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Preface: Almost all of these programs can be installed on either Windows 3.x or 95. A few provide separate programs for each Windows version. Typically, you'll need a good 486DX system, color monitor, CD player and sound system, to take full advantage of the various multimedia and tutorial features. Editor
Gazebo Gardens is a CD-based gardening perennial, illustrated encyclopedia produced by Custom Software Innovations. This CD based guide will let you search a data base of 502 varieties of perennials, with multiple selection choices including: 1) bloom period, 2) flower color, 3) plant height, 4) soil conditions, 5) soil pH, 6) sun and 7) planting zone. In addition, searches can be made using: 1) scientific name, 2) common name or by thumbnail pictures displayed on panes of 15 at a time. Thus you could search for a plant suitable for Zone 9, with red flowers, that grows about 20" high, blooms in July, in moist soil with a pH of 7. When your search is completed, the information is displayed in a well organized format, complete with all of the plant's vital statistics, a full color picture, and a scrolling textbox containing information on the plant's care and propagation. In addition, with a simple click of a button, you can hear the scientific name of the plant pronounced for you. By stating certain characteristics, you can design your own unique garden layout, taking into account the amount of light, water, soil conditions, maintenance level, etc.
This program could prove valuable to the home gardener interested in learning more about perennials. However, out of the thousands of varieties of perennials existing, this data base of 502 total includes only 208 varieties suited for Growing Zone 9, the Gulf Coast area. My main concern is the quality of the pictures which for the most part are dark and slightly fuzzy. This has been brought up by others because it is mentioned in the Q&A section of the help screen. None of the suggestions given in the Answers seemed to make much difference. All of these images are .BMP 45K format (210x210 pixels) which become extremely out of focus if enlarged using one of the graphics conversion programs. According to the instructions, there should be a choice of printing either text or picture. Actually, both print in a nicely formatted page with picture at top followed by all pertinent descriptions, but there is no way to change printer properties from within the program. For more info go to http://members.aol.com/gazebog/order.htm.
Tom Robb is a HALPC member and Past President of the Harris County Master Gardener Association. He can be reached at trobb@halpc.org.
The Home Improvement Encyclopedia (HIE) by Books that Work provides a range of typical home projects - large to small - and useful options to understand both the project and the tools/materials needed to successfully complete it. It covers both home improvements and repairs. This software requires Netscape Navigator 2.0 or above to move within this program, but you won't be connected to the Internet unless you choose to do so. (HIE requires only the browser component of Netscape to work.)
HIE is easy to use, covers a multitude of home improvement topics, generally uses layman's jargon, and adequately defines job specific terminology. Topics contain text and may include photos, illustrations, videos or animations. The "Springboard to the Web" features home-related web sites and provides a site-update connection on the Web…giving you a dynamic extension to your HIE.
There are two types of applets: Selectors and Estimators. Selectors are databases that allow you to select project materials based on your individual needs. For example, the Paint Selector screen will let you select: interior, material: wood/ type: floor/Paint must: survive heavy wear and with these criteria recommend Alkyd Floor and Deck Enamel. Estimators calculate the amount of material you need for a project. The Wallpaper Estimator screen asks for room measurements, number of doors, windows, etc. and calculates the total sq. ft. required.
The nine major topics covered via friendly main menu: Essentials, House Structures, Plumbing, Electrical & Phone, Decks, Yard Structures, Landscape, Tool Dictionary and Applets. The Essentials topic includes seven subtopics: Emergencies, Safety, Wear & Tear, Carpentry, Painting, Heating & Cooling, and Working with a Pro. Looking at subtopic Carpentry you can examine Lumber, Sawing & Sanding, Hammers & Nails, and Other Fasteners. Under Sawing & Sanding there are four animations showing hand sawing, hand sawing to perfection, power saw safety and power saw kickback. If you do the math, you will find over a thousand unique subject areas explored.
The "Springboard to the Web" feature also provides an update connection on the Web…giving you a dynamic extension to your HIE. You'll also find some good sources at http://vg.com/Magazine-Rack/TOH/.
