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Presenter: Okay, see you later.
Woman: That was a great presentation you made in there!
Presenter: Do you know I put together that entire project, including the presentation
slides, just this morning?
Woman: Had your whole department working on it, huh?
Presenter: No, I used my new Lisa personal computer.
Woman: A personal computer did all that?
Presenter: That’s right.
Woman: Incredible!
Presenter: The Lisa computer is incredible. In just a few moments, it helped me
adjust the schedule chart, update an entire budget, write a memo, which
included part of the budget, develop some graphics, and create a distribution list. And
I had time to spare before my meeting. And now with my Lisa working for me, I
can do this kind of project every day, and still have time to relax.
What’s so special about Lisa? Oh, I’ve had other computers. But my
Lisa’s different. You see, it works the way I do. I can create and
combine words, numbers, charts, and pictures virtually in seconds. Well, why don’t
I just show you how I did this.
You see, Lisa’s screen is... special. Now, you can think of it as being like your
office, with a desktop and other office fixtures. Now, you see what I mean
about the screen? It’s very graphical.
Here’s a place to store information – a folder. And a place to get
rid of information – a waste paper basket. On the top of the screen,
there’s a menu bar. It tells you what kinds of functions are available at any
one time. This entire arrangement is called The Desk Top Manager.
We control Lisa by pointing to these images on the screen with this unique item,
called a mouse. By moving the mouse, we move the pointer. To open my folder, I point
to it, and click the mouse button, selecting it. Now, by going to the menu bar
and depressing that button again, the menu is displayed. The option that I point
to, in this case “Opus Project,” is highlighted in black. When I release
the mouse button, I can see the contents of the folder.
I can quickly put the documents in any folder on Lisa, and even store folders inside
other folders, just as I do in my office.
LisaProject
Presenter: Now, earlier today I filed a project schedule in this folder. Let’s retrieve it.
I go back to the File/Print menu, and choose this option, which opens the document on
my desktop. I can now see what the document contains.
This is only a small part of the whole project. If I want to see all of it, I can
open the Page Layout menu and choose Reduce To Fit. The whole chart fits
on my screen at one time. But since I only want to work with tasks in the next
few weeks, I’ll only show part of the chart.
The circles are milestones, and the boxes are the tasks to be completed. Inside each box
is the name of the task, who’s responsible for it, and how long it will take.
I can also see two dates associated with each task and milestone. This one is the
latest I must start the task if it’s to be completed on time, and this one is the
latest I have to complete the task if I’m not to delay the whole project.
With Lisa, I can update the structure of my chart using just the mouse. To add a
task to my flowchart, I draw this box with the mouse, and enter the name of the new
task from the keyboard. I can delete this old line using the mouse, and draw in
these new lines. The critical path is automatically updated to include this task. The
heavily bordered boxes on the bottom show the connected tasks that take the
longest – that’s why it’s called “the critical path.”
I can rearrange the boxes to make the chart easier to read. All I do is grab the
box with the mouse and move it over.
I assigned Robert to the new task and gave him five days to complete it. Let’s see how
this new job will affect his workload. I’ll ask Lisa for a resource chart.
I can see that with this new project, Robert will probably be overbooked, but Steven has
some slack time. Once the project begins, I can monitor work progress by entering the
days remaining on each task, which automatically updates the resource chart. LisaProject
simplifies scheduling, so I can manage my resources better.
Now let’s take a look at the budget that I prepared for this project. But
first, let’s set this document aside. I simply go to the File/Print menu with
the pointer, and choose Set Aside “Schedule.” It goes to a place on my desktop, so I
can easily go back to it.
LisaCalc
Presenter: And updating a budget, this morning? It was simple. With
the help of LisaCalc. LisaCalc allows me to easily develop budgets, financial analyses,
cost models, and much more.
Let’s look at my Opus budget, which is now opened on my desktop. If I
wanted to see the assumptions I made when setting up this model, I can scroll up.
I can also scroll down, and to the left, and right. I can reduce the size of
the print, so I can see more of the chart. I can now see
the entire model on the screen.
Let’s say I wanted to change the values in one of the cells. I point to the
cell, press the mouse button to select it, and then type in a new value, which
automatically replaces the old one.
Now, what would happen to my expenses if I started
with a staff of ten people instead of four? Let’s see if there’s some way
I can reduce my expenses. Now, we could revise the assumptions spelled out below
the model. Let’s see what effect reducing employee expenses would have on my deficit.
