The intended audience for this tutorial is students who have access to a microcomputer lab. It assumes a lab instructor will be available. It was apparently written for use in an introductory microcomputer class. The book is 8.5 by 11 inches and lacks a binding that would enable it to lie flat on a table or in a copy stand.

The background information on a PC is rather sketchy. It fails to take into account that students may inadvertently wander into a Macintosh lab or a computer laboratory filled with UNIX workstations. The book is divided into four sections: an introduction to DOS, an introduction to WordPerfect 5.0, an introduction to Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2.01, and an introduction to dBASE.

One of the first commands taught in the introduction to DOS is FORMAT. A brief warning that FORMAT will erase data from a disk is given, but the obligatory bold-faced, paragraph-long warning involving the use of this command is saved for the end of the chapter and included in the summary of DOS commands. Users may not encounter this warning until it is too late.

The insistence that students write their names and social security numbers at the beginning of each exercise is irritating. To novices, this continues the myth that the computer is tracking everything that they do. Many students will be intimidated by this requirement. The idea that microcomputers can be friendly and easy to use is not brought out.

The section on WordPerfect, although technically correct, contains some bad sample exercises. The first exercise is writing a resume. The resume has a poor layout, and tabs are used at the beginning of each line. A better way of doing this exercise would be to provide for plenty of white space and a greater reliance upon hanging indents, which are created by the INDENT command within WordPerfect. The second WordPerfect lesson features a session where macros are built. This may not be a good idea; beginning users may not need macros.

The sections on Lotus 1-2-3 and dBASE are better, but students may have lost interest and enthusiasm by the time they encounter these parts of the book. One nice feature in the section on Lotus 1-2-3 is a description of the various functions used within the spreadsheet. One unexplained aspect of this book is the introduction to dBASE III Plus followed by an introduction to dBASE IV.

The biggest problem with the book is its failure to link everything together. It gives the impression that work you do in Lotus cannot be moved or imported into WordPerfect 5.0, and that databases created under dBASE cannot be imported or used by the MERGE command within WordPerfect.

Overall, I do not recommend this book. Other tutorials do a better job of introducing students to DOS, WordPerfect, Lotus, and dBASE, such as Lund, Bacon, and Ross [1].