QL Decision Maker

ZX Computing

David Nowotnik

QL BUSINESS SOFTWARE Good software of any description has been slow to appear for the Sinclair QL. But as the QL was primarily intended as a business micro, this software famine has had a particularly deleterious effect on QL sales. Fortunately, business software is starting to appear. One of the first producers is a company by the name of Triptych Publishing. They have produced a series of packages called the 'Brainpower' range. There are currently three programs in the range for the QL. QL Entrepreneur, QL Project Planner, and QL Decision Maker. These packages each cost £39.95, and are sold under the Sinclair label. All these packages are sold in the Standard Sinclair 'black box'. Tilt the box, and a loose leaf folder drops out containing the instruction manual and microdrive wallet. Each package is supplied with four microdrives, these being a mixture of training courses, application programs, and one spare cartridge for backup. The applications will not work without first backing up the program, but you have to find the information at the back of each manual on how to do this. Each package is primarily intended as a training course, but you also get one or more application programs which allow the user to put business theory to practical use. ENTREPRNEUR Entrepreneur is aimed at the embryonic businessman; it tries to focus the mind on how to start a business. The 128 page manual is easy to follow. It starts with a very comprehensive list of items which the potential entrepreneur must address to form his or her business plan. The list is so long that it is sure to put off all but the most resolute, but highlights the fact that tremendous thought and planning must go into a business idea if success is to be achieved. There is one tutorial program with Entrepreneur; this explains the principle balance sheets. If you know absolutely nothing about the subject, then following the manual and the well formatted screen displays, you should acquire a basic know' ledge in a couple of hours. Entrepreneur's two application programs are similar; they allow you to develop a financial plan of the future business. In so doing, several financial concepts are introduced and explained well. The programs (one is for a single product business, the other for a business with multiple products) expect you to enter all the relevant information. Questions are clear, and they are carefully presented as a checklist in the manual. The program then analyses all this data to produce a series of financial reports. These will tell you if your plans are sound or if some modifications are needed. Your bank manager should be sufficiently impressed to grant the loan you need to get started! And, if you're just an armchair entrepreneur, then there are some examples in the book to try; they'll give you a surprisingly good feel for the demands of setting-up a new business. GETTING STARTED Starting a business is one area where you need a sound plan of action, as well as finance. You'll need action plans for any project once the business is off the ground too. If there are several activities in a project which are interdependent, all requiring time and effort, than you'll need to plan the most effective sequence of actions in order to complete the project in the time allowed, and within budget. The technique of critical path analysis is one powerful way of planning and controlling a project, and 'Project Planner' teaches you the principles of this technique on two tutorial microdrive cartridges (again, used effectively with the manual). A third cartridge gives you an application program to plan your own project, or to just try one or more of the examples given in the manual. By telling the computer the activities which will be involved in the project, how long they will take, how many people will be involved in the project, and how the activities interact (e.g, which jobs must be completed before others can start), a 'network' is constructed. Where you have more time to complete a job than the job should take, you will have 'float' (spare time). But there will be one or more series of jobs where there is no time to spare; there are the critical activities, and the planner knows that he has to manage these more carefully to ensure that the project goes to plan. Project Planner presents the network to you in a number of ways, as a network, bar charts or tables. If you decide to alter the plan (you have a bright idea on how to improve the plan) then you can alter the design and logic of the network, get a new set of analyses from the computer, then decide for yourself exactly what will be the better option. Again, Project Planner is excellent for the business student, who should gain a very good appreciation of the principle and practice of network analysis. It also allows the user to develop and refine plans before the start of projects. Its limitation, compared with far more expensive project planning programs on 'real' business micros, is the apparent inability to help in the management of on-going projects. Once a project is underway, inevitably there are problems, or, on the other hand, activities which are completed faster than planned. There appears no way to feed status information into program, and receive reports on their effect on the network. The printout of the jobs list, in the form of a table or bar chart, is available. Unfortunately, critical activities are not highlighted on the printout (although they are on the screen), so it's a bit difficult to find them in a long list. Bar chart printouts are hard to read as they lack a grid to help you judge the position of bars. Still, the program doesn't cost $100+ as others do, and too much should not be expected. But, these are limitations of which serious users should be aware. DECISION MAKER Perhaps the one program of the three which could be used by both students and businessmen alike is Decision Maker. The program is based upon the principle of decision trees and risk analysis. Any decision one makes can have a number of chance outcomes; each one of these may require further decisions or result in more outcomes, each with some probability of actually occuring. So, from one decision stems several outcomes and further decisions, draw these diagrammatically, and you get a decision tree. Add the costs (or profits) associated with each outcome, and hazard some guess at the probability of chance outcomes actually occuring, and you end up with all the requirements to calculate the best decision. To check that the decision is 'best', two further techniques called 'risk' and 'sensitivity analyses' are applied by the program. In actual fact, the mathematics involved (and all the program really does for you is to do the sums) is quite trivial, and once you know the rules, then most simple decision trees can be solved in a few minutes with a calculator. The logic of constructing and decision tree, and adding the required data are left entirely to you, but, of course, the program helps to draw (and produce on a Epson printer) some neat decision trees, and if you dislike maths, then all the hard work is done for you. So, in much the same way as the other members of the 'Brainpower' series, Decision Maker is a computer aided tutorial system with a relatively unsophisticated application program which allows the theory to be applied. As tutorial packages, all three are excellent, although the price of each must be considered high when compared with standard text books on these subjects. All three application programs are somewhat limited, but, again, serve the student well to practice the theory supplied by the tutorial programs. But, workhorse business programs, unfortunately, they are not.

