 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group 1994 PC Update Readers' Choice Awards Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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The Editors of PC Update are pleased to announce the results of the 1994 PC Update Readers' Choice Awards survey. The survey was designed to identify the products that our readers like or desire. The findings do not necessarily reflect what readers own and do not necessarily refer to the latest versions. There are no claims of technical superiority of one product over another, and some results could
vary from surveys conducted by others.
The free-form nature of responses made it difficult to interpret some entries. Except for the word processor and spreadsheet categories, many readers failed to indicate the version number or whether it was the DOS or Windows version. Predictably, the task was made even harder with the hardware responses. There are so many models of printers, for example, that it was easier to group all hardware responses as "Preferred Brands".
Award Categories
Word Processor
Word for Windows 6.x and WordPerfect 5.x were pretty close contenders and if we had no online entries (submitted via the BBS), WordPerfect would have been the winner. Anyway WordPerfect 6.0 was slightly ahead of Ami Pro 3 and not a serious contender. Disregarding versions, Word for Windows was the clear leader.
Winner: Microsoft Word for Windows 6.x
Joint Runners Up: WordPerfect 5.x and Microsoft Word for Windows 2.x
Spreadsheet
The penetration of Microsoft Office appears to have influenced several of the business software entries, so it is refreshing to see other brands hold their own.
Winner: Borland (now WordPerfect/Novell) Quattro Pro 5
Runner Up: Microsoft Excel 5
Database
Databases are still Borland's domain, although Access has been making steady progress and is the one to watch.
Joint Winners: Borland Paradox and Microsoft Access
Runner Up: Borland dBASE IV
Communications
Don't write off Telix yet, especially when the Windows version is about to be released. It was a close race between Telix and Telemate but the former won.
Winner: Deltacomm Development Telix
Runner Up: White River Software Telemate
Fax
Delrina WinFax Pro had not even a shadow of competition in this category. A landslide victory!
Winner: Delrina WinFax Pro
Office Mail
There was a small tussle between several office mail packages but the leader was Microsoft Mail.
Winner: Microsoft Mail
Off line Reader
Without a doubt, the clear winner was Blue Wave. OLX had some competition from RoboMail but pulled through in second place.
Winner: Cutting Edge Computing Blue Wave
Runner Up: Mustang Off Line eXpress
Presentation Graphics
Old favourite Harvard Graphics was left far behind with the offerings from Lotus and WordPerfect, while the tussle was between Microsoft and Corel Corporation.
Winner: Microsoft PowerPoint
Runner Up: Corel COreISHOW!
Vector Graphics
COrelDRAW! continues to be the graphics leader despite strong competition from Micrografx Designer, whose latest marketing strategy (for the new version 4.1TE) is to focus on the technical illustration niche and not compete with COrelDRAW! in the general-purpose graphics market.
Winner: Corel COrelDRAW!
Runner Up: Micrografx Designer
Bitmap Graphics
The popularity of CorelDRAW! was also reflected in the choice of users for a good bitmap graphics tool in the form of its PhotoPaint module. Not surprisingly the Paintbrush applet included with Microsoft Windows is also popular with many.
Winner: Corel PhotoPaint
Runner Up: Microsoft Windows 3.x (Paintbrush)
Graphics Viewer
Graphics Workshop for DOS or Windows (two separate versions) was streets ahead of the next contender, PaintShop Pro.
Winner: Alchemy Mindworks Graphics Workshop
Runner Up: JASC PaintShop Pro
OCR
Optical Character Recognition is not a major field of interest among our readers but OmniPage was the leader, with Recognita just behind. The rest were simpler products that had been bundled with hand scanners or fax software.
Winner: Caere OmniPage
Runner Up: Recognita
Game
No guesses for the most popular game of the year: Doom. Apart from a few votes for SimCity 2000, the rest of the entries were widely scattered with no clear pattern.
Winner: ID Doom
Runner Up: Maxis SimCity 2000
Education
Educational software choices were also very scattered and the only product many readers agreed on was Microsoft's attractive encyclopaedia, Encarta.
Winner: Microsoft Encarta
Utility
Utilities are firmly Symantec territory, whether you like PC Tools, The Norton Utilities, or XTree Gold. There were votes for List, assorted archivers and antivirals, but none of those were in the lead.
Winner: Symantec The Norton Utilities
Runner Up: Symantec XTree Gold
Backup
From the entries it was sometimes difficult to know which Norton product contained the backup tool in the reader's mind, so we had to assume that they meant the standalone version. PC Tools also made it with Colorado's offering.
Winner: Symantec Norton Backup
Runners Up: Symantec CP Backup and Colorado Backup
CAD
Apart from the two winners there was little other competition in this specialist category.
Joint Winners: IMSI TurboCAD and Autodesk AutoSketch
Personal Finance
Intuit Quicken is the overwhelming product of choice for most of our respondents. There was some skirmish for second place, with Microsoft Money taking the honours.
Winner: Intuit Quicken
Runner Up: Microsoft Money
Personal Information Manager
PIMs are in a strange category and are often synonymous with contact managers in the eyes of many. To prove that the KISS principle still holds true, Lotus Organizer took the lead from InfoSelect. My personal choice was left behind in the dust.
