A personal computer with many office applications

Chicago’s James P. Biers has discovered that his T/S1000 is a slide rule, calculator, desk-top planner, and more; and looks at business software.

When I started my business career, not so long ago, the slide rule and mechanical calculator were the mainstays of professional desktop computing power; but that was before the dawn of the integrated circuit. I can remember the day of my first electronic assistant, a $400 calculator that could add, subtract, multiply and divide. Oh yes, it also took square roots. Now 12 years later, we have at one quarter the price, a Timex Sinclair computer.

Although it is now possible to replace the electronic calculator with a remarkably priced desktop computer, is it worthwhile for the business person to make the change? Can tasks be done with ease at the office desk? Can the desktop computer take on some of the chores currently performed by mainframe or mini computers? The answers to these questions hinge on what work has to be done at the desk, on the time factors and on available software for the tasks at hand.

The first question you can resolve for yourself by an examination of your work needs. Ask yourself, “What do I do now that is time consuming or that I have to rely upon a data processing department to do for me, resulting in untimely information?” Secondly, you should examine whether having this work done at your desk would make you better informed, efficient and generally better able to do the remainder of your work.

Once you have looked at your job in this way, you should have an idea of where and how added computing power might help you. Next look at the process and information needed in these potential jobs for your Timex Sinclair. Simply put, the job to be done and the information required must match the capabilities of the machine.

A job that requires a large amount of stored data or access to the corporate base would probably not be a good choice for desktop processing. On the other hand, an examination of a cash flow and the discounting of the same to get a present value might well be an excellent choice.

Having made the decision for a desktop computer, you must either find packaged software or be able to write your own. Since your time and talents may not lie in the direction of software development, the package route may be your best bet.

Now let’s backtrack briefly to see how this task of examination and software selection might work. Imagine yourself employed by a firm that makes several products containing materials which must be purchased in the open market and whose prices tend to have wide swings from time to time. Imagine further that two primary functions of your job are predicting these price swings and the preparation of weekly reports on the current breakeven point for your company’s products.

As your first job requires access to a large data base and perhaps very involved math techniques, it may not be a good choice for desktop processing. There may also be strong arguments for consistency and for the need to avoid personal bias that will work against a decision for desktop processing of this job.

Your second job may, however, be an excellent choice for desktop computing. Although there might be several inputs to the breakeven equations, many of these may be relatively constant and be known for a month or even a year in advance, so that their frequency of change would be small. Such inputs might be labor, fixed machinery charges, insurance and the cost of other materials that may have stable prices or be under long term contract prices. The only changing inputs to the breakeven equations would consist of the materials that have wide price movements.

In this hypothetical situation, the materials price projections are not a good choice while breakeven analysis is a strong possibility for desktop computing. When reports are needed weekly, as in our given example, it would be convenient for you to have the desktop computing power. This would give you answers faster and more accurately than hand calculation methods and perhaps is more timely than submitting your information to a data processing department. Added advantages may be more flexible travel and meeting schedules because of either saved time over manual methods or in not having to meet input schedules of the data processing department. Also it may be possible to use even more current prices than at present, because of the lessened time now needed to prepare your reports.

Once you have decided you want desktop computing for your breakeven analysis, is there software available at a reasonable cost for the Timex Sinclair? The answer is yes. There is software that offers a breakeven analysis program as well as programs for examining cash flow problems and calculating depreciation and rates of return.

We have discussed one business application for the Timex Sinclair 1000. As people discover the substantial capabilities of this machine in the business area, they are seeking for more and more software. Programmers and software firms are producing it. This in turn leads to more business use and further software demand.

Currently the sources listed at the end of this article are offering business software. Among the substantial ones are Gladstone Electronics in Buffalo, New York, RUN-IT Software Club in Chicago, Illinois, and Softsync, Inc. in New York City.

I have authored two programs for business. Business Pac I is a comprehensive set of programs to help you manage your cash flow, measure your rate of return, keep track of depreciation and establish your production and sales breakeven levels. Business Pac II is for project scheduling and would be of assistance to anyone who needs to keep track of project hours, billings, variances and staff work loads. Soon to be released are a Personal Finance package that includes a check book/register program, a mortgage and rule of 78 loan program and net worth and budget programs. A personal investments package is also coming on the market. Most software companies are adding business or related packages to their line.

RUN-IT offers statistics for mean, standard deviation, regression and other analysis and data sorting, Real Estate Advisor to manage residential rental property and measure rales of return, and Computer Awareness series that teaches computer and programming concepts through sample programs. RUN-IT also offers a distinctly unique program called Graph-It which lets you enter an equation, its variables and constants as data without any programming. Graph-It analyzes the equation and plots the results in polar, or two or three dimensional form. This program would appear to have great applications in engineering, business, science, mathematics and teaching when you need to display a picture for clarity, impact or increased understanding. RUN-IT has plans for a financial assistance package called Market-Guru and a commercial real estate advisor program,

Softsync produces a program, “The Financial Manager and Record Keeper,” designed for small business budget management and record keeping. Their “Stock Market Calculator” was designed and written by an experienced stock market executive in conjunction with a leading brokerage firm. It contains three programs, Net Price Worksheet, Profit/Loss and Covered Write Worksheet. The first calculates commissions on stock and option investments. Profit/Loss uses the stock or option buy and sale prices to calculate commissions and net dollars and gives profit or loss. The third program is unique in the field. It allows you to try different prices and investment alternatives without having to reenter all data every time*

DATA-ASSETTE offers, among other programs Finance/Bank for maintaining check book balances, ZX99 TEXT (a word processor) and the Budget/Forecaster which assists in the preparation of personal budgets.

Budget/Forecaster lets you establish categories of income and fixed and variable expenses for a twelve month period. You may enter information by month or category, obtain a summary report and save the results on tape. A built-in calculator lets you work with your budget numbers without exiting the program.

The Timex Sinclair is undoubtedly a business machine. Its capabilities in this area will receive greater recognition as more software becomes available. The Timex Sinclair has a definite place in the office.