Odds and Ends

Short-shrift time at Chaos Manor finds Jerry looking at an outliner, an uninstall program, a Windows shell, and much more

Jerry Pournelle

I don't know where the month went. Actually, I do: I use Franklin Quest's Ascend to keep track of what I have to do, and that automatically gives me a record of what I did. Most of the month was eaten by final polishing of Beowulf's Children by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes. The publisher accepted the book last month, but we found some ways to improve it. Then we had a panic effort to save the space station. I'm no great fan of the space station, and in an ideal world, we'd be investing our space R&D money in something else; but it's the only far-out R&D program we have at present, and Dan Goldin is turning NASA around. He deserved support.

We also had a mild panic when the DC/X, the little spaceship that Max Hunter, General Graham, and I talked the National Space Council into building, had a fuel-leak explosion during a test. The good news is that while the aeroshell got ripped up, the ship recovered and landed on its tail of fire: the first intact recovery of a rocket ship from an in-flight abort. Love that ship.

What with all that, a couple of computer shows, and a speech to the Cisco Systems' users meeting, there wasn't time for any big projects here; but really neat products keep flowing in.

All of which means that it's short-shrift time at Chaos Manor. Short-shrift ground rules: I don't mention things I don't like, and you should assume that all these products deserve more space than I'll have time to give them.

Do you remember ThinkTank? It was an early outline program that caused a lot of excitement back in CP/M days. I played with it but never really used it. Later on came Symantec's GrandView for DOS systems, and I used that a lot; I even wrote columns with it. GrandView running under Quarterdeck's Desqview task switcher was a really good way to organize notes. I wrote essays, travel impressions, and even scenes for novels with it.

The problem with GrandView was that while it was fine as an outliner, and let me expand and hide and hoist and move text and titles around, it wasn't all that hot as a word processor. There was a version of it that was supposed to be compatible with Q&A Write, but it wasn't really. I never really decided to abandon GrandView. I just stopped using it, and a few months ago I quietly consigned it to archive tape.

Most word processors have outliner features, but I've never been fond of them. Partly it's a learning curve, but mostly I just don't feel the need, because I don't write outlines much. Even when I was using GrandView, I didn't use the special outline control features very often.

The theory behind outline programs is that you write as you think of things to say. Set down various points you want to make and expand each when you think of something that belongs there. You can hide text so that all you see is the main headings or expand it so that all the text is visible. Whenever you think of a point, you can stick it into the proper section of the document you're creating or tack it onto the end, if you don't know where it goes. It allows free-form writing, and you don't get bogged down in details.

Another way to write is to do what I advised my kids to do when they were learning to write nonfiction: sit down and write everything you can think of about the subject. Print it. List the topic sentence of each paragraph. If you find a paragraph that doesn't have a topic sentence, fix it. When you're done, see if that's the order in which you want to present your information. It probably won't be. Now rewrite your essay, putting things in the proper order. Polish it a couple of times, and you're done.

All this is preparatory to telling you about Inspiration, an outline program that I probably wouldn't have looked at if my partner Steven Barnes hadn't noticed it. ``You'll like that,'' he said.

Steven has done some TV scripts and was story editor of a series. He teaches classes on writing. He's better organized than I am, and I think that's the clue. In any event, Inspiration has all the features of ThinkTank, GrandView, and other traditional outliners. In addition, it has a number of visual/graphics features that let you turn your work into diagrams and flowcharts. There are idea maps, tree charts, process flows, plans and diagrams, and suchlike, as well as traditional outlines.

Inspiration was originally a Mac program, and the Windows version has a number of Mac-like features. It's likely to appeal to the same kind of people who like Macs. If you like storyboarding, you'll like Inspiration. Now that I have it installed, I may use it myself.

Many Windows applications now come with uninstall programs. Most of those work, but a few leave junk like references to themselves in WIN. INI, PIFs (program information files), or useless fonts. Other programs--including most older ones--don't have an uninstall facility at all. That means that unless you know what you're doing, when you delete a program, you won't get it all.