Here is a novel feature: Home Inspector Interview. After the "interview" you are given a list of things-to-do. By clicking on the Inspector's suggestion, you are taken directly to the appropriate project.
The HIE contains what I would accept as good home maintenance practices. It is a sound reference for the novice (especially so with the videos and animations) and supports the more experienced homeowner with ideas and techniques that may have silently slipped away over the years. I would recommend reviewing the areas discussing what to do when the power goes off — before the power goes off! For more info go to http://www.btw.com.
Harold Spangler is a HAL-PC member and homeowner and has completed many of the home improvement courses conducted by Houston Community College. He can be contacted at hgsbu54@hal-pc.org.
Multicom Publishing sends you browsing through 147 outstanding rooms illustrating the major decorating styles. This CD includes 3D visual/audio tours with specific instructions on "how to" decorate. The various "tours" (actual homes, not animations) include basics of good design, wall treatments, flooring styles, color schemes and lighting effects.
This is a very good beginner's introduction to interior decorating, filled with a wide array of design suggestions and solutions. By viewing the various and the variety of different treatments, the individual is able to visualize numerous approaches to decorating challenges. The viewing options include browsing through a variety of homes and rooms with a virtual reality approach. The rooms come "alive" as the user is able to scan from floor to ceiling, and progress from room to room, as if actually walking through them - taking in all the details.
The user can focus on as many as 47 specific rooms, including audio that describes how to achieve the "look" shown. The room views include flooring, window treatments, styles of decor and wall treatments. The descriptions of each area are elaborated on in great detail. This helps the user to easily apply the information to their own personal setting. This program covers Design Basics which includes texture, creating balance, furniture arranging, mixing patterns and using color. As the user explores these areas, they will discover a myriad of details to apply to their own given setting. The texture provides ideas for utilizing visual as well as tactile textures to create interest. Creating balance provides ideas for visually balancing furniture and accessories. Furniture Arranging includes a lot of good ideas for creating interesting furniture settings that can be easily transferred to the user's own room. There are also a number of ideas on mixing patterns of fabric to create interest in an otherwise uninteresting room. With the information on color, the user is provided with wonderful tools for utilizing a variety of color combinations that can create interest in a variety of room settings…or, challenges!
The entire program is in full, living color, so it truly comes alive to the viewer. This is a most exciting tool for the beginning decorator to source ideas from. I would highly recommend it since it is extremely informative, practical and very entertaining. For more info go to http://www.multi-com.com.
Sarajane L. Eisen, owner of Eisen Interiors, is an Instructor of Interior Design at Lamar University and she can be contacted at batsonsl@hal.lamar.edu.
This is an excellent tool, from Softdesk Products, for a small to large landscape contractor. It loads easily. It starts easily. The tutorial is excellent. The concept is superb. The tutorial seems to show the promise of great things that might be done for a variety of projects at different experience levels.
I do not think a Harry or Harriet homeowner would take the time to become proficient at the program. Although, with some effort, this program could be a valuable tool to assist them in visualizing if what they expect may be what they will actually get. I do not think the typical homeowner would have a knowledge of what plants to use and where. That is, they would lack the knowledge of what to use in the sun, shade, next to a wall or a walk, what to plant in different drainage areas or what was good in their geographic area.
However, to make the program easier to use you can place everything using "drag and drop". In addition, there is a unique "Grow" feature so you can see how your landscape will look several years later. For lighting, you can determine where you want the shadows cast. There are a number of predefined house, roof, exterior wall finishes, etc. to obtain a quick "generic" house around which you can install various landscape features. There are a number of different menus from which these features can be selected, such as Trees, Plants, (some basic) Lights, Human Figures, Surface Materials, etc. The actual 3D rendering is rather modest, but would do as an approximation of the finished job. Is this program for Harry or Harriet? "Yes", but only if they spend some time to learn the initial layout procedures and will be satisfied with a basic visual rendering. "No" if they want something more finished and closer to the actual, finished product.
