) CIDecember 198V Issue 1British Columbia's Computer Information Source

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CanadianPayroll

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InsideWendy Wood'sNEWSBFTES

Bedford's ¹wAccounting Packagefor the Mac

BBS Listings

I c i >c i CIDecember 1987 Issue 1British Columbia's Computer Information Source

ContentsColumns

Two ComruYaa Paean

PC s and CompatiblesMacintoshAtari.AmigaThe Stock Market Report.

Letters to the EditorWendy Wood's Newsbytes.BBS Numbers .User Group Listings..Computer Calendar.ClassiTieds.Index of Advertisers

Features

7....4

101112

201917

.14

.13.7

1214151617

Impressions of CD ROMWhat's a Neural NetworkgBuying a PC CloneUsed Computers Are They Worth the Risks'iBedford's Neiv Accounting Software for the MacPayMaster Canadian Payroll Package ..............

Cover by CameraWorks

Vol 1. No. 1

PUBLISHERKDITOR Kirtan Sin h Khalsa

EDITORIAL

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Wendy Wooh,Ken Maize, Bana Blankenhorn, MasayukiKeixzo Yamamoto, Grant Buckler and BillHayes.

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERSDan Brown and Gloria Alder

EDITORIAL CONSULT'ANTMicheal Bertrand

DESIGN

ART DIRECTOR Kathryn Anders

ART CONSULANT John Homes, MoonlightGrapllics

TYPESETTING Glacier Press

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2 The Computer Paper • December 1987

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CONTROL DATA DOW N G RADESCANADIAN OPERATIONMISSISSAUGA, Ont. (NB) — Control Data Can­ada Ltd. has laid off 45 employees and shiftedmostresponsibility for Canadian operations to its U.S.parent. Former chaizznan and president T.S. Allanand former senior vice- president of sales andmarketing Gary Glover have retired. Rather thanzephcing them, Contml Data Canada has an­nounced that the vice-presidents in charge of itsfivebusiness units wil form a"senior managementteam" for the Canadian operation but that eachbusiness unit will report directly to the parentcompany in Minneapolis. Avezell Elliott, vice­president of computer systems and services, will"assume responsibilities for day-to-day corporateoperations at Control Data Canada," the companysaid in a press release.CONTACT: CONTROL DATA CANADA,LTD., 1855 Minnesota Court, Mississauga, Ont.LSN 1K7, (416) 826-8640

DISTRIBUTOR MIGHT GO PUBLICIN TORONTO, NOT VANCOUVEROTI'AWA (NB) — Frantek Computer ProductsInc. has dropped plans to list its stock on theVancouver Stock Exchange and might seek a list­ing on the Toronto Stock Exchange instead,CANADIAN COMPUTER DEALER NEWS

reports. The paper quotes Mike Anderson, presi­dent of Frantek, as saying the company wants tolook for a hrger financial market than Vancouver.He said a listing on the Toronto exchange,Canada's largest, is possible within the next 12months. Anderson also says the company wants toremain 100 per cent Canadian, a trait it has empha­sized in the past.

PROVINCE GIVES TECHNOLOGYGRANTSTORONTO (NB) — The Province of Ontario hasannounced C$24.1 million in grants from itsPremier's Council Technology Fund. They will goto three Ontario companies working on airboznezadar, analytical instruments and computer-aideddesign. The projects are all being funded thmughanew industrial zesearch and development fundsetup as part of the C$1 billion technology fund.American Standard of Toronto will get C$3.8million to help develop an automated factory in co­operation with IBM Canarh Ltd., Markham, Ont.,Spar Aerospace Ltd. and Canadian General Elec­tric Ltd. of Toronto, the University of Tomnto,McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., and theUniversity of Western Ontario in London. Cana­dian Astronautics Ltk of Ottawa will get C$2.48million to develop radar for reconnaissance work,and Sciex, a division of MDS Health Group Ltd. ofToronto, will get C$17 million to develop analyticinstruments for measuring trace amounts of indus­trial chemicals.

