European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 22, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                More and More it s a pc world by . Shannon new York times his Rifle is a dog Soldier s Best Friend in is said and a Captain of conceivably a colonel May occasionally Tiro a shot in anger but the old wan has t used a weapon in years 3o it goes in the armed forces. And so it goes too. In the corporate world. A Survey by personal computing Magazine of the computing habits of top officers of Fortune 500 companies found that Only about a filth of them Ever come within shoaling distance of a personal computer. Age appears to be a big Factor according to the Survey chief executive officers 50 years old or younger Are twice As Likely to use a computer As the average of the whole 500. Naturally younger executives Are More Likely to have used personal computers which Are Only a Little More than to years old. After All in their climb to the top those with technical education or advanced business degrees use computers More often. Last year 27 percent of White Collar workers in the United states had computers on their desks the figure for 1986 was 19 percent. For chief executive officers it was 21.4 percent in 1988 and 21-7 percent in 1986, not a statistically significant change. So Why should a master of the universe use a computer anyway increased productivity is one reason Given by Loose executives who do use one. Perhaps More important is the ability to get information quickly and accurately and without someone else s interpretation. Another Magazine compute1, recently made two surveys of its readers. Since compute covers several disparate types of personal computer and a great variety of software the results May Tell something about the computer using Public As a whole. You re married Greg Keizer the editor writes of and to the typical Reader a touch Over 40, and you own a be wary of computer bargains by Michael Himowitz Baltimore evening Sun if you Are shopping for a new computer beware of mail order ads thai look too Good to be True. They Are probably us that too Good to be True i write this alter receiving a Call from a Nice fellow named Sam. Who was trying to run a Public Domain program i Tiad written. His computer was an ism convertible big Blue s doomed talc Rypl at a Laptop machine. The program which requires 100 percent honest to goodness compatibility with Standard ism video adapters would t run on Sam s Box it did t Surprise me. Since the convertible with its unreadable screen non Standard Printer and serial ports and iffy compatibility was a real dog that ism wisely consigned to the scrap Heap. There was t much i could do for him but since he was a Novice who had us bought his first machine i asked Sam How it happened to be the convertible. I saw it on that Home video shopping network he said. The Price was absolutely incredible. And it was an ism. You can t go wrong there can you so i ordered  now you have to figure that if the image King of the computer world unloads a Bunch of its boxes on an outfit that makes its millions Selling Knockoff jewelry and porcelain praying hands sculpture something has to be wrong but bargain Hunters can t resist. And Many like Sam wind up paying the Price in frustration so Here s some advice to wary of any computer advertised  a ridiculously Low Price by somebody who advertises himself As a  i m not knocking liquidators most of them Are businessmen trying to make a living. They buy up discontinued merchandise or overstocks and resell the stuff Al bargain basement prices. But when a computer is discontinued there s usually a reason other than the whims of fashion. Sometimes the manufacturer comes out with a new Model and wants to get rid of his older machines but if a computer is basically sound he can probably do that just by lowering the Price in Normal retail channels. A computer that winds up in a liquidator s hands often did t sell because in had some Basic design flaw because the manufacturer is out of business or because changes in the Industry rendered it obsolete. For example a colleague of mine bought an ism compatible from a liquidator s Catalon. He had no problem with the computer. It worked just Fine with the archaic version of word Star that came with the package. But the machine had Only 256k of memory. This was i Mejack in 1984. But not today. When my Friend tried to upgrade the memory so he could run newer More sophisticated software he found that the computer used a proprietary memory Board that was t available anywhere the liquidator who by now was pushing 275-piece tool kits  $35, did t know anything about it. The manufacturer was out of business. And my Friend was out of Luck. Laptop and portable computers often wind up in liquidators hands. Many Early versions of these machines were of oddball design with dim screens and a Host of compatibility problems. Old pm computers Are also favourites of the liquidators. These