Dr. Tim Rhodus
Department of Horticulture and Crop Science
The Ohio State University
e-mail: Rhodus.1@osu.edu

Last month we looked at the trade-offs between Macintosh and IBM computer systems. While the hardware side of this debate is certainly important, it is software that determines whether the time and money spent on a computer is worth it. If the software isn't well designed, fails to runs reliably, is difficult to utilize, or is generally incompatible with other programs; then get rid of it. After all, one of the main reasons that we buy computers is to improve employee productivity and if workers are struggling to accomplish a task on their computer, then the fault may lie with the software. This brings me to the point of this month's article, when do you decide it's time to upgrade a program? In the late 1980's, registered owners use to receive a free upgrade to their program from time to time. While these upgrades weren't designed with lots of new bells and whistles, the price was right. However, with the nearly two year delay by Lotus Corporation in upgrading their fantastically successful spreadsheet, LOTUS 123, I started looking around for another spreadsheet that would let me do things (be more productive) that weren't possible with LOTUS. At this same time, the QUATTRO spreadsheet program was released by Borland at an incredible introductory price of $49.00. This was too good to be true. The program was definitely better and the price was 50%-75% cheaper than LOTUS, depending on where you bought software. For me, the decision to upgrade was easy. Borland even anticipated my reluctance to switch by giving me the option of using LOTUS 123 command wording in the menus. (Borland eventually lost a court case over this very issue but it was a nice gesture.) SInce that first version, I have upgraded my QUATTRO several times but certainly not every time the company came out with a new version. Switching over to a Windows version was also not too difficult for the very same reasons as the first time, product was well designed and not too expensive.

However, upgrading software is no longer just a consideration of price. With software companies trying to include everything but the kitchen sink, today's versions of most programs have become incredibly large and time consuming to learn. Take the latest copies of WordPerfect or Microsoft Word for example. Both programs enable you to write text, link tables with spreadsheets, compose graphs and freehand drawings, export files in a dozen or more formats, include the current document in an email message, perform sophisticated mail-merge functions for printing form letters with customized salutations and closing, and design a professional looking document that only a few years ago would have been outsourced to a printer for type setting. Yes, these are important functions that every office needs to be on top of, but how many different ways are there to print a set of mailing labels? Basically, I feel there have been two significant milestones over the past ten years that warrant upgrading your software. Around 1990 or 1991, most companies started providing Windows versions of their software. This new(?) environment finally made it possible for DOS users to keep two or more programs running at the same time and share the contents of one document with another through the cut-and-paste commands. Users also had a graphical interface to work with, but given the quality of graphic cards and monitors at the time, this was nothing to get too excited about it. The professionals had been using Mac systems for five or six years and this wasn't even close. The other significant upgrade stimulus that began occurring in 1994 and is still going on is the development of a suite of programs by a single company that includes four or five different packages - word processing, database, spreadsheet, presentation, and personal information manger or possibly email. Conceptually, these bundles are on the right track but getting used to a new spreadsheet or database because your favorite wordprocessor and presentation package were sold by different suppliers is not an easy task. Likewise, unless you're prepared to upgrade your hard disk storage or RAM memory, these new office suites may not be feasible for many users.

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