IBM LAB CELEBRATES 20TH AN­NIVERSARYTORONTO (NB) — IBM Canada Ltd.'s Torontodevelopment laboratory celebrated its 20th anni­versary at the beginning of December. The thirdlargest private-sector laboratory in Canada and thefourth-largest software lab in IBM worldwide, the

Toronto facility has grown rapidly in recent yearsto about 1,100 employees. Bjorn Anderson, direc­tor of the laboratory, said the lab's zesponsibilitiesinclude software development for IBM's mid­range systems, image systems, and programminglanguage standards for IBM worldwide.

SCULLEY SPECULATES ONFUTURE AT BOOK LAUNCHTORONIO (NB) — Book-sized computers thattalk, take telephone messages and can retrieveinformation fmm remote systems without specificinstructions fmm the user maybecommonplacebythe early 21st century. But even then, there maybeno real market for home computers. So said JohnSculley, chairman of Apple Computer Inc., at theCanadian hunch of his book "Odyssey: Pepsi toApple," onNov.23. Sculley's Canadian publisher,Fitzhenry and Whiteside of Toronto, invited an as­sortment of Apple dealers, journalists and other .guests to Tomnto's King Edward Hotel foralunch­eon that marked the Apple chairman's first visit toCanada since his Pepsi-Cob days. As part of hisafter-lunch speech, Sculley showed a short videodepicting his view of a possible computer of thefuture, much like the Dynabook concept pioneeredat Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Centre.Sculley pointed out that his hypothetical machineused no technologies that don't exist today, al­though most of them are experimental at present.He said new technologies usually need an incuba­tion period of about 15 years. Sculley also con­firmed that Apple ismoving away fmm homecom­puters, a market he thinks is largely illusory atpresent. All that exists today is a "home-business"market in which people use computers at home sothey can bring work home from the office, he said."There will eventually be a home computer mar­ket," he said, "but my sense is that will be manyyears into the future."

change in education. Students must learn to thinkand not just to memorize and follow instructions,he said. "Our educational system in the U.S. islargely focused toward training young people forthe early industrial age," he said. (Sculley addedthat he couldn't comment on the Canadian educa­tional system, but NEWSBYTES CANADA be­lieves his comments apply as well here.)

VANCOUVER FIRM UNVEILS RE­PORT WRITER FOR LOTUS 1-2-3,DBASEVANCOUVER (NB) — Krieger Data Corp. ofVancouver has introduced ProMark IQ, whichproduces reports from files created by Lotus 1- 2­3, dBase III and Krieger's own ProMark databasesoftware. David Galloway, senior marketingrepre­sentative for the firm, said the package is adapted,under license, fmm software developed by a U.S.firm. It can extract data fmm 1-2-3 and dBase filesto produce reports with summary totals and per­form "all kinds of calculations" on the data Pro­Mark IQ can also produce graphs, Galloway said.

continued on page 13

NEWSBYTES Canadian bureau chief isGrant Buckler, Source ID IP2008, voice(416) 285-0644, or 859 Kennedy Rd., ¹203,Scarbozough, Ontario, Canada MlK 2E3.

Sculley also took the opportunity to call fora

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4 The Computer Paper • December 1987

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6 The Computer Paper • December 1987

PayMaster Canadian Payroll Softwareby Bill Hayes

Is it worthwhile to put your company payroll ona personalcomputers.Yes and no. It depends.

The PayMaster program by Etc. Software does agood job of speeding up the data entry and tedioustable look-up portion of paymll processing. It's theprocess of getting that information back into yourexisting bookkeeping system thatputs the utility ofthis program into question. Let's have a look atwhat the program does well first.

