Monthly Archives: July 2000
Office suites group test
Now you have a third choice between expensive ‘office’ suites and cheap but under-featured ‘works’ packages. Ability Office 2000 admirably fills the gap in the market with well-featured and professional-quality programs, all for £50. The suite comprises a word processor called Write and two other key applications unimaginatively labelled Spreadsheet and Database. Write is rather…
Taxan – Ergovision 737 TCO99-S
As was inevitable once cheap-’n’-cheerful 19-inch monitors arrived on the market, the prices of 17-inch displays have been forced downwards, so that they’re now encroaching on what used to be the exclusive territory of 15-inch units. This could mean one of two things; either manufacturing costs are being drastically cut, or margins were pretty huge…
Electronic Arts – SimCity 3000 World Edition
Perhaps you feel that you haven’t tortured and traumatised your little citizens enough? Or maybe you’d like to construct great sprawling metropolises… metropili’… erm, cities in the style of classical European or Asian influenced architecture? These options and more are opened up to the devoted SimCity mayor with this new World Edition of the 3000…
Route 66 – Route Britain 2000
Despite being around for many years, route planning tools are routinely criticised for being too slow and inaccurate. Can Route 66 Route Britain 2000 do better? Things start well: this package offers an accurate postcode and place name search tool, as well as support for GPS receivers, which should make the process of starting and…
Gateway – Astro
Imagine a compact, all-in-one desktop system, democratically priced and with the accent on ease of use and general convenience; a computer for the millennium, a computer for anyone to use. You could be forgiven for thinking that this sounds like an evangelical pitch for the iMac, but in fact it could equally well describe Gateway’s…
Garmin – eMap
There has never been a better time to buy a personal global positioning satellite (GPS) receiver for finding out where you are and where you are going. Yesteryear’s slow, inaccurate, expensive, PC-hostile and cumbersome GPS units are definitely a thing of the past. The new Garmin eMap demonstrates how good and affordable GPS has become…
Mesh – Matrix GDR 700
You’ve got to hand it to Mesh – they know how to package a PC. I don’t just mean sturdy boxes, I mean the little touches, like including an A2-sized leaflet on exactly how to set up your PC. Colour coding the keyboard and mouse ports, labelling the graphics card clearly with ‘monitor’. Providing a…
Opera Software – Opera 4.0
As you’ll see from our earlier review, we’ve been fans of ‘the third browser’ for some time. It’s not free, but a wise saying states that you get what you pay for. For those new to Opera, it’s a fast, small footprint, user-friendly Web browser that supports the latest Web standards and has many features…
Serif – PagePlus 6.0
Serif PagePlus 6.0 is a publishing tool for the home or business. The program has many design shortcuts for the amateur or professional user and excels at making complicated tasks look easy. Despite this, it comes at a fraction of the cost of most high-end DTP packages such as the ubiquitous Quark XPress. The software…