UnInstaller from MicroHelp takes care of that job. When you invoke UnInstaller, it looks at your INI files and finds lines that reference nonexistent software. Another part of the program finds all the tracks of a program and offers to delete them. There are other features.

This isn't a program you're going to need every day, but when you do need it, you need it bad. It's not perfect, and you want to be careful how you use it; but it knows more about Windows than I do, and it gives you lots of warning before it actually wipes anything out. I'll certainly keep it. Recommended.

There are a zillion Windows shells out there. The best known is Symantec's Norton Desktop for Windows, which works quite well. Over the years, however, they've added feature after feature to it, so that now it takes six high-density disks and nearly an hour to install. Last night during the course of installation, it thought it found a virus in my system. Then, when the installation was about 65 percent complete, it slowed to considerably less than 1 percent per minute. The disk lights would go on and off, but nothing would happen for a long time; I suppose it was decompressing big files.

Once it's installed, Norton Desktop works quite well. It's much more intuitive than Program Manager, and it sure is loaded with features, including the virus checker, which now didn't think it saw one after all.

By contrast, Quarterdeck's SideBar installs in a couple of minutes. It's not loaded with features. There's no virus detector and no backup program; but it sure works, and I like it. I miss Norton Desktop's file viewer, which knows how to translate odd file formats, but the viewer in Norton Commander can do that, too, and I generally keep Commander available in a DOS Window. That' s the only Norton Desktop feature I really miss.

SideBar incorporates many of the features of OS/2. The right mouse button is used a lot. More to the point, SideBar can create ``shadow'' objects. That is, I can drag the icons of the programs I use most onto a little vertical toolbar on the right side of the desktop. If I drag them there, the icons vanish from within their original groups; but if I bring them in with Control-drag, the icons remain in their original groups, while the shadow that's installed in the toolbar can launch the program.

SideBar allows folders within folders. It allows folders on the toolbar. It lets you have icons for folders; every program group won't look just like any other group. It has access to all your disk drives, and in Windows for Workgroups, that includes all the network drives; Norton Desktop doesn't seem to understand that concept. SideBar lets you put program icons directly on the desktop, inside folders or out. There's a ``recycler,'' which functions as a w astebasket, and a clock icon that works. You can also customize the toolbar.

There are other features, such as launching Word 6.0 for Windows by clicking on beowulf.doc. If you launch a second Word document, the program puts it in a different window of Word 6.0 rather than launching a new copy of the word processor.

SideBar's paper documentation isn't very good, but the on-line help documents are excellent. My advice is not to bother looking for anything in the manual; just hit the F1 key. You'll find what you want to know a lot faster. I spent 5 minutes searching the documents and never did find out how to install a new program, but the help files showed me in a few seconds.

All program shells advertise that they let you organize your work just the way you like, and I suppose most of them do. I have nothing against any of them, but I don't seem to use them much. SideBar is the first Windows shell that I have put on more than one computer. Alex has already ordered one to install on Larry Niven's machine, because SideBar is excellent for setting things up for a nonexpert user. I was never fond of Windows shells, and the only DOS shell I ever cared for was Norton Commander; but SideBar is different. Recommended.

One of the most dramatic things we saw at Spring Comdex was Elastic Reality. To say this is a morphing program is about like saying that Rodin's The Gates of Hell is a statuary group. It turns a man into a tiger, grows horns on the devil, changes little girls into big men. The problem is, you have to see it to believe it. It produces effects on a Mac with QuickTime that I wouldn't have believed you could get without a Silicon Graphics system. Indeed, Elastic Reality was developed with Silicon Graphics hardware, and that version was used to produce special effects for feature films and major TV series. Now you can get it for the Mac.

I won't list all the features because I haven't time. The video that comes with it shows you a bunch of stuff it will do, and I expect any soft ware retailer will let you watch that. Just let me say that if you do graphic arts with a Mac, you need this program. Highly recommended.