On the other hand, a small to large landscape contractor could utilize this as a wonderful tool to sell its products or services. Take a picture of a client's home, office, etc. before with a digital camera and then superimpose the finished product you'd have them reaching for their checkbooks and asking when will it be completed.
Additionally it would, in my opinion, take a minimum of eight hours for a computer literate person to get to do some rudimentary things with the program, and most likely a great deal of practice or say forty hours plus to get to the first level of proficiency. This program works under either Windows 3.x or 95. This program is a keeper. For more info go to http://www.softdesk.com.
Paul Gross, a HAL-PC member, is President and Chief Designer of Illumascape, Inc., a high end exterior illumination firm headquartered in Houston. He is owns Ace Springs Tree Farm, a wholesale tree nursery. Visit his web site at http://www.illumascape.com or contact him at pgross@illumascape.com.
This useful program of gardening information, from Electric Mulch Ltd., is a good example of what CD databases can do. With this tool you can access over 12,000 pages of gardening information (300 megs) with only a small 200K footprint on your hard disk. This Windows 3.1 program is relatively easy to install if you read the directions but requires some planning to use since it takes 4 minutes to load every time you use it. (With a 2x CD player).
Mary Bolack of Electric Mulch Ltd. is a Master Gardener volunteer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She became interested in collecting the kind of information available through local County Extension Agents on a national basis. In her spare time (apparently quite a lot of it) she has scanned and downloaded 3,000 documents from more than 60 sources into a runtime version of Caere Corporation's Pagekeeper program. The resulting application is called "The Ultimate Garden Tool," subtitled, "A Searchable Reference Collection." This remarkable collection can be accessed by searches and through a simple folder structure.
What you see as a result of your search is a black and white scanned image and/or a text file of a fact sheet from any of various government, Internet, and institutional sources. These are not technical documents but consumer oriented explanations of how to plant and care for fruits, vegetables, trees, and ornamental plants of many kinds. You can use an arrow button to go right to the word you were searching for and you may be able to select a document written in your own area of the country since the document list is annotated with the source of the material. When you find your information you can copy it to the clipboard, print it, or fax it from the program. You can't add any information of your own. For that you would need the full version of Pagekeeper. (list $195.00)
Hobby gardeners, nurserymen, libraries, and all persons supplying gardening information to others should consider buying this reference. It could save the inquiring gardener a lot of time web-surfing, making phone calls, and sending e-mail. Information taken from other areas of the country about your problem should be confirmed by your local county agent or nursery, but many techniques of gardening apply everywhere.
The usefulness of this information is not likely to be outdated soon. Gardening methods do not change as rapidly as computer systems. Bolack is planning to update and enlarge "The Ultimate Garden Tool" by adding color illustrations.
This is a niche product, not mass produced, no fancy packaging and the price is $95. If you would like a six-foot shelf of practical gardening information that fits inside a jewel case, this is the software for you. For more info and an on-line demo go to http://www.hortsoft.com.
Paul Downs is a HAL-PC member, its CorelDraw SIG leader and produces advertising for Teas Nursery including their website at http://www.teasnursery.com . He can be contacted at 713/871-0454 or madriguy@hal-pc.org.
Installation is typical of Softdesk Products - straight forward, easy and automatically sets up for you.
This program is ideal for the do-it-yourself homeowner-designer who wants to actively explore the basic programmatic and room layout options involved in the design of a home. Although the program may also support design efforts for small offices or related projects, the furniture templates are primarily designed for residential layouts. Simplified landscape shapes and textures for outdoor design projects are included. This program is primarily designed to assist with visualizing floor plan options, and not for the production of construction documents or blueprints.
The basic program is well designed and clearly documented. Users can proceed quickly to designing their own layouts from scratch, or can use any of the 500 editable home designs provided via CD format as a starting point. Navigation through the program is facilitated by the now-familiar toolbars, pull-down menus, and the ubiquitous Help menu familiar to all Windows users. This reviewer estimates that it will take roughly eight hours (which includes learning time) to convert the typical "thumbnail sketch" produced by a prospective homeowner on a napkin into a plan and ultimately a rendered perspective.