System RequirementsTheprogram runs on IBMPC or compatible m

achines with a minimum of 256K of meinory. Theprogramcomesononedisk. Itispossible accordingto Etc. to run up to 75 employees on a one disksystem,75 to 250on a dual floppy system, and 250to 999 on a hard disk.Set-up Routine

The system set up is a simple menu drivenprocedure run though a file called Housekeeping.Itishereyou decide whether toinitialize the systemon one, two or a hard drive. The short manual (32pages+ appendix) included in the package does agood job of taking you through the initial routine.Creating a Company

The initial bootup takes you to the main menuwindow. You are advised as a first step to create anew company name file so that the T4's which itprints at the end of the year have that informationon them.

SecurityYou can also at this stage set up four level

password protection. Level 1 has access to allfunctions. Level 2 can change everything but thecompany name and the Security functions. Level3 is allowed access to the Department, Job, Histori­cal, Cheque and Print files. Level 4is only allowedto access Department, Job and Historical files.Passwords can be up to 8 letters, but once you startto use passwords, every time you enter the pro­gram, you will be required to enter your password.Windows

The program makes intelligent use of win­dows to assist in data handling. For example whenyou ate in the cheque writing file, as you togglethrough the fields, a window box will pop up toshow your options for such things as employeenumbers or Job Costing categories. Another win­dow pops up everytime you enter the Employee,Cheque, Department, Job Costing or Historicalfiles.'Ihen youaregiventheoption to Add, Updateor Delete to the file.

Employee FilesThe next step is to enter employees into the

pmgram. This process is greatly facilitated if youhave everyone's Tax Exemption forms up to date.

A few potential problem area in entry occurhere. The first encountered was in entering Vaca­tion Pay rate. The field is defined with a numberand three figures after the decimaL A four percent

EayloyosDsymtaeatJob CostingSistotic&1ChorusZeal SnltrinalCESlp4hp 840%ISoclltlC'fQutt Ptogxaa

ante first loner ot use arrov asys ana ptasa Caature Zsc to act.

deduction would then look like: 4.000. This ap­proach I found somewhat less than intuitive andmanaged to enter a.04 rate which resulted in.04%rate rather than 49o.

A second potentially confusing area I discov­ered was in defining the ending period of employ­ment. Dates are formatted as MMDDYY. Theprogram uses acodeof"010101" todefineemploy­ees who are still working for you. Since the major­ity of employees who you are taking the time toenter into your new payroll progruu are likely tobestill employed by you, it would have speeded updata entry to have the program default to this valueexcept in those rare cases you are entering anemployee who has already left. Again its all in themanual, but the best judge of a program is oftenhow far you can go without looking at the manual.

The third problem I encountered was in defin­ing the claim amount. Here the program differedslightly from the manual. The manual shows ascreen with the word "Claim". The program in factsays '"H)1 Claim" which to me suggested that I

4 l N a nu ­ — — Sse. to ~­

program up has multiple departments and employ­ees who sometimes contribute hours to these dif­ferent departments. PayMaster does not handlethis situation well. Acall to thecompanyconfirmedthis fhcL The option they suggested, was to not useDepartments at all, instead use the Job Costing fileto divide up the labour. This suggestion has onlylimited applicability, because the reporting fromthe Job Costing is only very rudimentary. It doesnot break down the amounts between wages andthe various benefits such as UIC, CPP etc.

This brings me to my final and major com­plaint against PrryMdsrer. The reports PayMastergenerates seem more geared to getting me to pur­chase my cheques from Etc. Software than toproviding accessible information. Etc. Softwaresays that you have three options with the program.1) use their pre-printed cheques and report sheetswhich means buying a whole other series ofcheques and entering the adjustments directly inthe General Ledger,2) print out on plain paper, andtransfer the information to another accounts pay­able system, 3) get Etc. to customize the system ata rate of $25/hour to include the report hbels. Thefirst option of buying from Etc. is really the onlychoice that is reasonable if you want to use thispmgram. This of course is the ideal for them, butmaynotbeso for your company. The secondoptiondoesn'treally workbecauseof the way theprogramprints out just raw numbers with out any headerinformation(it' s on the pre-printed forms you see).The report ends up with a closely grouped bundleof numbers with no labels to help sort out what iswhat. The third option of engaging in contractprogramming does not seem reasonable for a pro­gram designed to inexpensively save time andmoney.A Bug?

