation with Andrew Tobias./AT^/rA Ferrell 42

Buyer's Guide

Personal Finance Software. Facts and figures about 76 financial packages for your own bottom line. Caroline D. Hanlon

The Commodore 128D

Clifton Karnes

Star Trek: The Rebel Universe

Neil Randall

Robotic Workshop

Keith Ferrell

Airborne Ranger

Robert Bixby _

I COLUMNS

Dream Zone

James V. Trunzo .

Print Magic

Duncan Teague —

Gee Bee Air Rally

Rhett Anderson =

Quattro

J. Blake Lambert ,

Editorial License

We've changed COMPUTE!; here's why, and what to expect in months to come./Gregg Keizer 4

News & Notes

Computer sales up, Soviet software invades the U.S., video- game explosion, and more. Editors . ^^_ 6

Gameplay

Change history with Balance of Power and President Elect, Orson Scott Card .

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COMPUTE! SPECIFIC

Impact

Only important software alters the

way we think of computers.

David D. Thornburg 10

Discoveries

Computers in schools— have they lived up to the promises made? David Stanton 86

Levitations

Our free-form columnist takes his first bow./Arlan Levitan 94

Letters

Tefl us what you think.

Editors

New Products!

New software, new hardware. Editors

MS-DOS

Clifton Karnes _

64 & 128

Neil Randalls

Apple II

Gregg Keizer

Amiga

Rhett Anderson .

Macintosh

Sharon Zardetto Aker .

Atari ST

David Plotkin __^

Hints & Tips

Editors

Cover illustration: Lee Noeh Jr.

SS^n mI^ n^ ^^?^o?i2f ^«^-J?t?* Home, Educational, and Recreational Computing {USPS: S37250) is published monthly by COMPUTE! Publications, Inc., 825 7th /We,, New York, NY 1001 9 USA. ™ne. (212 265-83&0. Editorial Offices are located at 324 West Wendover A/enue. Greensboro. NO 27408. Domestic Subscriptians: 12 issues. S24, POSTMASTER: Send address o^^i']ifixl?*rPP ^^' Magazine, PC, Box 10955. Des Moines. lA 50950. Second class postage paid at New York. NY and additional mailing offices. Entire contents copyriqht ©1988 by COMPUTE! Pubbcations, Inc. All rights reserved, ISSN 0194-357X. h/ a ir

We Changed

Because We

Saw You

Changing. It's

That Simple.

GREGG KEIZER

We've changed. When you flip through the pages of this issue, the first thing youMl notice is a new, clean layout and design. Thanks to the expert guidance of our art di- rector, Janice Fary, the magazine is easier to read, easier to use, easier to digest. COM- PUTEf's contemporary look reflects, we think, our philosophy of providing the most up-to-date information about computers and how to put that information to use.

Which brings us to an even more fun- damental difference. Over the last decade, COMPUTE! has published the highest qual- ity software available in print form. With this issue, however, COMPUTE! magazine begins a new era, one that doesn't include type-in programs.

As computers and software have grown more powerful, weVc realized it's not possi- ble to offer top quality type-in programs for ail machines. And we also realize that you're less inclined to type in those programs. You're more interested in hands-on fea- tures, dependable and forthright product re- views, and insightful columns. We've changed because we saw you changing. If s that simple. After all, our job is to give you the kind of information vou want.

We believe that the new COMPUTE! will make the time you spend on your com- puter more interesting, more worthwhile, and more productive. And we think that the package we've put together does that better than any other consumer computer magazine.

COMPUTE! w\\\ include more feature articles, written by authors old and new to the magazine — practical features that dem- onstrate the power of personal computers, that show you how you can use the machine to educate, entertain, produce, and process. Well-written articles show you how to use your computer, not how one person far re- moved from your experience may use il. This issue, we're showing you a bit of every- thing— a preview of what to expect from COMPUTE! features. Hardware guru Arlan Levitan looks at laptops; educational com- puting expert Fred D'Ignazio shows how summertime can be fun with a computer; and our games-crazed staff picks its 20 fa- vorite computer diversions.

There will be a complete buyer's guide in each issue to help you find, and then buy, the right software for your computer. This month, for instance, we offer a comprehen- sive listing of personal finance packages. Next month, flight simulators. The month after that sports games. And so on.

