As preparations begin to celebrate MicroPro International’s three millionth WordStar user, the Wimbledon-based UK end of the San Rafael, California company has, as reported briefly (CI No 763), brought out two new add-on memory resident programs: Boost, designed to enhance WordStar and other applications software, and Graph-in-the-Box, a business graphics product. MicroPro stresses that Boost – developed by Developed Software Products – offers useful features to the user, including reminders, time and date, calculator and an address book. Boost reads and writes to the word processor screen, allowing snippets to be transfered to the main program. Similary any part of the screen can be printed without using the normal print routines. Boost, running under MS-DOS 2.0 and above, takes 52Kb of RAM above the normal requirements of the application software and can be used on IBM Personals, XTs, ATs and compatibles. MicroPro’s second release is Graph-in-the-Box, capable of plotting up to 15 sets of data in any combination. It captures information from text on screen to be turned into graphs, step charts, pie charts or scatter diagrams. Also for the Personalike gamut, Graph-in-the-Box uses 128Kb of RAM over and above usual requirements and can support most dot matrix and laser printers, plotters and screen types. MicroPro now has exclusive rights to distribute the product, originally developed by Ide Data in Sweden, in the UK, Ireland, West Germany and Italy. The company also took the opportunity to announce further updates of WordStar 2000 and WordStar Professional adding that WordStar Professional Release 4 CP/M-80, with over 120 enhancements, has already sold 100,000 copies in its first 100 days. Celebrations of WordStar’s three millionth sale will be going on throughout September and October when all UK purchasers of WordStar Professional and 2000 Plus will have the chance to win an Eastern Delights Holiday and other prizes. Existing users haven’t been forgotten and will qualify for the draw if they re-register. Meanwhile September 28 sees the opening of a new MicroPro training school for end users. Boost is now available for UKP39.95 while Graph-in-the-Box is UKP119 plus VAT and will be on sale from October 1.