Your Sinclair

Graham Rydout

THE COMPLETE QL SOFTWARE BUYERS GUIDE At under £200, the QL has started to look a real bargain. If you've splashed out on one already or you're considering taking the plunge this Christmas, you'll want to know just how much software is available for the machine. The answer is still not much but things are starting to look up. Graham Rydout surveys the field. THE LANGUAGE BARRIER Very soon after its launch eighteen months ago, the QL was blessed with a wide range of languages and a couple of 68000 assemblers from Metacomco and Computer One. Now that range has been further complemented. Title: Assembler Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £39.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: QL Pascal Publisher: Metacomco Price: £89.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: BCPL Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £59.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Lisp Development Kit Publisher: Metacomco Price: £59.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: QL C Publisher: Metacomco Price: £99.95 Rating: 9/10 All of these come supplied with the Metacomco full screen editor that has now become the QL standard. So much so, in fact, that Metacomco have licensed it out to other companies for inclusion in their packages. Title: Assembler Publisher: Computer One Price: £29.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Forth Publisher: Computer One Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Pascal Publisher: Computer One Price: £39.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: Assembler Publisher: GST (via Sinclair) Price: £39.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: Editor Assembler Publisher: Adder Price: £34.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Publisher: Hisoft Coming Soon This list will give you an idea of the range of Assemblers and language packages available from companies other than Metacomco Title: Mon QL (Microdrive) Publisher: HiSoft Price: £14.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Mon QL (EPROM) Publisher: HiSoft Price: £39.95 Rating: 10/10 Title: QL Monitor Publisher: Computer One Price: £24.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: QL Monitor Publisher: QJump Price: £24.95 Rating: 7/10 With only three disassemblers/debuggers on the market, HiSoft comes out tops with MonQL on EPROM but the others are expected to follow suit shortly. Title: QL Monitor Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £18.05 Rating: 2/10 This is a very simple package and suffers greatly from a sever lack of features - not one I'd recommend. Title: C Compiler Publisher: GST Price: £59.95 Rating: 7/10 This isn't a complete implementation of the language but it's well suited to the beginner. Title: Supercharge (compiler) Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £59.95 I haven't yet seen the finished version or this compiler out it promises to be a product that everyone can make use of. It's written by Simon Goodwin oi Zip compiler fame (take a look at Your Spectrum 3) and it claims to convert almost every SuperBasic program into fully multi-tasking 68008 code. Title: SuperBasic extension Publisher: QJump (via Sinclair) Price: £24.95 Rating: 9/10 Title: SEE (EPROM) Publisher: Hisoft Price: £39.95 Rating: 9/10 Of these two SuperBasic extensions, QJump's leads the way but HiSoft's SEE has some very useful facilities. It gives the QL true windowing capabilities and as it's on ROM you don't have to keep loading it in. Title: Microdrive Toolkit Publisher: Compware Price: £9.99 Rating: 5/10 Title: Microdrive Toolkit (with source code) Publisher: Compware Price: £34.99 Rating: 5/10 The toolkits change the QL#s microdrive commands into functions so that values can be returned and errors such as 'drive full' trapped. Title: Keydefine Publisher: Psientific Software Price: £9.95 Rating: 10/10 This is a complete key redefinition package that'll let you use the redefined keys in almost every QL package. You could, for example, define the P key so that when you press it with the Caps Lock held down, the current document from within Quill could be saved and then printed. Freebie programs provided are a fast copier (a multi-tasking directory lister that lists directories from within other programs) and a printer spooler. Title: ICE (EPROM) Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £49.95 Rating: 9/10 ICE (Icon Controlled Environment) gives the QL a full Icon based Desktop Manager and Frton End to QDOS. It removes most mundane file handling tasks and I can thoroughly recommend it. Title: WD Utilities Publisher: WD Software Price: Microdrive £7.50, 5.25" £10.00, 3.5" £12.00 Rating: 6/10 WD Utilities are a complete set of SuperBasic procedures providing a menu driven system to manoeuvre files. Title: Cartridge Doctor Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 9/10 If you're frequently visited by the 'Bad or Changed Medium' error message, you'll welcome this program. It's a fully automatic set of routines to recover corrupted and deleted files. Title: Q Doctor Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 If you prefer doing things the hard way, Q Doctor only allows you to load and edit sectors from the microdrive. Unfortunately, there are no similar products available for disk users. Title: GraphiQL Price: £34.