It arrived too last for a Christmas review, but the new Advanced Art Studio should have gotten into the shops in time to make a nice little prezzie for anyone who was lucky enough to get a 128K Spectrum from Santa.

This enhanced version of OCP's Art Studio (which is specifically for the 128K and won't run on any of the 48K versions of the Spectrum) uses the 128K's additional memory mainly for storage purposes, giving you a 42K RAM Disc facility as well as a 16K 'Scrapbook' which, between them, allows you to store a number of screens, character sets, Fill patterns and so on, and to call them back from memory instantly - so saving you all the fuss of Saving and Loading to and from tape all the time.

In case you're not familiar with that bit of jargon, a RAM Disc is an area of memory that is set aside purely for storage of programs, data or, in this case, screen pictures and patterns. Anything stored in this area simply sits there until you need it and can then be summoned up instantly with just the press of a button.

The new storage facilities are implemented by adding a new sub-menu to some of the existing command menu and treating the RAM Disc almost as if it were a microdrive. Suppose that you're halfway through designing the loading screen for the latest mega-game when you decide that you want to call up a new character set for printing the name of the game. You push the cursor over to the 'File' window as you normally would, but when the menu appears asking whether you want to save your picture to tape or microdrive you choose the microdrive option. This leads you to a new sub-menu which allows all the usual options for dealing with microdrives, but also has a new option for the RAM Disc, as well as a catalogue listing all the files on RAM Disc or microdrive.

So, you simply give your picture a name and instantly save it onto the RAM Disc. The saved picture is automatically verified at the same time, eliminating the business of saving and verifying onto tape. Next, you choose the 'Text' menu and select the new commands, 'File Menu' which leads once more to the cassette/microdrive choice. A quick look at the catalogue shows you that Rainbird have thoughtfully included a few alternative character sets which are tucked neatly away on the RAM Disc. You select whichever set you think is suitable (if you want to create a typeface of your own, there's a 'blank' character set which can be edited, allowing you to do this), call back your picture and get back to work. This whole process takes just a few seconds whereas it could take minutes if you were relying purely on tape storage.

AS well as these alternative character sets, Rainbird have also included a couple of sets of 'Brush' and 'Fill' patterns to give you a bit of extra variety, or you can always create your own and file them away on RAM Disc. With over 40K of RAM Disc to play with there's plenty of room for all sorts of bits and pieces, and if you use that up you can always save the RAM onto tape and start on a new 'disc'.

The Scrapbook facility is a sort of souped up 'cut and paste' option in that it gives you 16K worth of memory to store small sections of larger pictures, so that you can use these same sections over and over, quickly transferring them from one picture to another.

As far as the business of drawing pictures is concerned there's hardly anything that could be created with the enhanced Art Studio that couldn't be created on the original 48K version (although the 128K version does include a new 'arc' command), however the new fast storage offered by this version is almost as good as fitting your Spectrum with a disc drive.

I suppose it's a tribute to the quality of the original program that it can't be much improved upon even with an additional 80K to play with, and owners of mere 48K machines aren't going to be left too far behind (neither I imagine, will they be too envious of the enhanced version's enhanced price). But at least it shows that some companies are finally starting to produce software that really makes use of the 128K's full potential.