How do you follow an act like 1-2-3? The Lotus Development Corporation, producer of last year's most successful software package, aims to do it with a Symphony.

This is the name of its follow-up, which it claims will turn your IBM PC or XT into the workstation of the future. The whole world and his dog seems to have their sights on the workstation of the future but from Lotus it may be a more convincing promise.

Symphony offers word processing, database management, spreadsheet and graphics capabilities in an integrated package. Coupled with a windowing system and extensive communications facilities, Lotus calls Symphony "the most complete business productivity tool ever offered for the microcomputer market", but of course it would say that.

Really an extension of 1-2-3, Symphony will be available in the UK from mid-1984. The UK price has yet to be decided, but the introductory US price is $695. A trade-in deal for your old 1-2-3 will also be available, one estimate being about $200 - the price difference between the two products.

The drawback is that you'll also have to lash out on a memory expansion for your micro, unless it's an XT. Symphony needs at least 320K, but will run happily on a single disk system and can support up to 16 in-line displays.

The idea of such memory use is that you won't have to wait for programs or data to be loaded in from disk, as is usual - the whole program will reside in TAM, making switching between the modules and data updating quick and easy.

Symphony provides a programming environment for developing dedicated applications programs via its Command Language and Lotus plans to release 'add-in' applications such as time management and project scheduling to the open-ended system. These will become optional extras to the package.

The system has been designed with international communications in mind; it incorporates the Lotus International Character Set, intended to allow simply translation of menus and other information including date/time and currency formats.

After 1-2-3, Lotus has a reputation as a trend-setter to maintain.