V. 11:14 (595-596): Enhanced Chartist Macintosh, version 2.73a John Sweeney

Enhanced Chartist Macintosh, version 2.73a —John Sweeney, Technical Editor

ROBERTS-SLADE, INC.

619 North 500 West

Provo, UT 84601-1547

Phone: 800 433-4276, 801 375-6850

Fax: 801 373-2775

Product: Real-time data acquisition and technical analysis package.

Price: $1,295 plus $395 a year.

Equipment requirements: Apple Macintosh II or better, 2 megabytes free RAM, RS232 serial cable for datafeed from satelIite or FM receiver, 30 MB or more hard disk drive. In addition, the Chartist can use any Macintosh-compatible printing device, any high-resolution Mac-compatible large screen and up to six Mac-compatible monitors. (This product is also available for IBM-compatible machines.)

The last time I saw the Chartist series for the Macintosh was Master Chartist. This was back when it was one of the pioneers of the Macintosh world, using the superb built-in drawing and 72 dots-per-inch screen to produce better graphics than anything that DOS could provide. Of course, the situation is much more competitive now, and Enhanced Chartist is a much more powerful package, obviously fine-tuned over the years to users' needs. But it still takes good advantage of the Mac platform, though in many senses, its programming hearkens back to those years.

Installation, for instance, can be somewhat tricky. The manual for the Enhanced Chartist needs to be updated, as it is currently incomplete and on occasion inaccurate, although I'm told an update is in the works. Getting data setup requires hand-holding from developers Roberts-Slade, and there was no way to import existing data to match up with the new data. There is a utility available from Roberts-Slade, but it was not included in the package. Do not let this discourage you. Once you get past this, the Enhanced Chartist is a beauty to use on a day-to-day basis.