The Senior Collection |
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Although this software is helpful to seniors, it can be valuable to most anyone. There are two parts to this series. The August issue will conclude with reviews of: two travel-map programs, two finance/planning programs, a will/estate preparation program, and a program you probably won't want to buy! Editor Mayo Clinic Health Encyclopedia
Do you have a physician who talks with you? Do you take responsibility for your health care? Do you know the names of all your medications and why you take them? Do you know how to search the Internet and find out answers to specific medical problems?
If the answer is yes to all these questions, then you do not need to buy the Mayo Clinic Health Encyclopedia. Otherwise, you might wish to consider this multimedia approach to medicine. This four CD-ROM set consists of Family Health, Family Pharmacist, The Total Heart, and Sports and Health Fitness. I installed all four CDs on a Pentium machine running Windows 95. Installation was easy and consisted of placing the CD in the drive and looking for the setup icon under the D: drive (or whichever one is your CD drive). Full installation took approximately 23 megs of hard disk space.
Family Health: There is much to be admired on this CD. Particularly strong sections include an area where a personal medical history can be entered, and life cycles which addresses human development from the newborn to over age 65. Another helpful area was the FAQ section. This section, divided roughly by decades, addressed common questions about health, screening tests, and common diseases. Most importantly, the search tools were easy to use. I looked up spider bites and found a clinical description and a graphical presentation of what common spiders, bees and ticks look like. There was a poison section with a list of poisonous and non-poisonous house plants. Overall, this is a excellent source of information.
The Family Pharmacy: This CD is more than a list of drugs. It allows a person to enter a list of their medications, search by disease (and then lists the common drugs used to treat the disease), by drug name, by class, and by the physical description of the drug (shape of pill, numbering, color, etc.). My complaint is there was not enough detail. For instance, I entered rifampin and a commonly used oral contraceptive. It suggests there may be an effect but goes no further to tell what that effect may be. Personally, I would find this very frustrating if looking for a specific answer.
Sports Health and Fitness: This CD was done in conjunction with the ESPN network. That aside, this CD stands alone on its content and organization. It is set up so a person can individualize a conditioning or weight loss program, or seek a more healthy lifestyle. It allows a person to keep a journal and chart milestones in a workout program. I found the section on nutrition and general guide lines for sports injuries very helpful.
The Total Heart: This may be the strongest and most interesting of the four CDs. This is an in-depth look at the normal heart, diseases of the heart, medications, diet, and cardiac testing. The content of this disc rivals classes which are taught to nursing and paramedic students. If you have questions about your own heart and how to keep healthy, I highly recommend this CD.
The Problems: The potentially most important part of the Mayo Clinic Health Encyclopedia is the interface with the Internet. A copy of Netscape is included, which is linked to sites which supplement the material in the encyclopedia. I could not access this Internet because every time I tried I got a message saying "opening serial port" and my computer locked up requiring a re-boot. However, I have found the Internet a rich resource for answering medical questions. The quality of that information varies.
I can recommend this four disc set based on the enormous amount of information that is usable and its link to the Internet where more information is available.
Reviewing this makes me wonder about the state of multimedia for adult users. At this time, would you rather buy a book on a subject or a multimedia disc? Multimedia is not 10 cm people talking to you from the computer screen. I have at home Harrison's Textbook of Internal Medicine on CD-ROM. It is really no more than an information retrieval system whose strength is the ability to cross-reference search terms. It is really not something I pick up and browse still preferring a book. What I would like to see is a textbook of medicine which resembles Mayo Clinic's The Total Heart. This would include the ability to vary the level of information based on the users expertise so that anyone might be able to use it, real integration of sound, color still photos, statistics with corresponding references, video clips, and ties to the Internet and the National Library of Medicine.
The author can be reached at jg21154@intergate.com/.
Family History & Genealogy
Overview: This is a fun program that has you writing stories and making books. You can include graphics, audio, video, pictures and an assortment of special effects such as labels, notes and lines to dress up the pages and make it more interesting. I feel given enough time, most people can learn to use it.
I reviewed this software with the idea of using it with genealogy. I don't think that it would be a very good tool in this area. After really learning its ins and outs, I might revise my opinion.
System Requirements: 386 (486 recommended), Win 3.1 or higher, MS-DOS 5.0 or higher, 4MB RAM (but then you need a minimum swap file of 4MB to run so 8MB recommended), SVGA (256 colors) and a CD-ROM. They recommend a sound card but if you are going to use most of the features it is required.
