Pat, while using MS Excel for your program set up is a good idea, it can be costly if you don't already have the package. They used to sell it as a seperate item, but I have not seen it that way for a while. Lately I have only seen it as part of MS Office which will set you back about $125 for the Student Teacher Edition. Professional packages will run 2 or 3 times the price.

Another option is to download OpenOffice 2.3 from OpenOffice.org
This is an open source free business package sponsored by a number of computer based firms such as IBM and Sun. In fact IBM is introducing Open Office under their own banner as Lotus Symphony. The package consists of a word processor, a spreadsheet, presentation graphics, database, a drawing package and a math package. The software will read and write MS Office files (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.)

Best thing is, is that it is FREE. It is a large download, about 98mb, but on a cable modem or T-1 line it is a quick download. Then all you have to do is click on the file name to execute the setup program. We have over 60 PC's in our office and most use MS Office because they came with it. But for those that did not and being on a limited budget, we installed Open Office in lieu of MS Office. The users see little diffierence, because Open Office has the "look and feel" of MS Office..

Even if you choose to use Excel, you should download Open Office and install it on your PC and then play with it and test it. If you don't like it you can easily remove it. Open Office also provides updates to it's product more frequently then MS, plus it is a lot less buggy. It is definitely worth a look, because of the price (FREE) and because of the "look and feel" and ability to read and write MS files. Despite being free, it is really very good.


You can check it out and download it at : www.openoffice.org


Another suggestion, is to check out software specifically designed for what you want to do. There may be a retail package for you, or a sharewear/freeware package available. You can check out retail stores such as Staples, Office Depot, etc. or online sites such as www.Tucows.com Cost may vary from free to several hundreds of dollars depending on whether 'freeware or retail software".

You could get a cd burner or dvd burner to save your files off line. Cd's store about 700 megabytes where as a double layered dvd will save about 9 Gigabytes (billions). DVD burners and discs are getting really cheap.

Another option that I currently use is the Flash Drive or Jump Drive which is a small USB based device to which you can read and write up to 8 gigabytes. They come in sizes from 128mb to 8gb. A lot handier and convenient than cd's or dvd's ( you can carry one on your keychain if you want). The prices for these nifty devices have come down a lot. A 128mb drive runs about $10 and an 4GB drive is about $60. Only problem with these devices is that you need to have Windows 2000, XP or higher to get full functionality of the USB device. If you hava an Apple, no problem. Apple practically invented USB.

Sorry to bore you or make your head spin, but there are a lot of options available and before settling on one thing, explore your options. You may find something you like at a very reasonable cost.