In the process of discovering about the differ­ence between the Department and Job Costingapproach to breaking out payroll, I discovered abug in the program. I first entered a number ofDepartments, then I decided to delete them all anduse the Job Costing approach. When I moved thecursor into the Job Costing area while entering aCheque, instell of the Job Costing category win­dow appearing, I got lines of code on the screen. Ihad to re-initialize the system to get rid of thispmblem losing the data I had entered in up to thatpoint.Additional features

The program allows you to either pay holidaypay in each pay period, or accumulate it til aspecified date. The way to then get itout, is to enterthe Employee file, choose Update and then changetheRetain item to Y. Theprogram then willincludethe accumulated holiday pay up to and includingthe current pay period.

PayMaster also can handle advances and the

continued on page 14'Ihe Computer Paper • December 1987 • 7

Start up Scree»

should enter the code used by the government todefine the different categories. This idea is rein­forced by the next field'TPDIV Chim" (again notin the manual) which is a computed field. Thesuggestion by this layout is that all one need enteris the government defined classifications, and theprogram will fill in the next field. In fact it doesn' twork that way. It turns out that you are supposed toenter the actual claim amount in the'TDI Qaim"field. Surprisingly, nothing shows up in the'TPDIV Claim" field. One wonders why itis thereat all. All this became clearer after reading the ap­pendix of the manual. Another hint was given bythe format shown in the message bar at the bottomof the screen when you enter the' IDI Claim" fieldwhich is (XKXX.KX).

Of course all these problems were minor, andnothing thata quick perusal of the manual couldn' tsolve, but nonetheless could stand to beimprovetLDepartments Vs. Job Costing

This is where for me theprogram fell down themost. The company for which I intended to set the

DEALERS R CONSULTANTS ONLYPlease Cal/ For Complete Confidential Price List

SeagateIBMPS II Model 30-002/021 .... . . '1230/1625PS II Model 50-021 .... . . . . . . . . . . . 2525PS II Model 60 44MB/70MB...3650/4195PS II Model 80 44MB/70MB...5085/6095AT 339 (8MHz, 512K, 30 MB) .... . .3495AT 068 (6MHz, 256K).... . . . . . . . . . 2395XT 286 (6MHz, 640K, ZOMB)...... .2295Mono Display 8503 .... . . . . . . . . . . . . 189Color Display 8512 .... . . . . . . . . . . . . 439Color Display 8513 (EGA).... . . . . . . . 5105~/4 External Drive.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .295I BM Mouse for system II... . . . . . . . . . . 8 5IBM Modem for system II ... . . . . . . . . 3 10Pro Printer II/XL .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 375/545Pro Printer X24/XL24 ... . . . . . . . 555/695Quiet Writer II/III.. . . . . . . . . . . . 975/1195IBM DOS 3.3 (min 5) .... . . . . . . . . . . . 85CALL FOR ALL OTHER COMPUTER

' QUA%I'ITY DISCOUVI' AVAILABLE

SEAGATESEAGATE HARD DRIVES20MB/30MB W/Conuoller..... . . '269/29930MB/40MB Full Height .... . . . . 475/56540MB (STZ51)/65MB (277N) ....365/56580MB (4096)/80MB (277R).... . .875/599

MMSCRIBEZOMB/30MB RLL W/Cont..... . . '265/29540MB (3650)/40MB (3053) .... . .325/52540MB (6053) Full Height.... . . . . . . . . 58580MB Full Height (6085).... . . . . . . . . 799

HARD CARDS20MB/30MB for XT...30MB for AT20MB/30MB for PS/2 ..