Ease/Difficulty of Use: I'm sure that many would say that using it is easy. I found it easy to get started, but difficult to make changes. It does not come with a manual, relying on an on-screen help. Things were going fairly well until I wanted to make changes. I followed the directions and made most of the changes, while leaving links from one story to another with no way to delete them. It also doesn't explain very well that you have a right click menu that has many regular edit features such as cut and paste. I imported a text file and that worked fine. It was much larger than I wanted to keep so I tried undo. The text file disappeared but the pages it had added didn't. I kept trying to get rid of pages and they somehow kept multiplying! I tried to make changes in different ways. When I copied a story into its holding feature, I had no problems. When I copied pages, I couldn't make them be recognized as a story again.
Product Support: They give you 30 days support on installation questions for the cost of the long distance call. The only other information I had was on Premium Support. One was a Help Card where you buy 15 min for $24.95 or a toll-free number at $24.95 per call. Published by Delrina, with a street price of about $50.
Donna Le Noir is a HAL-PC member and Genealogy SIG Leader.
Overview: Finding a good genealogy program is not easy since they do NOT sell most of the genealogy programs in your local store. I have used a previous version of Family Tree Maker (from now on just called FTM/W) that was lacking in some areas, but Broderbund has improved this new version. This program is easy for genealogy beginners with its extensive on-line Genealogy "How-To" Guide. It takes you in stages through the information gathering process. They also detailed it enough to be of benefit to experienced genealogists.
System Requirements: This program will work with Win 3.1or Win 95. It requires a 386 or higher, 4 MB RAM, a CD-ROM, VGA display and 9 MB of free disk space. A 486 or higher with 8 MB RAM is recommended. I installed the program on my 486/75 laptop with 8 MG RAM and a 2x CD-ROM.
Basic Features: If you are not "into" genealogy, I should explain that you want to gather more than just names on your family members. The basic information needed is full names along with when and where everyone was born, married and died. FTM/W shows all of this information for husband and wife on one screen (the Family Page). It also lists the children by name, sex and birth date. Information on each child and the parents of the husband and wife is available by clicking labeled tabs at the right side of the screen. Buttons also lead you to more information such as multiple marriages, education, hobbies, medical history, addresses for those currently living, non-traditional families and 15 pages of freeform notes per person. The buttons now change appearance so that you can tell when you have entered information. This is just one improvement over earlier versions.
They say you can enter up to 2 million relatives. I'd have to say that would depend on the size of your hard drive. Each individual can have up to 99 spouses and you can enter up to 99 children for each marriage!
Features: Sources, where we need to keep accurate records, is an area that is all too often inadequate or difficult to use. FTM/W allows you to record your sources for 20 different fields in a text format that will hold more than 2400 bytes.
Data entry has been simplified by using a feature called "Fastfields." Fastfields remember the last 50 items you have entered in most fields, but not dates. As you start typing the name of a town previously entered, it automatically fills the rest of the letters for you. These names are in alphabetical order and Fastfields will refine its suggestions as you type and quits when it no longer has any logical choices to offer. Also, the first time you type in a "Children" list on a Family Page, the husband's last name is automatically inserted after the child's first name. You can turn off Fastfields if you wish, but who wants to do more typing than necessary?
The regular types of reports are available, but they can be generated based on searches such as anyone born, died or married in a particular location. Once you have created a report you can jump to anyone's Family Page by double clicking their name.
Multimedia: In the FTM/W Scrapbook you can include photos, video, audio, scanned documents and create on-screen slide shows. FTM/W supports Kodak Photo CD, TIFF and BMP files and OLE objects. This is an area that I could only briefly touch on, but I had no difficulty importing scanned images and bitmaps. I did not have any photo CDs to try. This is a new and rapidly growing part of genealogy.
Special Information: One interesting addition to FTM/W is the Family Archive CDs. These CDs hold information such as marriage record indexes, Social Security death benefit records, census indexes and some scattered mortality indexes, land records, military records and cemetery records. While this information can be very helpful to your research, I would not suggest that you buy FTM/W for these CDs. Most of this information is available through libraries or the Family History Centers. What I find much more interesting are the World Family Tree CDs. They contain family trees submitted by FTM/W users and other family history buffs and contain thousands of names. FamilyFinder Index comes on the same CD as the FTM/W program and you can use it to see if they have included any of your family in World Family Tree entries. Current literature offers two volumes at approximately $50 each.
