Intuit Stands Out for Its Flexibility, Low Cost

With just a few days left until Christmas, what could be better than finding a real software bargain and a low-priced computer to run it on?

The software I have in mind is a fully integrated package with a simple database, easy spreadsheet and word processing that can be merged with mailing lists, all for $39.95.

The program, Intuit IS 2000, is published and sold by Noumenon Corp., 512 Westline Drive, Alameda, Calif. 94501; (415) 521-2145.

Intuit is suitable for home and small-business users and is especially good for new computer users. It is not aimed at so-called power users, nor the corporate marketplace. I found it refreshingly iconoclastic in design--once I was able to put aside some strong prejudices against Intuit because it doesn’t conform to the usual way of doing things on a PC.

Intuit is not only cheap to buy but cheap to use because it will run on the lowest-priced IBM PC or PC compatible you can find. All it takes is 256 kilobytes of RAM, or operating memory, and two floppy drives. (It takes 384K of RAM if you want to run Intuit under the MS-DOS operating system, which isn’t necessary but is desirable if you have a hard disk.)

Intuit acts as its own operating system--with or without DOS. It doesn’t create individual DOS files of your various word processing documents, spreadsheets and database lists. Instead, the entire diskette on a floppy system or DOS subdirectory on a hard disk is treated as if it were a single file. What you would normally think of as files--the separate elements you create and work with--are just units of text or numeric data within this large single file.

One immediate advantage of the Intuit system is that you can name your Intuit files with sentences or phrases up to 67 characters long. (I’ll call them Intuit files to distinguish them from standard DOS files, which are limited to 11-character names.)

You also can freely arrange Intuit files into Intuit directories and subdirectories organized any way you wish. The result is that it is easier to find things the Intuit way.

This sort of flexibility characterizes every aspect of the program. Because every element is part of a much larger whole, you can move or copy most anything most anywhere most anytime.

To help you do that, all of the program commands can be executed with the 10 PC function keys, and the commands are the same no matter which mode of Intuit you are using.

The word processing mode allows you to set predetermined printing formats, augmented by a series of “dot command” formatting instructions that you type above the appropriate text. You don’t see the formatting on the screen, however, until you print the document. It is basic word processing--no multiple columns on a page, spell checking, thesaurus or proportional-spaced type.

The spreadsheet function is not as sophisticated or powerful as Lotus 1-2-3, but very usable nonetheless. It allows creation of a table of data up to 200 rows deep and 65 columns across. Each row and column can be named, and mathematical functions are performed by referring to those names.

For instance, imagine a simple table of monthly sales figures listed by salespersons’ names. To compute the monthly totals you need only type “Add Charles thru Wilma = Total,” assuming that Charles was the first salesperson and Wilma the last. To find the total sales by salesperson the command would be “Add Jan thru Dec = Year.”

It’s an easy and logical way to manipulate data in a table, although it can get a bit cumbersome when you try to execute complex formulas.

If you run Intuit under DOS, you can import text files and ASCII database records from other programs and likewise move Intuit data into other programs.

Noumenon’s president, Martel Firing, has written a couple of interesting white papers, which are available for the asking, explaining the program’s conceptual basis and features.

I ran Intuit on a Tandon PCX-20 computer equipped with a 20-megabyte hard disk. Tandon, based in Chatsworth, recently began manufacturing computers under its own label after years as a major maker of disk drives.

That background has allowed Tandon to establish a firm foothold in the PC marketplace, perhaps faster than any other makers since IBM and Compaq. After marketing its machines in Europe since November, 1985, Tandon entered the U.S. market last July. It already has more than 700 dealers, including major chains such as Sears Business Centers, Entre, Pactel and about 100 ComputerLand stores, according to Mike Sanders, a Tandon spokesman.

The PCX is an evolution of the computer Tandon made for Radio Shack, which was marketed as the Tandy 1200. The original Tandy 1200 had some reliability problems, but Radio Shack contended that those were largely eliminated in its second version of the computer. It has since dropped the Tandy 1200 from its line.

Tandon engineers say that the circuitry of the Tandon PCX is two revisions improved over that of the original Tandy 1200, and my own inspection verified that the motherboards, the main circuit boards, of the two machines are different. The Tandon monitor is one of the best around, with a full 13-inch, diagonal, non-glare screen in green or amber with built-in tilt and swivel base.

The basic PCX-20 with 256K of RAM, a floppy disk drive and a 20-megabyte hard disk has a suggested retail price of $1,595. The monitor goes for $240 and the video adapter to drive it is $90.

The 10-megabyte PCX-10 sells for $1,295 plus monitor and adapter. Both are patterned after the IBM PC XT with Intel 8088 microprocessors running at 4.77 megahertz and with six full-size and one half-size expansion slots.

Tandon also offers four PC AT work-alike computers equipped with Intel 80286 microprocessors and dubbed the PCA, PCA-20, PCA-30 and PCA-40. Each comes with 512K of RAM, expandable to 1 megabyte, along with eight PC AT-compatible expansion slots and a 1.2-megabyte floppy disk drive.

The basic PCA, which has no hard disk drive, has a suggested retail price of $2,195. For an additional $300, you can get the PCA-20 with a 20-megabyte hard disk. The $2,995 PCA-30 and $3,395 PCA-40 offer 30- and 40-megabyte hard disks, respectively, and both feature 40-millisecond access times, about half that of the 20-megabyte drive.

All of the Tandon computers come with a one-year warranty as well as a MS-DOS 3.1 operating system and GW-BASIC programming language.

Computer File welcomes readers’ comments but regrets that the author cannot respond individually to letters. Write to Richard O’Reilly, Computer File, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.