Two features of this program are especially worth noting. First, the Virtual and Interactive walk-throughs provide the user with the opportunity to see the proposed spaces in moderately-detailed perspective views. A series of separate views can be interactively linked along a virtually unlimited axis to provide a real-time tour. Likewise, a "fully" rendered view of each room using user-selected textures, colors, and furnishings allow the user to anticipate the final results of the design effort. These two features are important to prospective users since, despite the general familiarity of the public with the techniques of "movie magic", interactive promotional displays, and related graphic modelling advances, it seems that most persons still have difficulty in visualizing the spatial content of architectural drawings - even those of their own making. The virtual graphics greatly enhance the design effort.
Another real strength of Home Design Suite 3D is the integral database function. This feature not only allows for painless area take-offs and quantity surveys of the resulting design, but also keys the drawing to a cross-indexed set of fields that manage and provide reports on the various symbols used in the design. These reality-checks are invaluable in converting the drawings into meaningful information such as square footages of select areas, room perimeters, or other dimensional data of immediate interest to the "other" real-world design team members: architect, contractor and loan officer. For more info go to http://www.softdesk.com.
Blaine Kemendo is President of Inter-Urban Development Company, a Houston based architect and management consultant firm.
Sponsored by the folks at Home Depot and produced by Multicom Development, this home projects CD says: "Warning: Do not install this disc in a power saw." Yep, that's the first words I saw when I opened the box. Home Depot has a sense of humor! Basically, this program is a guide to various home improvement projects from a deck to a phone outlet and putting in a new water faucet and how to weather condition your home. The Windows 95 install was a snap - the easiest project. Navigating this program is easy - just couldn't be more obvious. The table of contents (main menu page) is a cut away of a house. To find projects and information on a particular area, just click on that part of the house - ceilings and walls, plumbing, exterior maintenance, etc. I tried cabinets and countertops. A lady appears in the ever familiar Home Depot apron giving the topic's introduction in an encouraging way and some wit too. Also a tape measure appears at the bottom of every screen. Click on the tape and out pops the tape with help, print, sound and quit. Next comes a good picture of the tools needed and the identity of each one. Then I tried countertops, a sequence of 14 pages. On the right side of the screen I was presented with choices, such as the skill scale, things you'll need and work smarter…great for this novice. For instance, when I went to the skill scale, I was informed that the installation of an 8' long countertop would take two hours if I were experienced, three if I were at an intermediate skill level and three and one-half if a rank beginner. But back to the project…all 14 info-packed pages! Each picture is detailed and the explanations of "how to" are well written and understandable. At the bottom of each page is a "more info" box. As a novice I pressed for each page hoping to see a more detailed explanation. The "more info" was actually a repeat of the same page. It explained the anatomy of a ceramic countertop. This was the only negative I found in the program. At each page I can click on the any of the various options as well as print anything I see. That is very much a plus - take it to the store to buy and to your project while completing it.
This is an very good program for most skill levels, especially for a novice. It is helpful in both the planning and execution states of your project. For more info go to http://www.multicom.com.
Ginny Hinz is a HAL-PC member and home handyperson who can be contacted at dustyvth@hal-pc.org.
Version 2.0, by Books that Work, should be useful to both the serious gardener and the occasional home "landscaper" who might buy $100 or less a year. Why? Rather than being an "encyclopedia" in the typical sense of the word, this program is more of a very informative guide to various plants and shrubs and some trees. As for installation, I barely noticed it until it was complete and I clicked on the icon.
The initial menu-page provides five areas of information from Getting Started to Buying… and Plants for Every Persuasion and a sixth choice of an alphabetical list of plants. The "help" options at the bottom range from an excellent Name search (I entered "peo" and found all the various Peony plants, for instance) to an extensive characteristics Search function that presents an extensive "criteria" menu where you select from various characteristics from nine categories for plant color, temperature zone, type of soil, season, etc. It allowed multiple selections within a category for the more discerning gardener, and a photo album, plant list, names and web sources.
