Claris Works on Kids’ Software

Claris Works on Kids’ Software — Claris is shipping ClarisWorks for Kids 1.0, a special version of ClarisWorks aimed at children ages five through eleven and perhaps the first Claris software to ship with a soundtrack. The passworded Teacher menu lets savvy kids or adults set preferences, the occasional alert message is labeled "Important Question," and the dialog box for opening files makes it easy to get at certain folders plus the many templates that ship with the product. The menu items and toolbar buttons are tastefully and brightly colored, and make me wonder wistfully why "productivity" software for grown-ups is usually so boring looking.

CWFK files are compatible with ClarisWorks 4.0. The estimated educational retail price is $49 and there’s also site license pricing. To run the software, you’ll minimally need System 7.1, a 68020-based Macintosh, 3,250K available RAM, a 13-inch monitor, and 30 MB disk space (to make CWFK speak, you must run MacinTalk, which requires additional RAM). A trial version is available as a 4 MB download; as of this writing the download link on the ClarisWorks for Kids Web site didn’t work, but I could use the FTP site. Claris — 800/544-8554 — 408/727-9054 — <[email protected]> [TJE]

<http://www.claris.com/kids/>

<ftp://ftp.claris.com/pub/USA-Macintosh/Trial_ Software/
ClarisWorksForKids.bin>