Problems: I found several oddities when printing. Pedigree charts cannot be configured so you can get more than four generations on one page if you include birth, marriage and death. They have solved part of the problem by printing Family Group Sheets. Now you have the option of starting each person on a new page or printing continuously. Extraneous information still exists that I have found no way to turn off. When printing from the Genealogy "How-To," I could find no way to change the margins, which left about 1-1/2" top margin and 3/4" bottom margin. You can, however, copy items and paste them into your word processor.
Support and Price: When calling tech support at 510/794-6850, I was unable to get an answer through their automated system and could not find a way back to the main menu. I called back and the person I talked to gave me most of my answers, but left margin changes as a problem with my HP printer driver. [This may be a problem with Win95 HP printers/drivers - Micorosoft has a fix for this problem. Editor]
Street price is $84 to $100 from Broderbund Software.
Donna Le Noir is a HAL-PC member and Genealogy SIG Leader.
The Family Guide To Health And Medicine
Claims: Complete details and up-to-date listings about prescription and non-prescription drugs; Correct pronunciation of different medications; Phonetic search for a specific medication, even if you are not sure how it's spelled; Expanded image database enabling you to identify a given drug by its size, shape and color; Comprehensive first aid information and valuable life saving tips; Vaccinations, health alterts and requirements for travelers, featuring continental and world wide maps; In-depth section demonstrating methods of administering and taking different medications; Thorough drug interaction section listing possible complications in combining different medications; Abused drug sections including names of illicit drugs, signs of abuse, abuse hotlines and more; and Full-color illustrations, displaying hundreds of pills, capsules, tablets and more.
Sounds good, doesn't it? At this point, it's important to note that healthcare practitioners of every description, and federal, state, and local governments spend countless hours and dollars trying to educate the public on the proper use of medications and general health awareness. A software publication that could assist in this effort would be greatly appreciated by everyone. The box claims can be divided into two catagories, information that could directly impact your health (drug information, drug interactions, and first aid) and information that's interesting, but not necessarily critcal (pictures, pronunciation, phonetic search).
What was wrong with the important stuff? The information provided seemed to be incomplete in quantity and quality, sometimes misleading and occasionally absolutely wrong. The drug list was far from "complete", therefore the drug interactions portion of the program cannot be complete. The first aid section does not follow the current literature. For instance, it suggested that after a snake bite you identify the kind of snake by the bite marks, then take the appropriate action. Current teachings suggest that if you are bitten by any animal, you should seek medical attention immediately, and let the professionals worry about identification and treatment . The life saving hints include instructions to "evaluate" a victim you find unconsious, then call for emergency help. Current teachings (again) say to call for emergency help immediately, time is of the essence, then evaluate and assist the victim to the best of your ability (help is already on the way).
Why I didn't pay much attention to the bells and whistles? I examined and quickly discounted the pronunciation, phonetic search, and color illustrations. If you are using a product, you have it in your hand, so you don't need a picture; its name is on the product or the label and phonetic pronunciation will be adequate. In the State of Texas, if you have a prescription product in your possession that was not prescribed for you, you may be committing a felony, so I don't think you would use this software to identify unknown medications (this is just one of the many reasons you should never use other people's medicine). Licensed professionals, in the course of their work, are exempt from this law, and their reference manuals and computer software are much more complete, so take your mystery medications to your pharmacist or physician.
I applaud the effort, and the presentation was nice, but I would have to seek a more comprehensive product.
Conclusion: Save your money. Wait for a new release or check into other products.
If you wish to read about a prescription or non-prescription drug, go to any pharmacy and ask to see Advice for the Patient Vol II, USPDI, a manual they keep just for you, and also ask to see their copy of Drug Fact and Comparisons (the bible among drug information specialists). If you need a medication identified, take it to your pharmacist; if he or she can not identify it after checking available reference books, ask your pharmacist to call the Poison Control Center for assistance. For first aid and life saving instructional aide call the American Red Cross, and the American Heart Association. For information on vaccinations, health alerts, and requirements for travel, contact your physician, the Center for Disease Control (Atlanta, Georgia) or look for a publication called The Medical Letter available at you physician's office or at a medical school library. (In Houston, that would be the Jones Library, in The Texas Medical Center.)
System Requirements: Windows 3.1, Minimum 4 MB RAM, 5 MB hard drive space, mouse, VGA display, CD-ROM drive and sound card. Published by Software Marketing Corporation. Street price about $49.
John Foshee, HAL-PC #75, is a registered pharmacist and a systems analyst in both mainframe and PC environments.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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