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: M-Paint Publisher: Medic Price: £49.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Paint Master Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Tascopy Publisher: Tasman Price: £12.90 Rating: 8/10 Title: Sprite Generator Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £24.95 Rating: 6/10 Graphic printers are a personal choice. GraphiQL suits highly detailed work but is extremely difficult to use. For dedicated artists only! M-Paint is a coloured clone of Apple's MacPaint. Simpler to use but a shade less accurate on detailed work. Least sophisticated at all, PaintMaster is none the less the most appropriate tor your average QL user. Its ability to compile a drawing into a SuperBasic program that then copies it makes it practical if you want simple illustrations within your program. All have simple screen dump programs but Tascopy copies all or part of the screen in a variety of shades. Sprite Generator does just that but it's a complex to use package that isn't worth the asking price. DOWN TO BUSINESS The high reputation of Archive, Abacus, Quill and Easel is based on their quality - it's not just that they come with the QL. Other companies haven't released similar packages because most people are happy with what they've got. Doubtless improvements could be made but I expect these'll come from Psion rather than an independent house. Title: Q-Spell Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 Pore spillars will welcome Q-Spell - a full-spec spelling checker to Quill. But be warned! Extra mamory's needed to check your document with Quill still in memory. Title: Home Finance Publisher: Buzzz (via Sinclair) Price: £24.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Self Employed and Cash Trader Publisher: Quest Price: £69.95 Rating: 7/10 Title: Small Business and Accounts Publisher: Sagesoft Price: £89.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Payroll Publisher: TR Rating: 8/10 Of the accounting packages aimed at home users Smallbusiness is the most professional. It has integrated Purchase, Sales, and Nominal Ledgers. Transferred from the IBM PC it just goes to show that the QL can compete in the business world. Payroll provides a perfect complement and deals with data for up to 75 employees. Title: Decision Maker Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Entrepreneur Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: Project Planner Publisher: Triptych Price: £39.95 Rating: 8/10 The Triptych products help solve various problems and educate you in the process. Title: Equate (Microdrive and disk) Publisher: Flite Price: £39.95 Rating: 7/10 For mathematicians, Equate can solve most problems - polynomial, linear, simultaneous equations, differentiation, integration, curve fitting and various graphical problems. Title: QL Gardener Publisher: Gordian Computing Services Price: £24.95 QL Gardener is a database with information on over 1100 plants. Just a shame that the package won't dig or even weed your garden for you! QL ADVENTURES When you consider the QL's large memory and excellent graphics you'd expect plenty of adventures. But only three quality games exist, and they're all text only. Title: Lost Kingdom Of Zkul Publisher: Talent Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 Title: West Publisher: Talent Price: £19.95 Rating: 6/10 Title: The Pawn Publisher: Magnetic Scrolls (coming soon) Rating: 10/10 The Talents were released early on in the QL's history and they're still looking good. Zkul is based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons format and plays very well. West is set in the desert wilds - complete with menacing Indians. Few reservations about this one! The Pawn is extremely high quality, similar to that of the Level 9 adventures. It's set in the magical world of Kerovnia during a period at social upheaval and includes a very complex command interpreter that can understand commands as complex as "Get all except the cases but not the violin case then kill the man eating shrew with the contents of the violin case. Remove the shrew's tail and use it to tie the pole and the noose together!" See what I mean? This game's by far the QL's best adventure yet. A WINNING STRATEGY If you compare this list of strategy games for the QL with the selection for the Speccy, it looks pretty paltry. Still, there are some good 'uns here. Title: Chess Publisher: Psion Price: £19.95 Rating: 9/10 Computer chess takes on a new dimension with a full 3D board display that makes impressive use of the QL's graphics. Title: Match Point Publisher: Psion Price: £14.95 Rating: 9/10 Match Point is converted from the Spectrum and improved graphics make the game more playable. Title: Area Radar Controller Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 2/10 This is a very poor aircraft control simulation written in SuperBasic. Title: Bridge Player Publisher: CP Software Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Backgammon Publisher: Digital Precision Price: £12.