Your CD-ROM library - 20 CD-ROM reference titles of interest to small business owners - Buyers Guide

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1996 by Dennis Eskow

Build Your Business (And Expand Your Mind) With These CD-ROMs

EVERY BUSINESS IS BUILT ON INFORMATION. WHETHER you're researching a special project, verifying data for current jobs, or canvassing for new clients, you need the right information tools at your fingertips. With a well-stacked library of CD-ROMs dedicated to answering a wide range of small-business questions, the data is a mouse click away.

Even with all of the ballyhoo about using the World Wide Web as a research tool, a CD-ROM may be the better choice. You could do your business research on the Web, but there's an expensive and time-consuming catch--be prepared to dedicate a lot of your time to unwieldy Web search engines that could produce 683,791 Web sites that mention the search term you've entered. A simple fact-checking task could easily become a scavenger hunt. With a set of CD-ROMs, your search for information may be narrower than it would be on the Web, but it's also more focused and will save you online charges.

We selected 20 titles that include data that will help a small-business owner answer questions and build hi s or her business. We concentrated on six important categories: Reference, Travel, Atlases, Marketing, Internet and Telephone Directories, and Miscellaneous Business. For Reference, we sought products that were comprehensive in a single category (a dictionary) or extensive in the wide area they covered. For Travel, we scoured for CD-ROMs that can help you plan a business trip, which means locating hotels, restaurants, and points of interest near your destination. Atlases are needed to provide more general answers to travel questions, especially when determining the best, most-efficient routes. Our crop of Marketing products had to help you find and keep customers. Internet and Telephone directories would help you locate important Web sites without wasting time online. Miscellaneous Business includes CD-ROMs we found useful that didn't fit neatly into another category. We awarded Best Buy seals to the discs that clearly stood out in their categories. No seal was awarded in categories that didn't have a clear winner.

The great thing about these CD-ROMs is convenience. They make it easier to run your business with a computer. With a CD-ROM, your computer can search the text. You can highlight, copy, and paste data and customize it any way you wish:

REFERENCE

Compton's Reference Collection 1996

Rating: ***

WIN 95 / WIN

Compton's Reference Collection 1996 is a gem that takes a while to appreciate. Packed with practical, whimsical, and fascinating features, it offers 11 reference sources, including the New York Public Library's extensive reference index, a dictionary, encyclopedia, multimedia library, and more. The timeline lets you point and click into any year (we discovered that eyeglasses were invented around 1300) and relate facts, people, and places. We used the collection's multimedia, encyclopedia, and atlas collections to plan an imaginary Christmas trip to Hawaii. When We reviewed this product in beta last year, we gave it three and a half stars for its extensive contents. But in the light of a new day, we give it three stars, and we hope Compton will improve its text search and retrieval engine. When we looked up the term I have a dream, none of the choices related the phrase to Martin Luther King Jr. Nor did a search for Happy Warrior turn up Franklin D. Roosevelt, as it should have. Thus we think this outstanding product falls just short of perfect as a reference tool. SoftKey lnt'l., 510-792-2101, 800-227-5609, www.softkey.com; $49.95 list (unless otherwise noted, we give list prices)

CIRCLE 118 ON READER SERVICE CARD

Microsoft Bookshelf 1996-97

Rating: ** 1/2

WIN 95 / WIN / MAC

Microsoft Bookshelf 1996-97 is the electronic version of a paperback library. It doesn't knock you over, but there's just enough to help you get by. Installation was easy, and the interface isn't too difficult to figure out. Microsoft has integrated the reference package nicely with its Works 95 office bundle so it's easy to lift a picture of Nat King Cole from an encyclopedia, for example, and incorporate it into a report. The search engine is better than average, but the contents are thin. Thus, when we searched for the phrase 1 have a dream, it gave us Martin Luther King. But when we asked for the Happy Warrior, it didn't recognize this as a Roosevelt reference. The included Internet Directory is an offline search engine but it has only 5,000 URLs listed, lame when compared with an online search tool. The multimedia library is arbitrary; it doesn't have a sizable collection of any particular category of animation. Most disappointing was the Encarta Atlas, which supplies general regional maps but no real details. Bookshelf did let us switch to large type, which is an excellent feature. Microsoft, 206-882-8080, 800-426-9400, www. microsoft.com./bookshelf; $54.95

CIRCLE 119 ON READER SERVICE CARD

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Deluxe Electronic Edition