The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : A Graphics Program That Fills In the Voids
Let’s say you’ve got a fast new Pentium-based computer with Windows 95 and you’ve added Microsoft’s Office 95 suite of application software, which includes the Microsoft Word word processor, the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and the Microsoft PowerPoint presentation software. The question is: Does a typical business user really need anything else?
Yes, many do. And Micrografx Inc.’s ABC Graphics Suite will fill in some important gaps left by Windows 95 and Office 95. Office 95 owners can buy ABC Graphics Suite for an upgrade price of $150, as can owners of most any other graphics software. The normal price is about $300.
ABC Graphics Suite contains four products, all designed to merge so seamlessly with Office 95 programs that the Graphics Suite program icons automatically appear on the Office 95 program toolbars. What ABC Graphics Suite lets you do is create business charts and diagrams that aren’t possible in Microsoft Excel, yet do it with data in your Excel spreadsheets. That is done with ABC FlowCharter 6.0, one of the four programs in the Graphics Suite.
Among FlowCharter’s useful chart types are Pareto charts, which organize frequency and cumulative percent of categories within a subject, such as types of complaints; Histograms that show the distribution of data; Scatter diagrams that display the relation between two factors on X and Y axes; Control charts that depict upper and lower ranges and the center; and Cause-and-Effect charts that graphically illustrate how various factors affect a particular situation.
Designer 6.0 is an illustration and drawing program with a large array of tools that allow you to create graphics that can’t be matched with PowerPoint or Windows 95 Paintbrush. Even if you only want to design a small logo for a new product, Designer is an excellent tool. A collection of 20,000 clip art images and 250 fonts help get you started.
Picture Publisher 6.0 is the painting and image editing program, with which you can create original artwork or retouch scanned-in photos. Maybe you won’t even need a scanner, because a CD-ROM with about 7,500 photos is included with the software.
The fourth component is ABC Media Manager, which keeps track of all those thousands of symbols, images and photos with on-screen miniatures. You can also use the Media Manager to place clip art images or a photos directly into an Office 95 document without even using one of the ABC Graphics Suite programs to massage it first.
All of the ABC Graphics Suite programs are new 32-bit versions of Micrografx’s previous stand-alone versions of ABC FlowCharter, Designer and Picture Publisher. Curiously, despite its new design, ABC FlowCharter will only import spreadsheet data from version 4.0 of Excel. That’s a version from several years ago. Office 95 contains Excel 7.0. But fortunately Excel 7.0 can save its spreadsheets in version 4.0 form, which is how I got Excel data into FlowCharter. It could be a big hassle if you wanted to use a lot of Excel data in FlowCharter charts because you have to keep two copies of the data or give up the great workbook format of Excel 7.0’s spreadsheets.
The Graphics Suite doesn’t require Office 95 to run, despite the tight integration. But it does require Windows 95. These 32-bit applications will not run under Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups. ABC Graphics Suite also requires a CD-ROM drive: It’s available only on CD-ROM discs.
What does not come in the box is much in the way of instructions in running these three complex programs. A 152-page book titled “Getting Results With ABC Graphics Suite” shows you some examples of things that can be done with each program. But it isn’t really a tutorial, and you aren’t given enough information or sample files to actually work through any of the examples shown in the book.
As with Office 95 itself, detailed help for ABC Graphics Suite is only available on-screen in a series of typical Windows Help files, since no reference manual is included. Printing books is a lot more costly than duplicating CD-ROM discs, and Micrografx joins Microsoft and a lot of other software publishers these days who are cutting back on printed documentation.
There is one thick book in the box, and it is essential. It catalogs all of the fonts, symbols, clip art and photos, which would be virtually impossible to browse otherwise.
Potential buyers should take heed if they aren’t skilled at learning complex software by themselves using on-screen Help files. Micrografx provides only 30 days of free support, and after that you have a choice of several expensive options if you want a technician to help you through a problem.
You can call a 900 number at $2 a minute, including the time you hold on the line waiting for someone. Or you can call an area 214 number for $25 per call (or spend $175 for the right to 10 calls) or sign up for a $275, 25-call-limit annual plan.
In recent computer magazine comparisons, Designer and Picture Publisher usually haven’t ranked quite as high as Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator or Adobe PhotoShop, and Scitor Corp.’s Process Charter has edged out ABC FlowCharter. But the differences have been small, and you won’t find a combination of programs such as ABC Graphics Suite from anybody else, nor can you come close to its price buying separate programs.
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Business Computing welcomes your comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Business Computing, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or message oreilly@latimes.com on the Internet.