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Reversi Publisher: Games of Skill Price: £12.95 (Coming Soon) Aimed at novices, Bridge Player and Backgammon are of little value to the experienced. Coming soon is Reversi - a full version of Othello. Title: Comos Publisher: Talent Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Patrick Moores, stand by your QLs. This is an astronomy package that allows you to display star and solar patterns as seen from any place on Earth at any point in time. From the star map you can choose any star with the cursor to find out extra data. ARCADE ACTION This list of arcade games for the QL may produce a snigger from Speccy owners - it doesn't exactly rival the selection on offer to them. Still, it's growing all the time! Title: QL Cavern Publisher: JMF (via Sinclair) Price: £12.95 Rating: 7/10 A massive 50 screen Jet Set Willy clone with 395 gems to collect. Good value, with a good many improvements over the standard platform game. Title: Meteor Storm Publisher: Arrakia (via Sinclair) Price: £12.95 Rating: 4/10 A bog standard version of Asteroids. Title: Booty Publisher: Firebird Price: £9.95 (Coming Soon) A locks and doors classic on the Speccy that sells for £2.50. Microdrive problems push up the price on the QL. Looks impressive! Title: EVA Publisher: Westway Price: £12.95 Rating: 9/10 A Jetpack-style game with very large sprite graphics. The most annoying feature is the almost continuous sound. Title: Star Guard Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £14.95 Rating: 5/10 Title: Galactic Invaders Publisher: Shadow Games Rating: 5/10 Shadow Games range from the reasonable to the pathetic. This pair come on the one cartridge and are just copies of Arcadia/Invaders. Title: Night Nurse Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 3/10 This uses Digital Precision's Sprite Package (see The Language Barrier) and it just goes to show that commercial games cannot be produced with it. Shame. Title: Quazimodo Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 7/10 Reasonable I suppose, very colourful and should satisfy if this is your thing. I'd back it! Title: Space Paranoids Publisher: Shadow Games Price: £12.95 Rating: 4/10 Another Arcadia style game - hardly worth loading up. Title: Zapper Publisher: Eidersoft Price: £10.95 Rating: 6/10 Similar them to Paranoids but slightly better value. Title: Master Blaster Publisher: Compugem Price: £9.95 Rating: 8/10 Excellent shoot 'em up that puts the rest to shame. Very smooth animated graphics and a wide range of aliens. Title: Cuthbert In Space Publisher: Microdeal Price: £14.95 Rating: 7/10 Microdeal has a very varied quality range. Cuthbert's aimed at the younger game's player and the hidden strategic elements make it more than a quick shoot out. Title: Lands of Havoc Publisher: Microdeal Price: £19.95 Rating: 8/10 A well packaged 2,000 screen arcade that players very well but could've made better use of colour. Title: Crazy Painter Publisher: Microdeal Price: £12.95 Rating: 8/10 You can hardly call this an Arcade copy - it's so different. Crazeee! Title: QL FLight Publisher: Microdeal Price: £19.95 (Coming Soon) A flight simulator that's due for release soon. Title: Hyperdrive Publisher: English Software Price: £14.95 Rating: 8/10 The QL's official Pole Position - rather disappointing considering what could've been achieved. It's on a par with the Spectrum version. LET US KNOW... We've tried to make this guide as comprehensive as possible but a list like this can never truly be complete. If you own a piece of software, or if you produce one, that's not included here, tell us about it and we'll pass the info on to Your Sinclair's software hungry QL readers. The address to write to is Your Sinclair, [redacted].

Sinclair User

INITIAL RELEASES QL Integrated Accounts, from Sagesoft, forms the centrepiece of a range of five new releases from Sinclair Research. The package will retail at £89.95, a quarter of the amount charged for the program on other systems. The other packages include Cash Trader, Decision Maker, Program Planner and Touch and Go. Cash Trader, at £69.95, is the second major string in the Sinclair bow. Together with the accounts package it will provide a powerful money management system for the small business man or for large companies with low staffing levels and many interests. Decision Maker and Touch and Go were written by Triptych. The latter provides an easy introduction to the QL keyboard and aims to make you as familiar with it as possible. Decision Maker provides answers to questions which you do not want to ask yourself.