Slate Announces Pencentric Spreadsheet

At-Hand initially for PenPoint only

Up to now, Slate Corp. has focused on development tools like PenApps and PenBook for pen developers. However, the company has now stepped into the application software market with the announcement of At-Hand, a pencentric spreadsheet developed under the direction of Dan Bricklin, co-founder of Slate and co-developer of VisiCalc (the PC industry’s first electronic spreadsheet).

At-Hand has a gesture-driven interface that, at least when compared to spreadsheets like Lotus 1-2-3, reduces the reliance on menus and edit-lines. Consequently, users can write directly into cells. The 256 by 8192 cell spreadsheet provides over 90 standard spreadsheet functions, 3-D graphing capabilities, and a scripting language for application customization. It supports PenPoint’s standard gestures for navigation and control.

The Slate offering is data compatible with file formats supported by both Lotus 1-2-3 (WK1) and Microsoft Excel (XLS). Data from those spreadsheets can be imported into and exported from At-Hand.

The spreadsheet will be shipping in May, 1992, selling for $495, and will run only on PenPoint 1.0. When loaded, At-Hand requires about 500 Kbytes of RAM. It is likely that At-Hand will soon face competition from other spreadsheet vendors. PenWare (San Jose, CA) has developed PenCell for the Momenta Computer and is expected to port this product to other pen platforms such as PenPoint. And we can be sure that Borland, Lotus, and Microsoft will be aggressive players in the pen-based spreadsheet market. Nevertheless, Slate will probably have a headstart in the PenPoint environment.