We*re doubling the number of our prod- uct reviews, adding hardware evaluations on a regular basis, and changing the focus of those reviews to give you solid information about the software that you want to buy, not the software we want to hype. We'll review programs like Quaitro because many of you work in the home. Ticket to London because you and your children want to learn with the computer, and GeeBee Air Rally because everyone likes to have fun.

COMPUTE! has always been known for its recognized columnists, and we're not go- ing to change that. "Gameplay," our new entertainment column, is written by Orson Scott Card, an award-winning science-fiction writer who has a keen eye for what makes or breaks a game. We're also debuting '* Dis- coveries," David Stanton's educational computing column and '"Levitations," our free-form column that reports on almost anything connected with personal computers and their users. And though we've changed the name of his column, we're keeping David Thornburg's refreshing look into both the near and the distant future of computers.

Even though we no longer carry type-in software specific to each kind of computer, we do give you computer-specific infor- mation in the new COMPUTE! Specific de- partment. If you own an Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64 or 128, IBM PC or compatible, or Macintosh personal com- puter, you'll find this new section an invalu- able fount of product information, news, and application hints and tips. Here you'll read about everything from an IBM PC virus to Commodore 64 emulators for the Amiga.

Rounding out the magazine are such things as ''News & Notes," full of industry news — the serious and the humorous — that appeals to anyone who owns a computer; letters to the editor; technical and program- ming hints and tips; and a stronger new products listing.

We like what we're oflering, and we hope you do, too. If you like using your per- sonal computer, want to know more about computers and how to put them to work (and play!), then you've got the right maga- zine in your hands. Stay with us, and stay on this unique road of discovery as we see what lies ahead.

(/^^ Y-^^^>-

Editor

COMPUTE

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On-saeen menus provide ''at-a-glance" summaries of the features of the program. When you select a feature from tlie menu bar, a menu drops dowTi to show all of tlie available options. E\'ery command a\'ailable is display ed in the drop-down menu. You will find that you will spend less time getting to know the program and more time on your projects. And since each member of the Eas)' Working tmly uses the same command structure, once you learn how to use one, you 11 find a head start on learning to use the other two. But don't be fooled Eas)' doesn't mean incomplete. Eas)^ Working products are (ullfeatured.

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mws&'notes

No Crash in Computers

Even though the stock market look the big dive last October 1 9, even though many analysts are calling for a slowdown in the economy (or worse, a pos- sible recession, or for the real doom-sayers, a depression), personal computer hardware and software sales are expected to remain strong and grow stronger.

Almost everyone is ex- pecting 1 988 to be a good year. Microsoft, the number one software publisher, predicts that sales of personal comput- ers will rise 26 percent in their current fiscal year (July 1987 to June 1988). Since Microsoft is the supplier of MS-DOS, the operating system for IBM PCs and compatibles, it should have a good idea of sales strength.

Apple Computer also sees a year of growth. John Sculley, Apple's chairman and CEO, recently told a group of ana- lysts that his company foresees an increase of 30 percent in personal computer sales dol- lars this year. Obviously, Ap- ple hopes a big pan of that increase is spent on Macintosh computers.

Fourth^uarter sales for both Apple and personal com- puter powerhouse IBM showed that lots of people and businesses paid little attention to the market's crash. IBM's fi- nal quarter was 6.3 percent better than last year's, while Apple's was a whopping 57 percent higher.

At the consumer end of things, retail giant Sears, Roebuck, 8l Co. projects a 10- percent growth in its computer sales. That's double the in- crease in 1 987. And home computer hardware and soft-

e COMPUTE!

90.000 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000 40.000 30,000 20.000 10,000

.'^:--

COMPUnR SAU8

ware sales, says the Electronic Industries Association, will be better this year than last. Home computer sales will be up 12'/2 percent, while software sales should jump 25 percent, says the Association.

But it's difficult to explain why businesses and consumers are still going after big-ticket items like computers. One rea- son may be that several com- puter companies — ^Apple and IBM in particular — are com- ing off a year in which they in- troduced new and more powerful models that have caught everyone's eyes. Price cutting is another possible con- tributor, especially in the IBM- compatible market, where clone manufacturers continue to offer more machine for less and less money. Home com- puter sales may be up because many people will have a bit more money this year, since the tax cuts take eftect And some businesses may see addi- tional personal computers as a way to make their operations more productive, an impor- tant consideration if there is a down turn in the economy.

