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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (35259)	11/4/1998 4:08:00 PM
From: IceShark	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Cobalt, Ever heard of Lotus or that other softy ripoff program? Have your son set it up since you have probably lost all clues about math since being "educated" in law. -g- Only takes about an hour, tax effect included, if you are not to fussy about format. Regards, Ice

To: Ilaine who wrote (35259)	11/4/1998 4:37:00 PM
From: accountclosed	Respond to of 132070

Coby I am in the minority of people who have stuck by Lotus 1-2-3 instead of changing to Microsoft Excel. I actually have both on all of my computers as Excel is part of Microsoft Office. Whenever I use Excel (when forced) I find that they are quite similar. Nearly feature for feature. I will be speaking about 1-2-3, so if I say something that doesn't have an appropriate translation to Excel, perhaps some expert will speak out. I also disclaim that I am not familiar with "Vorton". Lotus actually does crunch the numbers for you in "SmartMaster". A SmartMaster is basically a spreadsheet where they have already created a framework and all you do is fill in certain blanks. The list of SmartMasters on SmartSuite 97 starts out 1. Amortize a Loan 2. Calculate Loan Payments 3. Create a Personal Budget 4. Create a Territory Sales Plan. I don't use many of these, but I have used the "Amortize a Loan" template often. It is a simple matter to fill in a couple blanks: the amount of the loan, the rate, the length of the loan, and the beginning month and year of the loan. It figures out the payment amount and gives a summary of the amortization. You have the option if you want to get into the program of designing your own sheets, too, which is what I almost always do. In Lotus there are "@" functions. To sum a series of numbers, one uses "@sum". In the windows versions, there are also smart icons that sum numbers and perform many functions. In the case of an amortization, the function @pmt applies to get the amount of a payment. I know this mind sound ridiculously complex to a non-user, but three arguments apply: amount of loan, interest rate per period, and number of periods. So a 30 year amortization on a 200,000.00 loan at 6.5 percent would be @pmt(200000,.065/12,360) which my spreadsheet tells me is 1264.14. There is almost no learning curve to the SmartMasters, but there is one for the formulas. There is on-line documentation. The real payoff to me though is when you get far along enough to set up your own way of looking at problems with your own structure. Hope this helps ant