Mosaic's New 1-2-3 Twin Runs Under Windows
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Giving Windows users choice of spreadsheet program other than
Excel, Mosaic Marketing has ported its Lotus 1-2-3-like Twin
program to the Microsoft Windows environment. The new Twindows is
a direct port of Mosaic's character-based Twin spreadsheet to
Windows.
 
Like its predecessors, Twindows is completely data- and
keystroke-compatible with 1-2-3, but it also offers a
graphical interface using dialog boxes and a mouse. Twindows
can share data with any other Windows application through the
clipboard or through dynamic data exchange (DDE), and it can be
left lying around on the desktop while another application is
called up.
 
Twindows supports several capabilities found in the newer
versions of 1-2-3 (Release 3 and 2.2) but not in 2.01. These
include cell linking to external files for spreadsheet
consolidation, an undo-last-command function, background
recalculation, and sparse matrix memory management. Twindows
also incorporates minimal recalculation and a macro recorder
(which are available in Release 3, 2.2, and via the SpeedUp and
Learn add-ins for 2.01).
 
Mosaic has added some features not found in 1-2-3, including a
page-preview mode that lets users see up to 132 columns by 43
rows in the screen, and the ability to assign colors to cells
based on their content. Twindows offers 8 graph types with
selectable type styles and fonts; it can send output to all
Windows-supported printers, Mosaic said. File import/export
capabilities include Lotus .WK1 format, Supercalc3 version 2.1
through Supercalc4 version 1.10, Visicalc, DIF, CSV, and ASCII,
but not Microsoft Excel's .XLS format.
 
Twindows will operate on a 640K-byte PC XT or compatible, but
Mosaic recommends a 286 or 386 computer. It also requires
Windows version 2.11, which must be purchased separately.
Mosaic spokesperson Rebekah Mazzaferro said Twindows offers
performance comparable to the company's other Twin
spreadsheets, which are somewhat slower than 1-2-3. The product
will be shipping around the time of Comdex and will list for
$349, the company said.
 
Contact: Mosaic Marketing, 1972 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge,
MA 02140; (617) 491-2434.
 
                              --- Andy Reinhardt
 
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