computers popular in the Early 1980s, use z-80 microprocessors and the pm operating system which has Long since been superseded by the ism Standard. While they Are generally reliable these old pm warhorse such As the Morrow. Xerox Star and Kay pro 2 and 4 Are slow and awkward by today s standards. It is increasingly difficult to find parts High performance accessories or service. And virtually no one is writing new software for them. In Short they re dead ends which is Why they wind up in liquidators hands Al prices of $200 to $600. House. You re probably a professional an executive or a manager just As Likely you be seen the inside of a c University even it you Don t have a  a More readers use is Dos computers than any other a kind. In descending order of popularity the ones the used were Commodore 64-128. Apple ii atari 8-bit. Macintosh n Amiga and atari St. A sixty nine percent own one computer while 31 percent have at least two and another 31 percent plan to add a c second computer this year. To f what kind do the readers plan to Purchase an is n Dos computer by a slim majority the Magazine found. Other top contenders include the macintosh Amiga 500 and Apple  More than 80 percent of those responding own word processing and entertainment software and 56 percent nought five or More software packages in the last year. Of course a Survey like this is hardly scientific As Keizer concedes. It is a Survey not so much of readers As of those readers willing to fill out and return a questionnaire. Also owners of atari 8-bit machines Are a fanatical lot. And they May have packed the ballot Box. If you have one of these old machines and like it. In might Well pay to buy another one from a liquidator and use in Tor parts in Case something goes wrong Wilh yours. But it you Are looking for a new machine or for a first machine you should realize that these Aren t really bargains. Ism s defunct Kcjr is another Case in Point. Deliberately crippled so that it would t compete Wilh the company s bigger machines Junior was a disaster from the Start. No amount of upgrading can make it truly compatible. From time to Lime you la find juniors advertised Al Rock Bottom prices. Don t buy one even for the kids. They won t be Able to play most of today s games with it. I m not saying that All Low priced discount Catalon computers Are dogs. Some Catalon houses find a manufacturer who will package a decent machine for them. But these Aren t overstocks. They re current production run computers that can handle today s software. The problem is that novices often can t Tell the real bargains from the too Good to be True ii you Don t know much about computers but think you be spotted a bargain consult a knowledgeable Friend first. Then shop your local stores to find out what bargains they have on new machines. You May pay a Lew dollars More up front but you la wind up ahead of the game. The blessings of os-2 by Jack Warner Cox news service there can be Lew users of ism and compatible computers who have not heard by now of operating system-2. Better known As os-2, an the blessings it will bestow upon us any Day now. The major Advance os-2 was to provide Mere mortals was concurrency the ability to have More than one program open at any time. Ii you use More than one program regularly this is a major convenience. And somewhere Down the line when programs were written just for it os-2 was going to let us not Only have More than one program open at once but to actually have them running a database for instance doing a complicated sort while you wrote a letter in your word processor. If you Are among those eagerly anticipating All this there Are problems. Certainly you can buy os-2 now. You can even run some programs under in if you have a few More megabytes of ram and can find programs you care to run that Are prepared to cooperate with the system. This thing is a monster and while ism and Microsoft were Page 14 the stars and stripes puttering around in the workshop building it a funny thing happened our government shut Down the flood of memory chips and the Price of ram went out of sight. Chips Are getting cheaper again but they still Aren t what you d Call a Small expense. What with buying the program itself and the ram in which to operate it running os-2 will Cost you a bundle thousands of dollars quite possibly. But there is Hope. It s Here right now. In works it does t require that programs be written expressly fowl and in lists in the United slates for $129, which would t pay the sales lax on an os-2 setup. It s called Des View from a firm called Quarterdeck. The big problem one expects with a program like this is that it won t be Able to handle a lot of oddball programs. But we ran some programs that Are quite bizarre and de Sovio handled them with aplomb. The program does not insist on huge amounts of memory you can do quite a lot with in under the Standard 640k of ram. You install the programs you wish to run in in Wilh a simple monday May