| Original author(s) | Trius, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Initial release | mid 1980 |
| Operating system | MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows |
| Type | spreadsheet |
As-Easy-As for DOS and As-Easy-As for Windows was a shareware 32-bit spreadsheet program developed in 1986 for MS-DOS and later for Microsoft Windows. The name is a play on the phrase "as easy as 1-2-3", [1] a reference to the dominant MS-DOS spreadsheet at that time, Lotus 1-2-3 with which it competed for a fraction of the competitor's price. [2] The program was developed and sold by TRIUS, Inc. (a company founded by David Schulz and Paris Karahalios [3] [4] a Shareware pioneer [5] - not to be confused with Tritus, the makers of the Tritus SPF clone of the mainframe ISPF interface and editor). The company eventually branched out developing CAD (DraftChoice, StarFlic, ProtoCAD 3D, KeyCAD), GIS/Mapping software (Precision Mapping) and SDKs (MapPro, MaptiVate), no longer focusing on As-Easy-As.
As-Easy-As is historically significant as one of the earliest and most useful shareware programs that competed with commercial software on the basis of both price and features. For small businesses and personal users, the price of Lotus 1-2-3 was prohibitive, and As-Easy-As provided basic spreadsheet functionality for about a tenth of the price. This paradigm of undercutting the spreadsheet market leader would be adopted by Borland's Quattro Pro (which was not released until 1990). Subsequent versions of As Easy As became as powerful as any MS-DOS spreadsheet. Like Quattro Pro, As-Easy-As combined some elements of the 1-2-3 user interface, while modernizing them. One such modernization is the use of pull-down menus.
Cell formulae are very similar to Lotus 1-2-3, including the letter-number addressing scheme (A1, B2, etc.) and the @function syntax (e.g.,@SUM(A1..A10) using the ".." range separator syntax also like Lotus 1-2-3.)
The product included a detailed electronic manual describing the spreadsheet's functions and some basic MS-DOS operations.
Updated versions of As-Easy-As were made available at frequent intervals. Because these new versions often included valuable new capabilities, users were encouraged to support the continuing development of the program. Supporters who paid for a license received a 200+ page printed, detailed user's manual. The graphic defaults were more attuned to science and engineering users than to business users. This enabled a user to rapidly create x-y graphs of data, whereas the major commercial spreadsheets of the DOS era (Lotus 1-2-3 and Quattro) by default produced more business-oriented graphs. Many calculation functions were appealing to the science and engineering markets, such as improved capabilities for regression analysis and matrix operations.
The program was translated by TRIUS, Inc. into Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian and Chinese and at the height of its popularity it was being published locally in 10+ countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. It was also private labelled for publishing and distribution by SoftKey International and could be purchased at many major retailers.
On 3 November 2004, Trius discontinued the last version of As-Easy-As for DOS, and on 10 January 2006 the last version of As-Easy-As for Windows. Though copies of both programs were made available for downloading with free full licenses. [6] [7]
The earliest preserved historical version available on the Internet from the MS-DOS shareware era is version 3 from 1987.
Some of the awards As-Easy-As received include: [8]
| Free and open-source | |
|---|---|
| Proprietary freeware |
|
| Retail |
|
| Discontinued | |
Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released on 31 December 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU General Public License; it is intended to replace proprietary spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel. Gnumeric was created and developed by Miguel de Icaza, but he has since moved on to other projects. The maintainer as of 2002 was Jody Goldberg.
Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software. It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles in the business market.
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Excel forms part of the Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office suites of software and has been developed since 1985.
A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate and display a value based on the contents of other cells. The term spreadsheet may also refer to one such electronic document.
WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, displacing the prior market leader WordStar.
Lotus Symphony was an integrated software package for creating and editing text, spreadsheets, charts and other documents on the MS-DOS operating systems. It was released by Lotus Development as a follow-on to its popular spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3, and was produced from 1984 to 1992. Lotus Jazz on the Apple Macintosh was a sibling product.
Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Alludo, most often as part of Alludo's WordPerfect Office suite.
Microsoft Works is a discontinued productivity software suite developed by Microsoft and sold from 1987 to 2009. Its core functionality includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database management system. Later versions have a calendar application and a dictionary while older releases include a terminal emulator. Works is available as a standalone program and as part of a namesake home productivity suite. Because of its low cost, companies frequently preinstalled Works on their low-cost machines. Works is smaller, less expensive, and has fewer features than contemporary major office suites such as Microsoft Office.
Paradox is a relational database management system currently published by Corel Corporation.
Wingz was a spreadsheet program sold by Informix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally developed for the Macintosh, it was later ported to Microsoft Windows, OS/2, NeXTSTEP and several other commercial flavors of Unix. In spite of many positive reviews, including one calling it "clearly the spreadsheet of the future", the market was rapidly entrenching Microsoft Excel. Informix eventually gave up on the desktop market and reverted solely to database sales in the mid-1990s. Claris licensed and sold an extensively cleaned up version as Claris Resolve in 1991, but it was far too late to market to have any effect.
SuperCalc is a CP/M-80 spreadsheet application published by Sorcim in 1980.
Harvard Graphics was a graphics and presentation program for IBM PC compatibles. The first version, titled Harvard Presentation Graphics, was released for MS-DOS in 1986 by Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) and achieved a high market share. It was taken off the market in 2017.
3D-Calc is a 3-dimensional spreadsheet program for the Atari ST computer. The first version of the program was released in April 1989 and was distributed by ISTARI bvba, Ghent, Belgium.
GNU Oleo is a discontinued lightweight free software spreadsheet originally designed as a text-based spreadsheet using the curses library. The last development version of Oleo, 1.99.16, was released in 2001.
pfs:Write was a word processor released by Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) in 1983 for IBM PC compatibles running MS-DOS and the Apple II. It included the features common to most word processors of the day, including word wrapping, spell checking, copy and paste, underlining, and boldfacing, with a few advanced features, such as mail merge and some others. The software was easier to learn and to use than more expensive software with more features such as WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, and XyWrite.
Numbers is a spreadsheet application developed by Apple Inc. as part of the iWork productivity suite alongside Keynote and Pages. Numbers is available for iOS and macOS High Sierra or newer. Numbers 1.0 on Mac OS X was announced on August 7, 2007, making it the newest application in the iWork suite. The iPad version was released on January 27, 2010. The app was later updated to support iPhone and iPod Touch.
Synex Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Synex International Inc., was formed in 1983 in an effort to develop software for the microcomputer market and was run by Synex International Vice President Murray Hendren until 1992. In 2002, Synex Systems was acquired by privately owned Lasata Software of Perth, Australia. In 2005, Lasata was acquired by UK based Systems Union. In 2007, Systems Union was acquired by privately held Infor Global Solutions, a U.S. company that specializes in enterprise software.
Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) was a Mountain View, California–based manufacturer of business software, originally well known for its "pfs:" series of business software products, it was ultimately best known for its pioneering Harvard Graphics business and presentation graphics program.
Boeing Calc was a spreadsheet package written by Boeing Computer Services, an independent subsidiary of aviation manufacturer Boeing. It had originally been developed as an in-house accounting tool, but was launched as a commercial product in April 1985 for IBM 4300 mainframes running IBM MVS and IBM PC microcomputers running DOS. The original launch price was $399 per copy for the PC version and $8,899 for a combined PC/mainframe bundle.
