As the calendar slowly turns from winter toward spring, computer users across the country are suddenly searching for software that will help them with the most complex calculations they'll face all year.
I'm not talking about those silly programs that do your income tax. They're kid stuff.
People managed to get their 1040s in on time for decades before DTC anyone ever heard of a desktop computer. A little adding here, a little subtracting there. Nothing to it.
The real trick is finding software that will handle the ultimate challenge: the NCAA office pool.
Think about it. The entire NCAA tournament: 64 basketball teams, four regions, six rounds. Then throw in the people who toss a buck into the pool for the right to make their picks: five players, 10 players, 25 players, maybe even 100. The combinations and permutations are mind boggling.
My unofficial research shows that eight out of 10 Americans over the age of 12 are within betting distance of an NCAA pool. The pools cross every boundary of age, politics, race, sex, religion, creed and national origin.
As the annual March Madness approaches, millions of workers forsake whatever they should be doing to spend hours poring over their tournament trees and even more hours happily arguing about their picks.
The worst part is that some poor soul in every office has to track of all this, keep score and issue updated reports at the end of every round.
This costs American corporations billions in lost productivity, which would undoubtedly be noted somewhere if the bosses weren't up to their necks in it, too.
With this threat to the American economy in mind, I spent a few nights hunting for software to make managing the NCAA pool faster and easier.
Not surprisingly, a program that's used three weeks a year for an admittedly frivolous purpose and then discarded is not likely to attract Microsoft, Lotus or the other big players.
On the other hand, by scouring the software libraries on Compuserve and America Online, I was able to turn up half a dozen shareware or freeware programs to handle NCAA pools, two of which were quite serviceable.
The Best of Breed goes to Turbo Tourney for Windows, from Sideline Software of Des Moines, Iowa. This one isn't just good -- it's as pretty a three-point game-winning shot at the buzzer. In fact, I'm amazed that anyone would take the time to put so much spit and polish into software with such a limited audience.
Turbo Tourney makes it a snap to enter team pairings, players' names and the scoring for each round. (Some pools give an equal number of points for winning picks in each round, while others give an increasing award for picks in succeeding rounds). That's about all the typing you have to do. After that, the program takes full advantage of Windows' graphical interface. Entering players picks' and the winning teams in each round is a matter of pointing with a mouse and clicking on a tournament tree.
The program offers an outstanding variety of updates, what-if scenarios and scoring reports as the tournament goes progresses. The reports can be directed to the screen, your printer or a disk file. And thanks to the Windows interface, if you have a fax modem, reports can be sent directly to fax machines in other departments (or anywhere in the world for that matter).
Turbo Tourney can manage multiple pools. It comes with a sample file featuring the 1994 tournament teams, and the 1995 pairings will be available for downloading from Compuserve and America Online when the NCAA makes them available.
The program's Online help is extensive and fully-illustrated. A demo version, which is limited to three players but has all other features enabled, is available on Compuserve or America Online. If you manage an NCAA pool or know someone who does, Turbo Tourney is well worth the $24.95 price. For information, contact Sideline Software, P.O. Box 17174, Des Moines, Iowa, (515) 264-1210.
While spiffy Windows programs are great for people whose companies provide the latest hardware, many Americans are stuck in offices with old AT and even (ghack) XT machines that don't do Windows.
If you're stuck with older hardware, consider Office Pool Basketball Version 2.0, a $20 shareware program written by Mark W. Schurmann of Alpharetta, Ga..
It's not as intuitive as Turbo Tourney and doesn't have the graphical bells and whistles, but it's a solid piece of work that will get the job done, and it will run just fine on older machines.
Office Pool Basketball covers the basics well. It will score winning picks in different rounds according to your preference, and if you should actually decide to use the pool as a gambling device -- as opposed to donating all the players' entry fees to charity -- it will calculate different types of pot splits.
The program takes some getting used to. There's no manual per se, and the on-line help is skimpy. In particular, users should be warned to save their data frequently, because it's too easy to back out of a data-entry screen accidentally, losing what you've just entered.
One of the program's best features, from a pool manager's standpoint, is its ability to create "pick disks." These are floppies that contain a portion of the program that allows users with their own computers to enter their own picks directly. The administrator can import those picks from the floppy disk into the main database, saving a lot of work and eliminating the chance of errors.
However, given the size of the program and data files, you'll need a 3 1/2 -inch floppy drive or a high-density 5 1/4 -inch drive to take advantage of the feature. Also, the program can handle only one tournament. If you start a new one, any existing data you have will be overwritten.
While Office Pool Basketball will print an impressive variety of updates, reports and players' score sheets, the information is available only via the printer, not on the screen.
The program does support a wide choice of printers, and if you have a laser printer, it will produce the entire 64-team tournament tree on a single sheet of paper.
Office Pool Basketball is available on Compuserve and America Online. It's a good bet for people who don't have industrial strength hardware, and great for pool managers who want to let players enter their own picks.
For information, contact Mark Schurmann, 2845 Shurburne Dr., Alpharetta, Ga., (404) 594-2791.
Michael J. Himowitz is a staff writer for The Baltimore Sun.