— Gregg Keizer

Game of Gfasnosf, Comrade?

The first entertainment soft- ware designed in the Soviet Union is now available in the U.S. for IBM and Commodore 64 computers. Called Telris^ the game is a cross between arcade-style action and strate- gy- Tetris was designed by 30- year-old Alexi Paszitnov, a

Tetris begins the U.S.S.R/s quest for software dominance.

researcher at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Scientists {.Acade- my Soft); it was programmed by 1 8->^r-old Vagjm Gerasimov, a student of computer informat- ics at Moscow University.

The premise of the game is deceptively simple: Four squares, in various configUTB- tions, drop from the top of the

screen toward the bottom. The player rotates and flips the pieces as they descend in order to form complete horizontal rows where they land— with no blank spaces.

Tetris reached the West after the head of Academy Soft sent a copy of the program to a Hungarian programming company. Novotradc. which has produced soft- ware for British and American publishers for the past five years. Spectrum HoioByte is making it a corner- stone of the company's new International Series of entertainment software.

For the American version of Tetris, a Spectrum HoloBylc development team re- wrote the program, incorporating colorful background scenes repre- senting Gorky Park, Red Square. and other Soviet views.

The IBM version of the game has a suggested retail price of $34.95, while the Commo- dore 64 version is priced at S24.95.

— Selby Bateman

PRESENTING TECHNOIOGY THAT LETS YOU PROGRAM YOUR OWN DESTINY.

Electronics and computer equipment can be state-of-the-art today. And ready for the garbage can tomorrow.

Demand for technology is changing that fast.

And the people who can stay on top of it can write their own ticket in this world.

That's the beauty of the Air Force.

We can put you to work with technology that you may not read about in magazines for years.

We can teach you how to make sense of the

most intimidating circuitry in existence anywhere.

If you attend college, we'll pick up 75% of your tuition. You can even earn an associate degree from the Community College of the Air Force.

What does all that mean?

It means there's no telling where technology is going in the future.

But with Air Force training, youVe always got a future to look forward to. For more information, call an Air Force recruiter at 1-800-423-USAF

iwm^notes

Computer Games Go VCR; Teenage Boys Hit the Couch

irs a firsi. The popular Caiifor- nia Games from Epyx has been transformed into a VCR game by the company's new Con- sumer Electronics Division. VCR California Games is one of three new VCR game ven- tures being tried by Epyx, a company best known for its en- tertainment computer software. Marrying elements of vid- eo and board gameplay, I CR California Games begins with players who arc oul of money but are in a race to reach San Diego from San Francisco. To make enougli money for gas and car repairs, contestants take to the surll^oard, skate- board, sailboard. and other to- tally Californian devices, hoping for big prize money and instant fame. Al various

Calif ornia Games is one of three VCR games thai Epyx is hoping will keep you in front of the tube, not the computer.

places on the board game, players turn on the VCR and watch the action as surfers wipe out. skateboarders skate or die, and BMX bikers fly through I he air.

Patterned after the hit computer game of the same name, I CR California Games obviously hopes to tap into the

huge VCR audience, which in- cludes far more households than the home computer mar- ketplace. Other games planned for release are T'Ci? Golf and Play AC! ion ICR FoorbaiL A second line of games uses au- dio tapes for play-by-play highlights.

Epyx may be basing iis

VCR expectations on the re- sults of a survey the company recently conducted which said that I he majority of boys be- tween 12 and 18 — typically the group most taken with com- puter action entertainment software — would rather watch TV than play sports.

The survey of LOGO teen- age boys may not be an accu- rate depiction of American teen behavior, but it makes interest- ing reading nonetheless. Slanted toward electronic entertain- ment (75 percent said they bought computer games, while less than 20 percent of Ameri- can households own a com- puter), the surv*ey reported a stunning 35 percent relaxed by watching TV. Playing sports was a distant second at 18 per- cent, while using a computer came in third at 13 percent.

— Gregg Keizer coniinmd on page 87

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Do You Want

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Games Let

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Histor>' is the toughest game to create on the computer. By comparison, football is pretty easy to get right. Eleven guys per team, four downs to get ten yards.

