When I left you last month we were examining some
great commercial demonstration versions in the
Atari ST Library. I will continue that overview
this month, but first we have to take care of
business -- you know, tax business. My scan of the
Library for tax-related files came up a little
short. There are a few templates for 1040 forms,
but most are out of date. Newer versions will have
been uploaded by the time you read this, but what
to do in the meantime? How about examining a
complete tax preparation program, TAX WIZARD II+
from A&D Software?
  
I sent GE Mail to Rod McDonald [ST-INFORMER] at A&D
and recently received an updated press release.
Since I don't use the program myself (I live in
Canada) I relied on recommendations from owners of
it in the Bulletin Board. It seems that TAX WIZARD
II+ has some serious fans who have already been
clamoring for this year's update! Nothing like
word-of-mouth to gauge a program's value.
  
TAX WIZARD II+ runs on ST and TT computers in ST
MED/HI and TT MED/HI resolutions and touts a number
of powerful functions as well as configurability.
It supports over 30 tax forms using an interactive
GEM interface. According to Rod, "If you are self
employed, or have capital gains, investment income,
dividends, interest payments, or other financial
interests, home office expenses, etc., the program
can handle those forms' chores." Among those
supported are 1040 and 1040A along with Schedules
A, B, C, D, E , EIC, F, R, SE, and Forms 1116,
2106, 2441, 3800, 3903, 4562, 6198, 6251, 8582,
8829, and the new 8829 home office expense form.
"The current selection suits most private and sole
proprietor business returns filed under the present
federal tax system," he continues, "but
unfortunately, there is no support for state return
filings."
  
Lots more information is available directly from
A&D or by GE Mail to ST-INFORMER. Tax Wizard II+,
from A&D Software is priced at $49.95 (plus $2.90)
for new purchasers, or $39.95 (Plus $2.90) for
prior registered owners. Providing the registration
card from last year's package is sufficient to
claim the discount. Contact A&D Software, 909 NW
Starlite Place, Grants Pass, OR 97526, (503)
476-0071 for support or questions, or place orders
at 1-800-800-2563.
  
Back to Demos
  
Moving away from business applications to a
category of must-have items, I urge you to check
out these life-saving programs from the Atari ST
Software Library which ensure that your computing
time will not be spent moaning lost data!
  
28568 UVK58DMO.ZIP -- Demonstration version of UVK
(Ultimate Virus Killer). It's pretty much fully
functional, and will let you get a handle on just
how good this utility is. The demo is from the UK
distribution company, but UVK is available in North
America from Oregon Research. The program has
recently been updated to version 5.9 and can repair
boot sectors on MANY commercial games!
  
25511 EDGEDEMO.LZH -- This is a demonstration
version of Oregon Research's new offering, Diamond
Edge, the most advanced set of disk management
tools available for your Atari ST. It offers disk
and data recovery, complete undelete, file
validation and disk diagnostics, data protection,
disk optimization, bad sector mapping, hard disk
partitioning, disk information archival editing and
restoration, and much more.
  
22978 DBIIDEMO.LZH -- This contains the demo
version of Oregon Research Associates' hard disk
backup and restore program called Diamond Back II.
It is extremely fast, flexible and totally
reliable. V2.42 also has Diamond Super faST
compression routines to make backups even faster!
Never lose data again! This program takes the pain
out of doing backups.
  
That wraps it up for this month. I hope you enjoyed
this peek at some really useful programs. See you
on GEnie in the Atari ST RoundTable!