Winner: Lotus Organizer
Runner Up: InfoSelect
File and Disk Manager
I have to admit that I am one of the few who do not use XTree Gold and I don't really know why. It was your favourite, with the only serious competition from File Manager out of Microsoft Windows, again something I use only in an emergency.
Winner: Symantec Xtree Gold
Runner Up: Microsoft Windows 3.x (File Manager)
Network
The network category had three main players, of which the one to watch is Microsoft.
Winner: Artisoft LANtastic
Joint Runners Up: Microsoft Windows for Workgroups and Novell Netware
Programming Language
Our respondents are firmly Borland users, which confirms the company's position as a language leader. I was expecting some competition from Microsoft Visual Basic, but it didn't make it this time.
Winner: Borland C++
Runner Up: Borland Turbo Pascal
Laptop/Notebook
Toshiba portables of various flavours were the overwhelming winner in this category, with only token resistance from NEC.
Winner: Toshiba
Runner Up: NEC
Palmtop
Long known as a quality producer of calculators, Hewlett-Packard is also known for its palmtop series of computers, which did not have any serious competition.
Winner: HP
Network Laser Printer
Hewlett-Packard is also the laser printer king!
Winner: Hewlett-Packard
Personal Dot Matrix Printer
If I may mention one of my editorial peeves, few Epson owners seem to notice that the last letter is an "N", not "M". Legend has it that the name originates from "Son ronic Printer". Panasonic vied for second place but lost to Star.
Winner: Epson
Runner Up: Star
Personal B&W Laser Printer
Hewlett-Packard strikes again!
Winner: Hewlett-Packard
Personal B&W Inkjet
Just to break the monotony Canon almost stole the show in the inkjet category but
settled for equal first place with Hewlett-Packard.
Joint Winners: Hewlett-Packard and Canon
Colour Inkjet
Yes, Hewlett-Packard has covered the colour scene too, with Canon in second place.
Winner: Hewlett-Packard
Runner Up: Canon
Monitor
There was a wide spread of no-name "brands", with only two serious leaders.
Winner: NEC
Runner Up: ViewSonic
Modem
There were many brands of modem mentioned, including some that are not known to Austel! There were only two main contenders, with not much of a gap between
them.
Winner: Maestro
Runner Up: Netcomm
Sound Card
Creative Labs won this category by a staggering lead, thanks to its popular Sound Blaster series. Media Vision is gaining ground, if only to be significantly ahead of the
rest.
Winner: Creative Labs
Runner Up: Media Vision
Hard Disk
The hard disk category was almost excluded from the survey because most of us buy a PC without much say over the brand of hard disk inside. There was some
competition from Seagate and Maxtor, but they did not make it.
Winner: Western Digital
Runner Up: Conner
Tape Drive
There were many scattered brands in this category but our findings were in sync with industry surveys. Colorado is firmly an "Editors' Choice" at this magazine too.
Winner: Colorado Memory Systems
Scanner
The leaders in the scanner category represent the desktop and hand-held categories respectively.
Winner: Hewlett-Packard
Runner Up: Genius
CD-ROM
CD-ROM drives are becoming almost standard equipment on PCs but most of us appear to have bought one as a separate item.
Winner: Panasonic
Runner Up: NEC
Mouse
I have not yet used the latest Microsoft Mark III mouse mainly because I have both the Mark I and Mark II units and they show no signs of wear. There was quite a
spread of entries here, reflecting the plethora of mice sold with cheap clones.
Winner: Microsoft
Runner Up: Logitech
Floppy Disk
There were many house brands and no-name "brands", so we had to award the prizes to the highest
placegetters.
Joint Winners: Gestetner and Verbatim
Runner Up: Memorex
Tape
Winner: 3M
Runner Up: Verbatim
Laser Paper
Winner: Reflex
Best BBS
Among our respondents, there was a small spread of favourite BBSs but most of them drew a solitary vote. It should come as no surprise that our very own 18-line BBS
was the overwhelming winner.
Winner: Melbourne PC User Group BBS
Best Dealer
Again, a large spread of dealers, probably suggesting that there are a lot of good dealers out there.
Winner: Microarts
Runner Up: Computer Rebuilds
Best Repairer
One entry read, "When you find one, tell me!" There was a spread of companies but one clear leader.
Winner: Computer Rebuilds
Best Bookshop
Winner: McGills
Runner Up: Technical Book and Magazine Co
Best Commercial Computer Magazine
Many of you wasted your votes by nominating PC Update as the best commercial computer magazine, and it would have easily won in this class. Thanks, but this is an
extremely non-commercial magazine, created entirely by volunteers and unpaid authors. The winners are the very readable offerings from the ACP Publications stable.
The only doubt in our minds was that many readers refer to this user group and our magazine as "PC User", which might have boosted the votes for the commercial
magazine.
Winner: Australian PC User
Runner Up: Australian Personal Computer
Best Newspaper for Computing Content
Although many categories received a healthy number of votes or a wide spread of candidates, this category drew the largest number of votes. Our interstate members
voted for the Sydney Morning Herald but the leaders are well known to us in Victoria.
Winner: The Age
Runner Up: The Australian
Best Newspaper Computer Columnist
Winner: Charles Wright (The Age)
Runner Up: Ash Nallawalla (The Age)
Reprinted from the September 1994 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