I'll use Peonys as an example. Each plant or shrub page has what I call "seed packet" information. That is, general information about the plant, and some very basic attributes about the plant: height, origin, growing season, soil, etc. The information is a bit brief and not as complete or instructive as the casual user might find useful. For instance, the Attributes page should have the temperature zone, water requirements, etc. There is scant mention of these on the individual plant's initial page. Different folks have different commitments to their garden and this would be helpful in determining how much "fiddle with" time is required. There's also nothing on dormant season care, such as pruning and when to replant bulbs.
However, there is more than adequate information to help even the novice make intelligent selections and the program provides an audio pronouncing of each plant's Latin name, a provision for making a list of plants, and a way for you to write notes about individual selections. Of course, any of these may be printed. Navigation through the program is simple and direct - no problem in knowing where to find plants or things of interest to you. For instance, there is an option Photo Album. Simply click on an individual picture and you'll see the individual plant's "home" page for more details. For more info go to http://www.btw.com or call 1-800-242-4546.
Lloyd Mabry is a HAL-PC member and home gardener who can be contacted at sirhc@hal-pc.org.
Now that you've completed your "honeydo" project…
Bon Appetit!
When I first saw this program, I thought, "Of what use is a computer cookbook? Who has counter space to spare for a computer?" The Williams-Sonoma Guide to Good Cooking, by the Broderbund Software, is for anyone who loves to cook or eat delicious cooking! Many who appreciate good kitchen equipment are (should be) familiar with the Williams-Sonoma name. I assiduously avoid these stores because every time I go into one, I see too many things I can't live without.
The software is a treat for the eyes, with gorgeous color photography, and it contains a wealth of information: 1000 recipes, a comprehensive Glossary, a Menu Planner, and three different ways tosearch for a recipe. It even has nutritional information about each recipe and you can print the recipe and shopping list! Each recipe lists the kitchen equipment needed plus little movies on how-to-do things such as Carve a Prime Rib Roast or Roll Out a Pizza Crust. It will automatically adjust the quantity of each ingredient when you change the "number served".
As with most cookbooks, it tries to be all things to all cooks, and includes many very elementary items, which can be good or not, depending on your expertise. The feature that makes this program so handy is that you can print the recipe, use it once, and then trash it, thus eliminating spotting your cookbook. I liked the handy "Favorite Recipes" feature into which you can copy any recipe from the A to Z Index (but you can't add your own recipes). There are some surprising omissions. Since I am partial to Cajun style cooking, and we see a lot of it here in Houston, I looked for Cajun and Creole recipes in the alphabetical Index. Yes, there were a few. No, they were NOT authentic. The Red Beans & Rice called for tomato sauce, which no self-respecting Cajun would dream of including; nor was Roux included, which is basic.
Overall, I think the plusses outweigh the minuses, and the program is a good choice, especially for the inexperienced cook. Carolyn
My co-reviewer and I are at opposite ends of the cooking spectrum. Carolyn is an excellent chef whereas I am interested in simplicity and speed. Also, if you are like me and "simple and delicious" means microwave, this program is not for you. Good cooking is what this is program is about; however, I could not find the word microwave anywhere! The Menu Planner section lists an incredible number of menu ideas for the novice to the experienced host. A Vegetarian Feast for 12 menu caught my attention. It was easy to print out the recipes for soup, side dish, main course and dessert. Each gave a list of ingredients, preparation and cooking times and number served. Recipes include a handy notecard feature for those cooks who like to personalize their recipes. I do have a quibble with the printouts. If the recipe required a chicken and/or vegetable stock, I received the instructions for these basics whether I wanted them or not. My other quibble is that it was a pain to have to change my display setting and restart Windows 95 to view this program, then change the settings back. Loved the ideas and information. Get it and enjoy! Ann
Ann Tornay, a HAL-PC member and is an accomplished hostess. Carolyn Barrar is a well respected regional cook and food editor for a monthly publication.
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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