One of the things computers do well is the tedious work of looking for trends in masses of data. This is often done by using matrix manipulations to generate multiple regression equations, and that remains the best general approach when you have structured data and are familiar with matrix algebra. A simpler method is to turn loose an analytical tool known as a neural network on your data. Neural networks learn sort of the way you do. That is, they look at many different cases and form a bunch of tentative hypotheses. They then reward (i.e., give greater weight to) the theories that pay off while eliminating those that don't.

That, by the way, is the classic method of operations analysis. You look at an ongoing process, try to identify relevant variables, devise a model that relates the input variables that you can control to the criterion you want, validate th e model, and try to optimize. This doesn't always work--sometimes pure intuition is better--but it works more often than you'd think. Sometimes you get spectacular results through the most unexpected actions. A neural network that would do operations research would be wonderful.

The problem is that most neural networks are difficult to understand and nearly as difficult to use. What most of us need is a neural network that's as easy to use as a spreadsheet. We could then let it examine the data and frame hypotheses for us to choose among.

That describes Braincel, which is far and away the best neural network for beginners that I know of. The documents aren't especially clear, but they're good enough that a bit of hard work and a lot of practice will get you going. The main example in the manual shows how to create an expert system to screen loan applications. Inputs are such things as monthly income, monthly expenses, home owner or renter, years in present job, and so forth. You input your data, build and train the expert system, and then test it on new data. There are other examples--one of Pournelle's laws is that if you're explaining something complicated, you can't have too many examples--and I was able to figure out how to use Braincel in a couple of hours.

Once you've worked the examples, you're ready for the back of the book, where program author Mark Jurik explains in some technical detail just what a neural network is and the difference between back propagation and back percolation. Alas, just as he gets interesting, he says, ``It's too mathematical to go into details here''; but there's also a decent bibliography for those who find mathematicians' equations easier to read than their prose.

Fortunately, you don't have to understand neural networks and back propagation in order to use them. You do need some common sense, and if you're going to bet much on the predictions of your neural-network model, you'd best develop some feel for tests of statistical significance. Computer p rograms like Stat will help with that.

One use of a neural network is to analyze financial information. Stock market reports talk about technical factors and technical corrections; mostly, that refers to a bunch of empirical rules about what the market will do tomorrow based on what it did for the past month. Some technical-analysis systems have been around for a long time. An early one was Dow theory, named for one of the founders of Dow Jones.

Neural networks won't teach you Dow theory, but they can allow you to make your own financial hypotheses. There's a section about financial data in the appendixes to the Braincel manual. If you are really interested, however, you might want to look at the NeuroVe$t Journal. It isn't cheap, but it goes fairly deep into prediction theory. It also advertises a bunch of other neural-network programs and analytical tools. If I were going to set out to build an investment expert system, I'd want it.

Last year (see ``Neural Net Adds Smarts to Spreadsheet s, Slowly,'' January 1993 BYTE), Maureen Caudill compared Braincel out of the box to a program she had been using for a year or so, with the inevitable result that she didn't like it as much as the one she uses all the time. That's a valid conclusion, but if you're that familiar with neural networks, you don't need advice from me. On the other hand, if you know nothing about neural networks and want to learn, Braincel is the best way I know to start.

Braincel has both automatic and professional modes; in professional mode, you have to make a number of decisions, and some of them may be hard to understand. No matter. Try automatic mode first to get a feel for what's going on.

Once you've used your neural network in automatic mode to create an expert system you understand, you'll want to try again in professional mode, in which you collaborate with the machine to design the model. After that, you have to decide whether to trust the expert system or go with your own judgment.

There's no real answer to that. There are two main values to expert systems and explicit models. First, by showing exactly how decisions are made, you can determine whether you have left out any important variables, and you'll know just how sensitive your decisions are to the various data inputs. The other value is that the expert system is consistent and never allows irrelevant factors to influence its decision. This can have important legal consequences.

If you're at all interested in neural networks, Braincel is about as painless an introduction as I know. Recommended.