But history — the rules keep changing.

The problem with histor>' is it only hap- pens once. We can never go back and run it over again to see what would happen with a few changes. What if Nixon had won in 1960, or Humphrey in 1968? What if Jerr>' Brown had been the Democratic nominee in 1976, or Gary Hart in 1984?

Nor can we ever know how close to World War III we really were in 1952 or 1962. Did Truman save us from a hideous war with China, or needlessly surrender half of Korea to a totalitarian state? Did our safety really depend on Kennedy staring down the Russians over Cuban missiles in 1 962?

Impossible to know. And yet two recent computer games. President Elect (Strategic Simulations: 1988 edition) and Balance of Power (Mindscape), dare to take on exactly those questions.

President Elect lets you replay ever\' election since 1 960. You may choose from all the candidates in each of those elections. Playing against the computer or a human opponent, you can tr\' to outwit history.

See if you can manage Humphrey's campaign in 1968 belter than he did. Or tr>' a fantasy election: Robert Kennedy against Richard Nixon in 1968, for instance, or something really strange, like John Glenn against Ronald Reagan in 1972, with Jesse Jackson running a third-party campaign.

The toughest test of all? Out-guess the future. The 1988 edition of President Elect offers all of this year's candidates — along with a few who. played coy too long or backed out early. By evaluating candidates' personal strengths and weaknesses, and their positions on various issues, the gamewrights let you hold your own test elections.

How would Gore do against Bush, if the economy is soft and public morale is down? What about Gephardt against Dole? Cuomo against Kirkpatrick? You can play them all.

.And, in one sense, the simulation works. I found myself following the game's poll results with the same kind of interest I feel about the real thing. Election day, with the returns trickling in, was almost as tense as the real thing.

But what really impressed me about President Elect was its faithfulness to the way presidential politics really seem to

work. The strongest forces are completely out of the players' control.

Is the national morale high or low? Is the economy booming or collapsing? Candi- dates ultimately can't overcome such pow- erful forces.

But that's the way it works in the real world. The game is only a contest of skill and judgment when you set it up to be pret- ty even — a middling economy, no incum- bent, two moderates.

I found few false notes in President Elect — and their guesses about 1988 have held up pretty well so far.

I only wish they had spent as much effort on the design of the game. The worst annoyances? The game won't let you change your mind about anything once a choice is made: the map that shows how different states are leaning isn't on the screen when you have to make campaign decisions.

Compare President Elect with a beauti- fully designed game like Balance of Power, though, and you begin to realize that while bad design can be annoying, bad histor\' makes a game unplayable.

Balance of Power is a Risk-like game about the contest between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for world domination. You give aid here, send a few troops there — al- ways with the possibility of nuclear war looming over you tike a shadow.

Unfortunately, you ver>' quickly realize that the shadow is really Chris Crawford, leaning over your shoulder and bullying you into playing the game his way. He has a sweet delusion that as long as the United States is very nice and doesn't do anything to offend them, the Russians will all go home. And if you don't play that way, why, he'll stop the game with a nasty remark about how the world was just destroyed by nuclear wan

The trouble is, since we've never had a nuclear war. there's no way Crawford can possibly know what would cause one. And there are a lot of experts who claim that the Soviets seem to behave a lot nicer when we stand up to them than when we disarm.

Maybe Crawford is right. But then, may- be he isn't. And in the meantime, he's so sure he's right that Balance of Power isn't a game, it's propaganda. Imagine what President Elect would be like if Republicans always won, and you'll know why Balance of Power fails.

Too bad, because Crawford is the best designer of simulation games I've seen. But when it comes to history, you just can't de- sign a good game by grinding an ax. El

MAY 1988

impact

-/ DAVID D.THOI

DAVID D. THORNBURG

Only Software

That Creates

New

Metaphors Can

Change the

Way We Use

Computers

According to legend, the Roman god Janus opened the door to each new year. He is represented with two heads because ever>' door looks both ways.

I was thinking about Janus the other day when I realized that there are two aspects to our use of personal computers. We use com- puters both to look backward lo our past way of doing things, and to look forward to new w^ays of working, learning, and playing. Each time we use a computer, we look through time's door in one direction or the other.

