So what's left? The numbers that you enter into your tax forms come from a number of different sources, and MacInTax doesn't help a great deal here, although it will let you import data from other applications (the manual doesn't say which ones are supported) and from text files

This is probably the most common word associated with tax preparation, and although MacInTax does a good basic job at helping you fill out the forms, it doesn't do much more

The MacInTax manual is good, but not great. There is an introduction, eight chapters, seven appendixes, and an index. The introduction is just that, and the first two chapters walk you through installation and basic usage

If you still do your taxes by hand with your Macintosh turned off on the desk in front of you, buy MacInTax. If you call MacConnection before 3:15 AM, you can go to sleep and they'll have it at your door the next day so you can save an incredible amount of time in preparing the stupid tax return

Some people have suggested that we start a regular letters section, so we've decided that a quasi-sporadic, semi-edited section does make sense. Some mailfiles will come through complete; others we'll edit for space reasons

Cool new input devices are always a hard call - on the one hand you want companies to challenge the status quo and come out with the ultimate in control, but on the other hand, if an input device is too strange looking, no one will even think of buying it

A lot of people had to quiet down when Apple introduced the Classic, LC, and IIsi because those machines aren't priced to compete with workstations. They are quite affordable (though it's still easy to find PC users bellyaching about how expensive Macs are), and Apple has lowered prices on a number of other machines to spread the savings across the product line. New Suggested Retail Price Reduction Mac IIfx 4/floppy $7,369 $1,600 Mac IIfx 4/80HD $8,069 $1,800 Mac IIfx 4/160HD $8,669 $2,300 Mac IIci 4/floppy $5,269 $700 Mac IIci 4/80HD $5,969 $700 Mac SE/30 4/40HD $3,369 $1000 Mac SE/30 4/80HD $3,869 $1700 Personal LaserWriter NT $2,599 $700 LaserWriter II NT $3,999

People looking to purchase low-cost Macintosh printers now have better options than ever before. Today, Apple introduced the StyleWriter, a 360 dpi inkjet printer and the LaserWriter LS, a QuickDraw laser printer

Just after we finish a special issue comparing the major compression programs (thanks, Ken!), the industry burps and spits out another few entrants. The compression market started with Pack-It, then StuffIt, and then StuffIt Deluxe and Compact Pro and DiskDoubler and Diamond, and now up pop the shareware AutoSqueeze, the DoubleUp board from Sigma Designs, the Gold Card from Pinnacle Micro, and SuperDisk! from Alysis Software. You've heard about the main programs and the DoubleUp board already, so I'll restrict myself to the new stuff

Some people try to make their printers capable of handling every sort of paper size and type, including envelopes. But those envelopes have always been the catch (literally, if you feed them through a finicky laser printer)

Apple has won round one of the lawsuit between Apple and Microsoft (and HP, to be technically correct). In a decision last week, Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S

Finally. Despair almost crept over me when I heard that Radius had not introduced a color version of its Pivot monitor at Macworld in San Francisco. After all, I try to include rumors that eventually come true

I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to view some of the extended ASCII characters on PC-clones, but they are pretty funny. You find little smiley-faces, all the suits in a deck of cards, and lots of other fun characters

Last week we talked a bit about the good things Microsoft did with Excel 3.0 and whenever you think of Excel, Word inevitably surfaces as well. Little has come out of Microsoft about what Word 5.0 will look like or what new features will be included, but we can make some educated guesses about likely changes, and a recent discussion on Usenet indicated the places Word currently has trouble

Now Utilities 2.03 Now Software, Inc. 520 SW Harrison, Suite 435 Portland, OR 97201 503/274-2800 503/274-0670 (fax) CPBaker on America Online Rating: 8 Penguins out of a possible 10 Summary: -- Now Utilities combines a number of former shareware and freeware INITs, cdevs, and applications into a single coherent package of system enhancing utilities