At last fall's Comdex, I was given a copy of a program called WizRule, which will examine a large database for rules. An example of a rule might be ``If Warehouse = 1, then there is a probability of 0.996 that agent = 3.'' This doesn't sound interesting, but note that the probability isn't 1. Are the deviant cases data-entry errors or evidence of fraud? In addition to linear probabilities, WizRule will look for relationships that may be useful for finding incorrect entries, spotting fraud, or making predictions. It will, given time, examine very large databases.

I won't go into great detail on WizRule because all I know about it is that it's published by Rational, Ltd., which is an Israeli company. I was given a copy, I have used it, and I can think of a lot of uses for it--but I don't know where you can get a copy, because there is neither address nor phone number in the manual or on the disk. If anyone knows, please tell me, and I'll publish the company's address in an upcoming column.

Databases contain a lot more information than most people can get out of them. Neural networks with fuzzy logic and rule analyzers are important tools for extracting some of that information.

There are also analysis programs that use specific structured models to make forecasts. One of the modeling methods is known as exponential smoothing. Another is stationary time series.

If you would like to know a lot more about the subject, I recom mend Robert Goodrich's Applied Statistical Forecasting, which is a book available from Business Forecast Systems. If you just want to use forecasting models, Forecast Pro is available from the same source. I have the Windows version. There's also one for DOS. Forecast Pro is fairly easy to learn for anyone who'd be likely to use it. If you want to know more about it, I covered the program in some detail in my June 1993 column. (Also, see ``Forecasting the Future'' in this June's BYTE.) It's still the best program of its kind I know of.

Windows users tend to forget that there are still plenty of DOS users out there. Every now and then I have to use a DOS system, and when I do, I remember SideKick. Borland's SideKick was one of the first TSR programs. You load it, go about your work, and if you need it, you pop it up. SideKick has a calendar, an appointment book, a phone book, various calculators (including scientific and financial), a note editor, and stuff like that. I used SideKick for years, and when I converted to Desqview, I still kept a Desqview window reserved for SideKick. I didn't abandon SideKick until I converted to Windows.

If you still use DOS and don't know about SideKick, you're missing something.

Evaluating monitors is a problem. I can tell you whether I like one or not, I can use one for a while and see how it holds up and if I get a headache, I can tell you the specifications, but it's not easy to find objective measures.

There is one way. DisplayMate from Sonera has a suite of tests for color balance, focus, pincushioning, and all the other factors involving monitors. It's easy to install and use, and it will discover and describe in detail problems that you didn't know you had. It will also help you tune your monitor to its best possible performance. This can be important if you stare at a monitor all day.

DisplayMate is self-teaching. You don't need the manual; just install it and fool around following directions. When you're done, your monitor will probably lo ok better, and you'll certainly know more about gray scales and color balance than you did when you started.

I used DisplayMate to examine a new ViewSonic 17 monitor. But I didn't need to; anybody can see that the ViewSonic 17 is beautiful. The tilt stand works, the controls are right up front and computer-controlled--they call it OnView on-screen programming, and it works about the way you adjust your TV set's color with the remote control--and it has an Energy Star rating. The monitor looks great at a resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels. It works with both PCs and Macs. The screen is nearly flat. The black is black. I don't know what else to say.

I now have an NEC MultiSync 5FGp, a Nanao FlexScan T560i, and the ViewSonic 17. I've run DisplayMate on all of them, and they all pass nicely: good focus, black screen, brilliant color, and sharp-edged lines. They're all fast, and when you change from Windows to DOS applications, they change screen resolutions easily and efficiently. Some monitors don't do that well. I have an older monitor that gives a loud click and throws gubbage on the screen when making that change.

I can't emphasize strongly enough the importance of a really excellent monitor for those who spend a lot of time staring at computer screens, and that becomes more important the older you get. My setup works best if the monitor is at eye level and approximately 30 inches from my nose. That means at least a 15-inch monitor, and a 17-inch monitor is better. CAD workers will want a larger monitor, but for writing, I find a 21-inch monitor a bit large because the lines of text will be wider than I can take in without swinging my head.

