123 5.0

I have been using Lotus123 since the 1970's. I started with Apple's Visicalc, and then was introduced to Lotus' Symphony program. Wow! There was almost nothing that could not be done with this program - Spreadsheet, documents, charts, even database (which I never learned how to do well). But, like most good things, Symphony died a slow death as Lotus continued to improve their basic program - 123.The biggest competition for Lotus turned out to be Microsoft's Excel. Excellent program that mirrors Lotus123 in many ways. I believe it's popularity came to being because it was sold as a package with Microsoft, not because it was superior to Lotus.I found lotus to be fast. I still use a the back-slash key for many functions rather than using the mouse. Using it in combination with the mouse really makes my computer smoke. People who are only beginning to use Lotus find that I sometimes am not a good teacher because they watch the screen, and my hands move so fast they don't know what I did (they were waiting for the mouse pointer to show them).I also find the printing aspects of Lotus to be far superior to Excel for ease in using. One window, and all your printing commands are there. Excel you have to use two or more windows many times to set up fixed rows and/or columns.Well, I have rambled enough about how I feel about the greatest gift to finance since the red pencil - Lotus 123. If you have any doubts about this program, email me. Over 20 years of using it and I still consider myself a novice. An advanced novice, but none-the-less a novice. Thank you for letting me review Lotus, and I hope this will convince you that if you do anything related to finance, you can't do better than Lotus 123.

I'm surprised software this old is still for sale. I've used 123 since the mid-80s and still prefer it to Excel, even through I have the most current version of Office. I believe your best value is to buy the most current version of 123 as part of Lotus SmartSuite 9.8/9.8.2 (available for a couple of dollars more on Amazon); I bought my copy about a decade ago. I originally ran SmartSuite 123 and WordPro under Windows 98 and currently run it under Windows 7 Enterprise and Mac OSX Lion using Parallels. SmartSuite also includes Word Pro, which is an excellent word processor, and Freelance, which was good in its day (over a decade ago) but not competitive with Power Point 2003 or later.

I ordered Lotus 123, edition 5 for Windows 95 and 98. The package didn't arrive in a timely manner. I contacted them 2 times. The first reply said it was mailed. The second said they sent another disk due to the time elapsed. The wrong disk arrived. I got edition 4, which stated I could update by registering by December 1995. The disk clearly states it was developed in 1995 and therefore was not for Windows 98.