A day in the life of a tax adviser using Windows.

• Author: Love, Jerry L.

The goal of this column is to offer ideas and insights on how to use computer technology to one's best advantage. This will be accomplished by explaining Mr. Leonard's use of computer technology in his day-to-day activities. His title at BlueCross/BlueShield is Senior Tax Accountant; his duties revolve around the gathering and organization of information relating to tax returns and their preparation. In addition to these core duties, there are the inevitable "other duties as assigned." These tasks or special projects may involve a one-time occurrence or require continual review and update.

Mr. Leonard works on an IBM PS/2 model 90, a 486 CPU with a clock speed of approximately 66 MHz. It has 8 MB of main memory, a 1.44 MB floppy disk drive, and a 400 MB hard disk drive. Attached to the basic CPU is a 545 MB Mountain tape drive, a second 350 MB hard drive, a Toshiba double speed CD-ROM player, a 3270 IBM terminal emulator, a Hewlett Packard LaserJet III, a US Robotics 14,400-baud modem, a mouse and the requisite parallel and serial ports.

Every computer should have certain basic programs and applications. The programs installed on Mr. Leonard's computer are Microsoft DOS 6.2, Microsoft Windows 3.1, Microsoft Word 6.0, Microsoft Excel 5.0 and Microsoft Foxpro 2.5. Through the use of these core applications, any other application can be emulated quite successfully. Due to the nature of Mr. Leonard's position, he also has many other applications, utilities, etc. on the system. The packages which he uses most frequently are:

* FAST*TAX System 5 Workstation Federal and State Income Tax Package, Current and Prior Year. * FAST*TAX System 5 Workstation Federal and State Insurance Tax Package, Current and Prior Year. * FAST*TAX System 5 Workstation Life Insurance Premium Tax Package, Current and Prior Year. * Dun & Bradstreet PC LINK Software. * IBM 3270 Terminal Emulation Software. * PORTFOLIOS PLUS Tax Management INC. - BNA Portfolios on CD-ROM. * CCH ACCESS, a tax research CD-ROM. * D&B INSIGHT Communications Program. * TURBO TERM Public Domain Communications Program. * PKZIP Utility Software.

Windows is the single program that has most influenced the performance of Mr. Leonard's daily activities. Even though a number of programs he routinely runs are DOS-based programs, he has set up DOS Windows (referred to as a non-Windows application) to run them. The only applications not run in Windows are his daily and monthly tape backups. Windows allows a user the ability to switch from application to application, whether DOS or Windows based, merely by using two keys, Alt and Tab. This saves the time in loading (starting)...