I don't know if Pen Windows systems will catch on. For a while, I used a really neat little machine called the Dauphin DTR-1, which had a number of interesting features, including Pen Windows. Alas, the early model I used had some power management problems that the production systems don't have. One of these days I'll try it again, because the little d arling worked really well when it was working, and it was a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in learning more about what Pen Windows can and can't do, the best way is to get the Kurta VideoTablet VTS-5. Kurta made the pen tablet for the Dauphin system.

The Kurta system comes with a board to install in your PC, a neat and fairly rugged tablet, the pen, and all the Pen Windows software. I confess I haven't done a lot with this beyond getting it up and running, which took nothing special. I fully intend to do some real work with this when I get a bit more time. After all, Niven and I postulated pen-based computer systems in our novel The Mote in God's Eye and its sequel The Gripping Hand (available in paperback at a bookstore near you), so I have a bit of a stake in seeing it all come to pass. The VideoTablet VTS-5 makes for a painless way to experiment with and learn about pen control.

I'm told it's also in practical use. A physician keeps his patient records using a Kurta VideoT ablet, and there are educational and commercial applications.

My son Frank has been the director of publicity for a major resort hotel, owner of a mail-service business, and a partner in a telemarketing firm. Unlike Alex, he's not a propeller head; he just wants to know what computers can do. Recently, he figured it was time to learn more, so he took a privately offered course on Macs. They studied Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, Soundworks, and Macromedia Director. The course took six weeks at two nights and some weekend time per week, and finally eight straight days of multimedia immersion.

Frank has been a Mac user since he first saw one. He's done ad campaigns, mass mailings, business plans, and so forth on Macs for years. I'll let him describe the course.

``Joining me were entertainment-industry professionals and a grandmother who wants to make children's CD-ROMs. With backgrounds ranging from a Philips CD-ROM producer to a commercial director who makes videos for McDonald's, we set off to learn the basics of video compression, editing, and interactive programming. We started with Premiere, a potentially wonderful video-editing system.

``Using a Radius Video Vision board installed in a Mac Quadra 900, we struggled to load and compress video from a Canon Hi-8 camera to edit our own movie. We quickly learned how much information and quality drops out during compression. Error reports showed something like 10 percent to 12 percent of the video input was lost in compression translation. We did find a way to decrease that by 4 percent by turning off external sounds and disabling the network.

``Premiere is impressive, offering transition devices between scenes that rival high-end editing suites. It includes page turns, clock wipes, crystal dissolves, and more than 20 transition-editing devices. If you don't mind a few quirks or the cost, you can be doing MTV-style videos of your friends' weddings in no time.

``The problem arises when you need broadcast quality. With the sp eed of most hard drives today, you'll drop out frames when you print the video to a Beta deck, and to solve it you'll need an array drive and adapters. Unless you're really slow, you'd do better to rent a D-2 editing suite at $200 an hour. It will save money in the long run.

``Macromedia Director offers some impressive opportunities as a CD-ROM authoring tool. With its LINGO-based programming language, Director translates bit by bit from Mac to PC systems. It's one of the few programs that will do that.

``You can import all your elements into a casting area in Director and then set it up on your stage. Music, text, images, and moving video all translate easily into Director. You will find problems with the programming and the interactivity. Director uses LINGO to program intricate--and not-so-intricate--decision trees. I'm told it is a close second to C programming and is a major stumbling block for noncomputer types seeking refuge from DOS in the Mac environment. I got lost.

``I think I' ll hire a professional.''

What Frank learned is that while desktop hardware is almost good enough for broadcast-quality work, and the software is almost good enough for professional-quality editing, there's still a bit of a way to go. The small-computer world has come a long way from 7- by 9-pixel monochrome characters displayed on a 16-row by 64-column screen. As I reported last month, my new Pentium system is capable of displaying on a good monitor color pictures of quality comparable to drugstore-developed Kodak photographs; but we're not quite to broadcast-quality desktop video editing. This time next year that may not be true. Stay tuned.

