Editor’s note: This is the final article in a three-part series on utilities for IBM PCs or compatibles. The first part, on enhancing input! output operations, appeared Feb- ruary 8, 1987, P. 22. The second, on DOS utilities, appeared March 21, 1988, p. 14.

In this final installment, I’ll consider the so-called desktop utilities, (not to be confused with the term desktop publishing). When SIDEKICK first came out in 1984, it used the desktop metaphor in an attractive way. Just as your desktop had a Rolodex, appointment book, notepad and calculator, SIDEKICK had a mini-database for names and addresses, calendar, notepad and calculator.

The electronic versions of these common items hadhad their advantages. The notepad could be a full-fledged editor with information that you could store on disk. The Rolodex could do its searches electronically on fields other than the last name. You could even use the data base to...

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