Computer Times
For the Beginner
What Can You Do With Your Personal Computer?
Most personal computers come with an all-in-one software package like Microsoft Works or Microsoft Office. If you are a beginner, you may be so overwhelmed with the computer itself that you don't have a clue as to what the software can do for you. Hopefully, this article will give you a few ideas and get you started on using your computer in your home for education and business.
Software packages like Microsoft Works and Microsoft Office have a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a database to take care of your household and educational computing needs. Let's look at each of these three tools separately.
A word processor is like an electric typewriter that lets you change your mind about what you type, and easily correct your mistakes. They have built-in spell checkers and a thesaurus.
Some common things you can do with a word processor are: write letters, create mailing labels, merge mailing labels into form letters, write school papers with headings and footnotes, produce business brochures, and a thousand other things that require the typed word. Once you have typed the words you can copy them to other documents, reformat them, change their type size and appearance (italics, bold, etc.), and do anything else you can possibly think to do with them.
A spreadsheet is like the paper spreadsheet you use with a pencil and eraser, except it is electronic. It also has all the features of the most sophisticated pocket calculator. For instance, if you wanted it to compute the present value of a row of numbers that you just entered, it could do it in a jiffy. You wouldn't even have to know what present value means. Simply select the desired group of numbers and tell the spreadsheet to perform your desired computation. Most spreadsheets have dozens of built-in math functions and preset calculations.
The real power of spreadsheets is the ability to link areas together. Let's say you had a list of your Christmas purchases in one column of your spreadsheet with a total at the bottom. In a second column, you had your household budget, and in a third column your actual spending. You could set up your spreadsheet to link all of these columns together. When you added your next Christmas purchase to the first column, the spreadsheet would automatically total all Christmas purchases, then reflect this new total in the third column under Christmas spending, then subtract the new Christmas spending total in column three from the budgeted Christmas total in column two, and finally show you the difference in column four. All this happened after you entered one new number. Now that saves a lot of punching keys on the old pocket calculator.
A few other things you can do with a spreadsheet are: average student grades, keep business accounts, calculate material cost for a building project, compute interest rates, compare loans, forecast sales, total the value of your coin collection, and do a thousand other things that uses math calculations.
A database is like a stack of recipe cards, or file cards, that will sort itself any way you command. Also, it will quickly show you any card, or stack of cards, that you choose to see.
Let's say you have a Christmas card list showing the names and addresses of all your friends, associates, and relatives. Also, let's say you typed an "A" to identify associates, "R" for relatives, and "F" for friends. In seconds you could sort your list by zip code, by state, by last name, or any other way you choose. Also, you could get a list of all relatives that live in Indiana and had a last name starting with the letter "B". If you can do something with a stack of file cards, the computer can do it with your database.
Some things you can create and manage with a database are collections, video libraries, recipes, phone lists, household inventory, and anything else you might manually put on lists or on file cards.
In one of my classes at Sullivan University, I asked the students for ideas on how to use a spreadsheet and ended up with 50 ways to use a spreadsheet. I've listed them below to give you a few more ideas than those presented above.
1. Family budget (budget, actual and difference columns).
2. Track monthly bills (company, date, & amount paid).
3. Track savings (by intended use - vacation, college, etc.).
4. Track investments (by type, amount, income).
5. Mortgage & interest (schedule of principal and interest).
6. Balance checkbook (setup like check register).
7. Trip expenses (as shown in May Issue).
8. Tax records (type, amount, location).
9. Car maintenance log (past and future service by mileage, date, and amount paid/expected).
10. Track lottery numbers (not sure this will help but it couldn't hurt).
11. Calculate expected grocery bill (item, quantity needed, average price, expected cost).
12. Recipe costs (ingredient cost, cost per serving, etc.).
13. Recipe conversions (decimal to metric, ingredient substitution).
14. Diet schedule (food items, calories, cholesterol, fat, etc.).
15. Exercise/workout chart (date, type, duration, calories burned, etc.).
16. Homework schedule (to help manage time on multiple assignments).
17. Course outline for degree (class, hours, instructor, semester, etc.).
18. Baseball card collection (type, description, value).
19. Golf score handicap (standard calculations plus weather, team members, course, etc.).
20. Yard sale inventory (item, original cost, sale price, difference).
21. Home inventory (item, date purchased, original cost, current value).
22. Phone numbers & addresses (categorized by friend, relative, doctors, etc.).
23. Real estate analysis (features and cost comparison).
24. Loan schedule (showing historical and predicted payments, interest, etc.).
25. Loan evaluation (comparing various loan types).
26. Business directory (industry, company, contacts, phone #s).
27. Business inventory (to include work in progress).
28. Order entry form (enter quantities, calculate totals).
29. Purchase order log
30. Purchasing/supplier list
31. Cash disbursements journal
32. Income/receipts journal
33. Customer revenue log
34. Sales tracking by customer
35. Contract log
36. Distributor monthly totals
37. Collection bonus report
38. Sales commission report
39. Production totals
40. Cost of goods sold (work, hours, materials, etc.).
41. Payroll
42. Cost estimates (select quantities, calculate costs).
43. Telephone expense report
44. Track company accidents (type, person involved, cost to company).
45. Business analysis (several uses where trends or variances are used to analyze business needs).
46. What If? worksheet (used to determine how changing one variable can affect the bottom line).
47. Advertising results (number of callbacks/sales tracked by ad).
48. Personnel scheduling
49. Project scheduling
50. Dairy cattle output (productivity of each cow).
The above list barely scratches the surface of what you can do with a spreadsheet program. With a little creativity, you could probably add at least a dozen more ways you can use a spreadsheet around your home.
You'll notice several of the items have nothing to do with math functions. Since spreadsheet programs have a SORT capability, they are ideal for keeping simple lists (databases) like mailing lists and phone lists. When you combine databases, like a household inventory, with the value of each item, you can easily get a total value of the entire list of items. One of our classroom exercises had our Christmas list (showing how much we spent for each person) automatically updating our family budget's "actual spending" column. Linking databases with math columns, and linking several math areas together, is a way to get the most power out of your spreadsheet program - a great general purpose tool for your computer.
Don't miss our For The Beginner column in the February, 2000 issue where we showed you how to use a spreadsheet, including how to set up simple formulas
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Till next month...
Happy Computing! J