Speaking of desktop video, we've had a VideoLabs Flexcam camera since before the earthquake. You've probably seen this: a little CCD (charge-coupled device) camera eye smaller than a golf ball atop a long, flexible gooseneck. It looks like a miniature cyclopean snake, which I suspect is what the designer intended.

Anyway, it brings video into your sy stem through a standard video input. The camera focuses from 1/4 inch to infinity and captures quite acceptable color even at low light levels. It has good auto white balance. It's easy to use and a lot of fun. If you want your computer to see you--as, for instance, in a video-interactive conference--this is a good tool to do it with.

The game of the month is MicroProse Software's XCOM: UFO Defense. It's probably going to be the game of the year. If I describe it--you're in charge of defending the Earth against an invasion of aliens in flying saucers with systems reminiscent of the late, lamented UFO TV series, a strategy and role-playing game--you'll think this is something nobody will want. I sure thought that from the description on the box, and I'd tossed it in the discard pile when my friend Rich Heimlich called to tell me I should try it. I thought at first that he was nuts.

Hours later I emerged to see it was dawn outside. Last night, Alex and I stayed up until dawn with it again. People, this game is addictive. You have been warned.

The CD-ROM of the month is a series that's not too dramatic unless you're in the professions. While others have been doing whizbangs, Lightbinders (2325 Third St., Suite 320, San Francisco, CA 94107, (415) 621-5746) has been quietly using CD-ROMs to publish professional journals that are available from the sponsoring organizations. I have ASBMB's Journal of Biological Chemistry and the Protein Society's Protein Science Collection from Cambridge University Press, which integrates interactive 3-D molecular models directly into the research articles. Lightbinders has a number of other interesting science publications and is doing many of the things I predicted would be done with CD-ROMs back when I first learned about them. If you're in the sciences, you should know about them.

The first book of the month is Cheryl Currid's Computing Strategies for Reengineering Your Organization (Prima Publishing, 1993). It's a readable introduction into modern high-te ch management strategy. There are a kazillion books on how to get on-line. The one I fancied this month is by Sharon Fisher and Rob Tidrow, Riding the Internet Highway (NRP, 1994). There's a lot of solid information well presented here.

Finally, Lt. Phillip Pournelle was Officer of the Deck when the helicopter carrier Tripoli left San Diego harbor for deployment to the Persian Gulf. He's carrying one of the latest Zenith color laptop computers for what may be the most strenuous torture test I can devise. So far he loves it. Stay tuned for details.

Next month promises to be even more hectic than this: Roberta and I celebrate our thirty-fifth anniversary with a trip to Victoria, British Columbia. This time, we can afford to stay in the Empress Hotel instead of just hiking up there to have breakfast. On the way, we'll visit the Microsoft campus.

For More Information

I recommend Applied Statistical Forecasting ($39.95) for those who want to know a lot more about the subject. If you just want to use forecasting models, Forecast Pro ($595; Forecast Pro XE, $995) is still the best program of its kind I know of. Contact Business Forecast Systems, 68 Leonard St., Belmont, MA 02178, (617) 484-5050; fax (617) 484-9219.

Braincel ($249; $99 special until October 30) is about as painless an introduction to neural networks as I know. Contact Promised Land Technologies, Inc., 195 Church St., Eighth Floor, New Haven, CT 06510, (800) 243-1806 or (203) 562-7335; fax (203) 624-0655.

DisplayMate for Windows ($79; DisplayMate Professional, $249; Standard DisplayMate, $149) will help you tune your monitor to its best possible performance. Contact Sonera Technologies, P.O. Box 565, Rumson, NJ 07760, (800) 932-6323 or (908) 747-6886; fax (908) 747-4523.

