Learning about computers for some professions and learning on computers about skills for business both just got easier.
No law office that uses computers ought to be without "How to Practice Law with Computers" or its yearly updates. There's no false advertising in the title. The thick hard-covered book and its soft-covered supplements cover the gamut.Hardware evaluations are all from a lawyer's perspective and include even such machines as the NeXT. Popular software is compared and recommendations given. All the peripherals are covered from CDROM players to modems and online databases.
The books are studded with interesting in-depth case studies. One shows how a law firm uses a hypertext program like Broderbund's "Memory Mate" to locate buried file information fast.
The book pulls no punches with its advice. It cautions that CD-ROM is still slow, especially for law offices with files that fill more than one disk. It points out that most PC telecom software can't communicate in the background, but "Smartcom III" can.
If your firm does a lot of telecommunicating, that can translate into lots of cash.
Sections in supplements assume that you own the first volume and just add information without repeating anything. So you do need to buy all volumes. The hard-cover book is $100 including past updates.
They're sold direct by the Practicing Law Institute, (212) 765-5700.
We have our reservations about "NewViews," an accounting program that takes a unique layered approach to bookkeeping. Instead of the usual menu, this program begins by listing the end products of accounting, its ledgers and reports.
Put the cursor on any line, type the right command and immediately the screen shows a "new view" - the underlying ledger. Command again and you see the relevant transactions in detail listed in the appropriate journal. You can get a view that shows current details or one that offers historic comparisons. Another view shows notes for any transaction.
NewViews' first release had a lot of bugs. Many were fixed in this version, 1.13. But the program still lets the books stay out of balance and it allows anyone to type garbage over ledger names, obliterating them entirely.
For these reasons, we never mentioned NewViews in the column. (Our longstanding policy is to name only software we recommend unless it's being heavily advertised. We want to minimize the risk of anyone's buying a program on a mis-memory of our say-so.) But NewViews has one excellent value: to teach accounting. The seven professorial authors of the book-and-disk "Student Edition of NewViews 1.13" use its unique layered linking of transactions, accounts and reports to demonstrate accounting principles and practices. For that, it's great.
The disk contains a fully working copy of the program. (To keep it a lot cheaper than the regular software package, it's disabled so you can only input data for the 1980s.) Also on disk is a set of data files for a make-believe manufacturing company.
The accompanying manual is a well-thought-out six-chapter textbook complete with chapter summaries and review questions. A separate instructor's manual is available.
We recommend the package for high school and college classrooms and for teaching yourself bookkeeping. Of course it's also great for any worker who needs to learn how to use NewViews.
It costs $37.50, works on IBM compatibles, and if your local bookstore can't order it, phone Addison-Wesley at 617-944-3700.
Strategic Management Group bought up an early-80s game called "Business Simulator," added some nice touches to make it more educational, and is selling it (with an excellent self-teaching looseleaf manual) as "Financial Learning System." We recommend it for anyone starting or thinking of starting a company of any size. In fact, as soon as we finish the course, we're sending it on to our young entrepreneurial son.
The workbook is divided into four parts. It's clear, concise and has lots of illustrations. Part One teaches how businesses acquire cash and how they use it. You learn how to read an income statement and balance sheet and how to do common-size and percent-change analysis.
Part Two teaches all about costs (fixed and variable) and profitability. It explains the various kinds of debt and depreciation. You learn how to do break-even analysis.
Parts Three and Four cover such things as financing cash cycles, budgeting capital and valuating stocks and bonds. Each part concludes with a small test (whose answers are in the back of the workbook) and a case study that uses the simulation game on disk, combined with already loaded games-in-progress, to help you practice what you've learned.
You can ignore the workbook and just play the game (solitaire or against an opposing tycoon-in-the-making). It has a built-in tutor and adviser, even a planner for testing business scenarios.
But if you're as rash as we are, you'll end up in bankruptcy before you get anywhere near Phase 5, in which you're piloting a multinational concern.
The game comes in Macintosh and IBM versions and costs $300 - a lot for a game but cheap for a course in finance. Strategic Management Group (800-445-7089) sells it with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Our only quibble: its installation procedure changes your Config.sys file to open 10 files and 10 buffers. That was fine in the early '80s.
Nowadays, most accounting programs demand at least 40 files and 20 buffers open. After you've installed this program, go back and change Config.sys back to what it was.
You can read back issues of this twice-weekly column at the electronic library, NewsNet, reachable via computer plus modem over phone lines. For NewsNet information, 800-345-1301. Copyright 1991 P/K Associates Inc., 3006 Gregory St., Madison, WI 53711-1847.