Geof Wheelwright evaluates Quantec's desktop package

In all the brouhaha caused by the development and launch of integrated software over the past few months, integrating software looked like it was going to be lost in the shuffle.

But the recent appearance of several new investigating packages could be the start of a reversal. Although these won't be on the scale of the now dubious-looking Microsoft windows or Digital's popular concurrent DOS OEM, they will have an impact.

One of the packages leading this new assault is Quantec's QED (Quantec Executive Desktop), a concurrent integrating package which includes a diary, daybook, event file, address book, telephone list, calendar, text processing facility, form design option, as well as project planning and calculator functions. But in the concurrent version of QED (selling for £295), all those are subsidiary to the main task of integrating your existing software.

An 'integrating' package is first and foremost a tool for allowing you to combine and mix-and-match standalone software. Second, it's a way of giving you lots of little extras that might not ordinarily be worth putting on a computer (such as a desk diary and an address book). But if it doesn't handle the former properly, the attractions of the latter become somewhat trivial.

Taking an installed version of QED (with my preconceived notions about integrating software firmly in place), I booked up the program and waited. After setting the time and date (something you should only have to do once as you would theoretically only have to boot up QED once a day), I was presented with something purporting to a desktop representation. Unlike a Framework or Macintosh-style electronic desktop, QED presents itself as a series of 'pages' - each containing a possible QED fucntion. These are arranged in a pyramid shape up to the middle of the screen and down the other side, with time management, addresses, deskfile, project planner, filing system and calculator among the default configuration.

At the extreme right-hand side of the screen is the box in which you can configure your options to hook up to outside programs - the default configuration is for Lotus 1-2-3, but this is easily changed.

The problem with QED is that you like it most when you're not using it. The best features of this package are not the ability to find addresses and diary entires quickly, but - for example - the ability to switch with a few keystrokes from Wordstar to Crosstalk to dBase (providing you've got enough RAM and disk space for all that - but that's an issue we'll get to later.

I'm not sure that there's any great use in being able to move into a diary or address file at a keystroke without being able to see the things at the same time. There seems to be something wrong with not being able to 'see' something you want to access immediately. Although there's probably not much time difference between looking up an address in a cardfile and getting it out of QED's address book, the difference is in how quickly you *think* you can get at it in a hurry.

A better option would have been to offer windows in which the address and diary files could be accessed. This sort of window is possible in Ashton-Tate's Framework or Lotus' Symphony (although it probably isn't practical in Symphony because you have to have all the information you want in a single 'worksheet' whereas Framework lets you load separate files).

The applications within QED are quite serviceable, although if they are to run alongside other applications, you'll need to consider getting extra RAM. QED will need at least 128K for itself, on top of whatever requirements your standalone packages have. This is very much a package your IBM compatible can grow into.

And that's no bad thing. RAM prices are dropping and the option of using the best standalone packages with QED becaomes more realistic as they tumble.

There are two versions of QED, a £195 version which isn't concurrent and a £295 version which is. I recommend the latter. The limitations of the cheaper version indicate problems with the idea of having useful desktop applications outside the framework of the Big Three applications (word processing, database and spreadsheet).

Get QED for its integrating abilities, but not for the individual applications within it.

Features 4/5
Documentation 3/5
Performance 3/5
Overall value 3/5