I’ll change it to 500 a month. Now I’ve corrected my deficit.
If I want to
insert any part of this budget into a memo, or a report, I use the mouse to select the
information. I then go to the Edit menu and choose Copy. I’ve now made a copy of the
model which I can use later. I’ll set aside the budget for now.
LisaWrite
Presenter: To create a memo, like the one I have here, I begin with LisaWrite, Lisa’s powerful
word processing tool, and I type my memo. Then I add the LisaCalc model I just copied
by positioning the pointer and pressing the mouse button. I get a vertical flashing
bar to show me where the insertion will be. When I choose Paste from the Edit menu,
the model is added into my memo.
I can also insert text, say a heading, above this
model. Again, I select my insertion point, and just type. I can even center it and
then change the text style. How about bold? I can work with any document until it looks
the way I like. And then with Lisa’s printer I can copy the document exactly as
it appears on the screen.
LisaGraph
Presenter: I could send this memo up now, just as it is. But if I wanted to make
the critical budget information obvious at a glance, I should graph it. With Lisa,
we can draw different kinds of charts, like bar charts, pie charts, and line charts.
Here’s that budget again. Now I’m gonna select just the critical information. Next
I copy that information just as I did before, and get the graphics document we wished to
create. I select the place I want the information to go, and choose Paste. The procedure
used is the same one we used when we moved information to LisaWrite earlier.
To the right of the graph, there are legends. I edit these words the same way I
do in all Lisa documents, by selecting and typing. But what if the information I
was trying to convey would look better in a different configuration? Say, in a
line, or a pie chart? The transformation occurs almost instantly.
To complete the graph, I can add titles in different type styles and sizes, just as I
could in the memo. Amazing how much can be done so quickly.
Whether I was working with LisaCalc, or LisaWrite, or any other function, I control
Lisa almost exclusively with the mouse, and always in the same way. The keyboard
I used only for entering text, or numbers.
LisaDraw
Presenter: Now, of course sometimes I want
a drawing that LisaGraph can’t provide. But I won’t need an artist or
this drafting table, all I’ll need is LisaDraw, the freeform graphics package that allows
me to develop custom graphics.
Here’s how that’s done. This is a piece of LisaDraw paper, onto which
I pasted the chart that you saw earlier. I can now explode the section of the pie, duplicate
it, and shade it with a different fill pattern. I can then rearrange these objects to
produce a drop shadow. If I want to further customize my pie chart, I can select all
the lines and make them bolder. I can also move text. And now, add something new.
By choosing this particular template, I can always draw perfectly straight lines. I could
even print this out exactly as you see it here.
Amazing? Not really. Lisa just makes it easier for you to do a lot of the
things that you are doing already, but better.
LisaList
Presenter: Finally, Lisa will help me
make a distribution list for this report on the Opus project. Let me show you how.
This document is a list of all the employees in the company. It contains their names,
mail stop, departments, and other information about them.
Suppose I wanted to send this report to everyone on the Marketing Council. I select the
Find What? option on the List menu, go to the Marketing Council column, and
type “Yes.” After I tell Lisa to Find & Show, I get only those
employees on the Marketing Council. Since I don’t want all this information on
my distribution list, I choose What Order & Format? and I can now say “No”
in those columns that I want omitted. I can also sort this list by
mail stop. Now let’s look at the revised list. Note that I have everyone on
the Marketing Council in order by mail stop.
You can see that working with just the mouse I have a lot of flexibility. In just
one morning I revised the schedule, adjusted the budget, wrote a memo that contained
part of the budget, created a graph based on the budget and customized the graph.
Finally, I distributed the report to selected employees. And now I can take an
empty folder I’ve named “Opus Project” and put all my documents into
this one folder so they’ll be easy to find.
You know, Lisa’s software is so complete, these six comprehensive applications
cover all the business functions that are most important to me: spreadsheet modeling,
charts and graphs, list management, text processing, project management and
presentation graphics. And because of the attention Apple has paid to making these graphics
and this mouse work for me, I need to learn only one way of
doing things to work all the applications.
And since Apple has thoroughly considered
the needs of the business person, Lisa also communicates to the central computer
that I share with other managers. And, of course, my company can use Lisa’s
development languages to customize its own programs.
Do yourself a favor. Ask to see how the power of Lisa can work for you.
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