                      Astound for Windows, v. 1.5
                      Reviewed By Mike Christensen

	Astound bills itself as "The next generation desktop presentation
solution for multimedia presentations." That's a pretty fair
description of this software.  It's a versatile package that
includes animation, video, and sound.  The system on which I tested
it was not equipped for sound or video, so I'm unable to comment on
the effectiveness of these enhancements.
	The software requires an IBM-compatible PC with a 386/20MHz
processor, Microsoft Windows 3.1, 1.44MB 3.5-inch floppy drive, hard
drive, VGA monitor, Windows compatible mouse, at least 4 MB RAM.
Optional requirements are sound card, microphone and CD-ROM drive.
The manual recommends 8 MB RAM.  On a 4-meg system, I ran into some
memory problems, especially with redrawing graphics on the screen,
and frequently had to save and re-open in order to get the screen to
redraw.  Using a master slide for complex backgrounds seemed to help
some.
	I found Astound to be relatively easy to learn and use, at least for
simpler presentations.  The tutorial is straight forward, stepping the
user through the basics in a systematic, easy to follow manner.
Beyond the basics, some of the enhancements can be a little
confusing if you're just "menu-surfing," but the documentation is
well organized and clearly written.  Those with the patience to
study the manual will be rewarded with some fun special effects.
	Animation choices are easy to follow, with drag-and-drop icons for
entry and exit points, and slide-bar timelines that allow delays,
pauses, and halts.  There is a decent, but not overwhelming, choice
of special effects for text and graphics presentation.  A rotation
tool for graphics would be useful, but I could find none.
	Astound comes with a good selection of templates for slides and
charts, as well as clip art, animated actors, sounds and video.  The
animated actors included were pretty much limited to standard
cartoon characters, as was much of the clip art.  A "bonus" CD,
however, promised a much better selection.
	The charting capabilities of Astound are impressive, with excellent
3-D and animation available.  Users can choose the order of
appearance of chart items, method of appearance, and depth of
perspective.  Importing from outside spreadsheets, such as Excel or
Lotus, is supported, as is OLE.  Existing charts are easily updated
and reformatted.
	Overall packaging is easy.  Slide order can be changed quickly by
dragging and dropping icons.  Previewing is accomplished with a
mouse-click, and can be done slide-by-slide or for the entire
presentation.  The preview can be stopped at any time with a
keystroke ("Escape," what else?).  This single-slide preview makes
experimenting with special effects a breeze.  Just make a change,
preview, escape, modify and re-test.
	Animation was sometimes choppy, although I suspect this could be
improved with enhanced memory.  Movement of two or more animated
actors or graphics was awkward (again, something which more memory
would probably fix).
	The drawing tools are pretty rudimentary, but you can import
graphics in various formats from other drawing applications.  EPS
files aren't importable, but bitmaps, TIFF, and GIF files are.
	Once a presentation is complete, you can run it directly from
Astound, or it can be saved as a self-running EXE file and
distributed on disk.
	Astound is a versatile multimedia presentation package that's easy
to learn and use.  Despite its appetite for memory (typical with
most graphics applications), Astound's suggested retail price of
$399 is, in my opinion, very reasonable for the performance it
delivers.

                           Gold Disk Inc.
                   3350 Scott Blvd., Building 14
                       Santa Clara, CA 95054
                          (408) 982-0200.


 Send your postal name, address, city, state, zip to 5prod@supportu.com
       for product literature to be sent to you via postal mail.