Elastic Reality (Windows, $495; Mac/Power Mac, $349.95; Silicon Graphics, $2995) produces effects on a Mac with QuickTime that I wouldn't have believed you could get without a Silicon Graphics system. Contact Elastic Reality, Inc., 925 Stewart S t., Madison, WI 53713, (608) 273-6585; fax (608) 271-1988.

If you want your computer to see you--as for instance in a video-interactive conference--Flexcam ($595; Flexcam Pro for S-Video, $795) is a good tool to do it with. Contact VideoLabs, Inc., 10925 Bren Rd. E, Minneapolis, MN 55343, (612) 897-1995; fax (612) 897-3597.

If you like storyboarding, you'll like Inspiration (introductory price of Windows version, $129; Mac version, $295). Contact Inspiration Software, 2920 Southwest Dolph Court, Suite 3, Portland, OR 97219, (800) 877-4292 or (503) 245-9011; fax (503) 246-4292.

Libraries and institutions only can subscribe to Lightbinders' Journal of Biological Chemistry CD-ROM (call for price) by contacting ASBMB, 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814, (301) 530-7154; fax (301) 571-1824.

If I were going to set out to build an investment expert system, I'd want NeuroVe$t Journal (U.S., $85 per year; Canada, $90 per year; international, $95 per year; subscription price includes a disk with 20 years of data on the stock market). Contact NeuroVe$t Journal, P.O. Box 764, Haymarket, VA 22069, phone and fax (703) 754-0696.

Once it's installed, Norton Desktop for Windows ($179) works quite well. It's much more intuitive than Program Manager, and it sure is loaded with features, including a virus checker. Contact Symantec Corp., 10201 Torre Ave., Cupertino, CA 95014, (800) 441-7234 or (503) 334-6054; fax (503) 334-7473.

Lightbinders' Protein Society's Protein Science Collection CD-ROM (call for price) is available from Cambridge University Press, Journals Dept., 40 West 20th St., New York, NY 10011, (212) 924-3900 ext. 334; fax (212) 691-3239.

I was never fond of Windows shells, but SideBar ($59.95) sure works, and I like it. Contact Quarterdeck Office Systems, 150 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405, (800) 354-3222 or (310) 392-4218; fax (310) 314-4217.

If you still use DOS and don't know about SideKick (DOS version, $69.95; Windows version, $29.95), you're missing somethi ng. Contact Borland International, 1800 Green Hills Rd., Scotts Valley, CA 95067, (408) 438-5300; fax (408) 439-9344.

UnInstaller 2 ($69.95) looks at your INI files, finds lines that reference nonexistent software, and gives you lots of warning before it actually wipes anything out. Contact MicroHelp, Inc., 4359 Shallowford Industrial Pkwy., Marietta, GA 30066, (800) 922-3383 or (404) 516-0899; fax (404) 516-1099.

The VideoTablet VTS-5 ($1495) makes for a painless way to experiment with and learn about pen control. Contact Kurta Corp., 3007 East Chambers St., Phoenix, AZ 85040, (800) 445-8782 or (602) 276-5533; fax (602) 276-9007.

Anybody can see that the ViewSonic 17 ($1045) is beautiful. The tilt stand works, the controls are right up front and computer-controlled, and it has an Energy Star rating. Contact ViewSonic, 20480 Business Pkwy., Walnut, CA 91789, (800) 888-8583 or (909) 869-7976; fax (909) 869-7958.

XCOM: UFO Defense (call for price) is addictive. You have been warned. Cont act MicroProse Software, 180 Lakefront Dr., Suite 120, Hunt Valley, MD 21030, (800) 879-7529 or (410) 771-1151; fax (410) 771-1174.

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Jerry Pournelle holds a doctorate in psychology and is a science fiction writer who also earns a comfortable living writing about computers present and future. Jerry welcomes readers' comments and opinions. Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Jerry Pournelle, c/o BYTE, One Phoenix Mill Lane, Peterborough, NH 03458. Please put your address on the letter as well as on the envelope. Due to the high volume of letters, Jerry cannot guarantee a personal reply. You can also contact him on the Internet or BIX at jerryp @bix.com.