My major personal computer applica- tion is word processing. When 1 use a word processor Tm looking backward, using the computer to accomplish tasks that are per- formed by older technologies — typewriters, typesetting equipment, and so on. Of course the computer has advantages over these, or I wouldn't use it. As writing tools, computers do the job much better than these older tools. What the computer lacks in novelty, it more than makes up for in efficiency.

Other backward-looking applications are abundant: Graphics programs, account- ing packages, and music-transcription soft- ware are all examples of ways computers can be used to look back through time's door to perform tasks that we can relate to in numerous concrete ways.

The concrete connection between some computer applications and the types of tasks we used to perform without computers makes this technology easy to justify and ap- ply. When we're told about a new word pro- cessor, it's easy to generate a set of criteria by which to judge the program before we even take it out of the box.

When computers are being used to per- form tasks that are new to us, we have no frame of reference. How would you establish the criteria forjudging the world's first inter- active adventure game, for example, or a mouse-driven musical instrument?

Computer applications that look forward are exciting, but they provide special chal- lenges to users and software developers alike.

The major problem from the develop- ers point of view is marketing. How can you convey the usefulness of a program that does something no one has seen before? The most common approach is to express the program's function with a metaphor. Some- times this works and sometimes it doesn't.

I remember sitting in a meeting during the late 1 970s discussing a forthcoming product called VisiCalc, No one had any idea of how to describe the product, the first electronic spreadsheet, to potential custom-

ers. Someone called it an electronic black- board; someone else suggested calculator ar- ray. There was no clearly understandable metaphor that captured the essence of this product until someone noted that the spreadsheet, known to accountants, was close enough to convey at least one of the program's applications.

Another example of a new computer application came in 1 984 with the introduc- tion ofFilevision for the Macintosh. This program was the first commercial hypertext database — although this term was unknown to most computei owners at the time. I re- member watching a computer salesman try in vain to explain what Filevision did. He called it a combination of a graphics pro- gram (old metaphor) with a database (old metaphor). Now that Apple has released HyperCard, the public's awareness of hyper- media is high enough to support products of this type.

It takes a brave soul to be among the first to adopt a new technology, even though pioneers often end up at a tremendous ad- vantage over their more conservative peers. I've often started working with a new class of software only to find applications for it that were not foreseen by the original devel- opers. The problem with being innovative is that new applications rarely sell well enough to become commercial successes in their first year. Many small, innovative compa- nies don't have the resources to wail until the world understands their new product.

We'll always use computers to perform old tasks, but it's important to realize that the advantages of using computers in this way are incremental. We may not like living without a word processor, but most of us could use a typewriter again if we had to.

Completely new applications for com- puters, however, have the capacity to allow major modifications in how we work, learn, and play. It's through the creation of new computational metaphors (almost all of which are created by small companies) that computer technology will influence our lives in the coming years.

Computers are like Janus — they look forward and backward in time. If you expect the computer to be a power tool in your life, be sure that some of your programs look for- ward, not backward. E

David Thornburg welcomes letters from readers and can be reached at P.O. Box 1317, Los Altos, California 94023.

COMPUTE!

Th* l*4d^ MogoalfW Of H>om«, iilucallonal, And B*cf*ett«fio) C«nifHif^

Editor

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Assistant Editors

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Copy Editors

Staff Contributors

Contributing Editors

Gregg Keizer Janice R. Fary Ketth Ferrell Rhett Anderson Clifton Karnes Tom Netsel Caroline Hanlon Mickey McLean Karen Siepak Lort Sonoski Tammie Taylor Karen Uhlendorf Rob Bixby WilUam Chin Todd Heimarck David Hensley Dale McBene Randy Thompson Lynne Weatherman Arlan Levitan David Thornburg

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William Tynan Kathleen Martinek Lance Elko Tony Roberts Stephen Levy Sybil Agee

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Operations Lucian A. Parziale Vice-President, Finance Richard Willis Vice-President. Production Mene Berson-Weiner

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Computer Drama

I believe thai the computer software and hardware induslries should address two things: a flexible word processing program which permits easy and quick formatting of scripts and plays, and a full 60-coiumn screen so we will be able to see an entire page without incessant scrolling.

Considering how much software and hardware comes out of California. I am surprised that nobody has done just this for TV and movie script writing,

Clement G. Scerback Seminole, Florida