Microsoft Word
1.0, that would later be part of the most successful business suite for
multi-tasking in a windows type of environment, was introduced, firstly, on a
Macintosh computer, in 1984, the first year of the Macintosh. Word was soon
followed by Excel 1.0 and Powerpoint 1.0.
A few years
later, the first Microsoft Office package, featuring Word, Excel, Powerpoint
and Microsoft Mail, was finally presented to the public: Microsoft Office 89
for Mac.
Office for
Windows was only introduced in 1990 for Microsoft’s own powerful and improved
Windows 3.0 Operating system. My first
contact with Microsoft’s new environment and Office applications was in ‘92,
with the upgraded Windows 3.1.
In this same
year, the Amiga family also got a business suite of their own: Mini Office,
from Europress Software, a company that I only knew for being the publisher of the
awesome Network Q RAC Rally game for DOS, released a year later.
During the
80s the Europress group consisted of several other companies, including
software development, and, with the boom of personal computers, quickly
reached, in the early 90s, the top 5 largest British software houses.
It all
started in 1965, year when Derek Meakin formed Europress to publish magazines
and newspapers. During the eighties, with the growth of the British computer
industry, Europress expanded its own publishing business and became involved in
software development. Later in the decade, Europress Software was separated
from the main company and inside it a new brand for video games was created –
Mandarin Software – and presented to the press in, you guessed it, a Chinese
restaurant in London.
In the
eighties, and under the label Database
Educational Software, Europress was responsible for a series of educational
packages in the UK that were sold only by mail order. Then, in 1989, the Fun
School 2 range of software was packaged more professionally and also placed in
store shelves all around the place. These packages were available for the Zed X
Spectrum, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST
and DOS, and went on through 1998 with the very last Fun School 7 CD-Rom set of
education software. The Fun
School range went on to sell more than 500,000 copies.
Also, in
1991, Europress bought Newsfield, a highly reputed publishing company
responsible for the awesome, and much respected, computer and video games
magazines Zzap!64 and Crash. This new branch of the Europress empire, branded
Europress Impact, went on for three more years with five new publications (Sega
Force, Mega Machines, N-Force, SNES Force, Amiga Force), ‘till it
all collapsed in 1994.
In 2012, and
under distribution by this company which name I refuse to pronounce (KOCH
MEDIA), Europress developed a puzzle adventure game inspired by Jane Austen’s classic
novel Pride & Prejudice that also had its debiu in movie theaters back in
2005 with academy award nominee Keira Knightley leading the cast.
Other great
video game titles published under Europress Software’s label were:
• in 1992,
Dojo Dan, for Commodore Amiga and with an awesome soundtrack by Allister
Brimble;
• in 1996,
Titanic: Adventure Out Of Time, for Windows and Macintosh;
• in 1997,
Rally Championship: The X-Miles add-on, for Windows;
• in 1999,
Mobil 1 Rally Championship, for Windows and PS One, and now under Actualize,
the re-branded Europress.
But, in
1992, came this weird title that was bundled in a coverdisk of Amiga Action
magazine #43): Unsensible Soccer, where we get to play with a team of oranges!
In 1992
came, as well, this business suite of professional software to take advantage
of all the multi-tasking and graphical capabilities of the Commodore Amiga.
This way, the Amiga could also be seen as a workstation rather than a simple,
but powerful, games console. The usual Commodore customers would stick with the
brand and potential ones would consider the Amiga platform as a serious
contender of the IBM PC and Macintosh in this area, now that the more appealing
and highly anticipated A1200 and A4000 were being released. Besides the price
of Amiga computers being much more attractive, also this package of office
software was hugely affordable compared to its Microsoft’s counterpart! Europress
Mini Office’s starting price was only 59 pounds! And you could do just the same
stuff and probably more with this one!
Looking at
the box, its white background automatically tells us that we’re facing a set of
serious software stuff for the Amiga computers. At that time there weren’t many
options in this area, just some old and obsolete packages or shareware that no
longer suited the need for more modern and thoughtful work.
So, let’s
take a deeper look into this Mini Office. In the first of the three application
disks there’s the Database, a very important tool for companies. Compared to other
database programs on the market, it’s really simple to use and the manual
bundled with this suite is clear and highly understandable.
The
graphical environment is really good to look at, and, in the bottom, there’s
some VCR style buttons for searching and saving, along with other normal
functions.
In the same
disk there’s a useful set of utilities application allowing users to manipulate
information, format disks, delete files, rename, copy and even install Mini
Office on the hard drive, if you have one on your Amiga.
As for the
spreadsheet application, it works pretty much like all the others with those
standard pull-down menus, but it can import ASCII files and can manage binary
code, something unusual in this kind of thing back then. To scroll through the
sheet we just need to use those VCR style buttons at the bottom.
Jumping
right into the word processor, it’s a simple and handy tool that, unfortunately
doesn’t support postscript, so, there’s only 7 different fonts to choose from,
but it does, however, let us import photos and pictures into the text. All
usual utilities in a word processor are present, so it does the job very well.
The
graphical utility present in this package is a pretty useful way of
representing boring mathematical data. It is way more attractive than just
showing a bunch of numbers, right? We just need to import the data from the
spreadsheet and we can now draw the graphic. There are various types to choose
from and everything is displayed by icons that we can easily understand and
identify. Finally, after we’re satisfied with our pretty looking graphic, we
can place it into the text in the word processor, just like a picture.
Besides
sharing similar design, all applications work together as one which is
extremely convenient ‘cause it helps understanding, really quickly, how
everything works.
To
conclude, Mini Office Amiga is a really friendly package and, back then, would
certainly make PC and Macintosh users blush with shame!
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