MSCELLANEOUS130MB Maxtor 28Mlsecond .20MB Tandon 3'/z inch.....10MB IBM Full Height ....

....$365/399.. . . . .455

....399/435

...'1750....225....195

DESKPRO MODELS386/20 MHz 60/130/300 MB.....In Stock386 40 MB (Factory Upgrade) ..s4295/4095386 70 MB (Factory Upgrade) ..4895/4595386 130MB Factory Only.... . . . . . . . 5895286 Model I/With 20MB... . . . 1850/2295286 Model 40 (Factory).... . . . . . . . . 2950Deskpro 2Drive 256K/20MB...1050/1395PORTABLESNEW 386 Portables In Stock.... . . . . . CallII Model 4 (Factory/Upgrade) ..s2595/2395II Model 2 2dr., 256K (80286)... . . . .1895Portable 2 Drive 256K (8086) ... . . . .1550"Portable 286 Model I... . . . . . . . . . 1795' 'III Model 20MB" .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 3495"III Model 40MB". .. . . . . . . . . . . . 3995Compaq Amber/Green.... . . . . . . . . . . 195Compaq EGA Monitor.... . . . . . . . . . . 545Compaq EGA Adapter.... . . . . . . . . . . 410386 Memory Exp. Board.... . . . . . . . . CallIMB Memory Exp. Kit.... . . . . . . . . . . 295Compaq DOS 3.1/3.Z.... . . . . . . . . . 59/71

Quantity Discount Available 'PRODUCIS

*Quantity Discount Available *

Dealers R Consultants OnlyCorporate P Retail Customers Call For Quotes

a • I a

8087-3 XT/80Z87-6 AT ..8087-2 XT/80287-8 AT .80287-10 AT IOMHz...80387-16/80387-20 ....

s95/160....145/249... . . . .289

....465/765

10 MB. Inter. /External... . . . . .

ZO MB. Inter. /External ... . . . . .40 MB. Inter. /External ... . . . . .Call for PS/2 Tape Back Up UnitsCall for Archive, Tecmar, Sysgen

$265/399.345/475.399/535

s1695'3295

... . .369

... . .699

... .1395

... .1150

Laser Series II... . . . . . . . .Laser Jet 500+IMB Mern. Expansion HP ..ZMB Mem. Expansion HP ..H P Plotter 7475A ... . . . . .H P Scanjet Scanner... . . . .

• • a •

182/182 Serial 120 cps..... . . . . . ' 199/269ML192+/193+ 200 cps..... . . . .289/409ML292E/293E 200 cps, 100 nlq...369/499ML393/393 Color 450 cps.... . .945/1029ML294/2410 ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . 737/1695Lazer Line 6. 1299

321SL (216CPS)..... .341SL (216CPS).... .351-2/351-2 Color ....Toshiba T1000/1100 ..Toshiba T3120 MB ...Modem for Laptops...

.. . . . . . . '479... . . . . .645

....865/1019....825/Call... . . . .2995... . . . . .299

• ss •

...'67/82....75/95....73/95... . . .95

Fujitsu 360K/ I. ZMB...Teac 360K/1.2MB.... .Toshiba 360K1.2MB...Toshiba 3.5 " Internal ..

474Z Woodman AvenueSherman Oaks, CA 914Z3For phone order call:(818) 905-0994 (213) 859-3410

* * * LOTUS 1-Z-3 '289 * * *

ZZ53 Westwood Bl.

* * * LOTUS SYMPHONY '429 * * *

One stop shopping for dealers R consultants. We alsocarry NEC • AST • HERCULES • DRAMS •

MODEMS • CITIZEN • MICROPOLIS • SONY• MICROSOFT • SAMSUNG

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Los Angeles, CA 90064".ilasterCard

8 The Computer Paper • December 1987