AICS Research

The Comments & Observations
of a Few Long-time Users

Judy Schaffer
GenCon Construction

 Users' Comments


Predicting the Power User

Over the years, we've come to have a good feel for who's likely to become a true "power user" of QueryCalc. The primary criterion hasn't proven to be whether the user has had prior data processing experience or not. A fair number of QueryCalc's current power users had never really even seen the HP3000 before they began using QC.

Rather, we've found that QueryCalc users are split just about 50/50 as to whether they come from the DP department or a management group. Instead, we've found that the two most important criteria for predicting whether or not a specific individual will evolve into a power user to be:

  • That the individual knows his or her business intimately.

  • That the individual cares greatly that the numbers in his
    or her databases properly total to the half-penny.

If the user-to-be has had prior experience with PC-based spreadsheets and the Query program that comes with the HP3000, so much the better. At that point, he or she is essentially ready to do extraordinary things. But prior experience hasn't proven to be all that necessary — simply because there's nothing all that particularly complicated about using QueryCalc. And as every QueryCalc user will tell you, the rules are, when you're learning QueryCalc:
"The answer's always 'Yes,' you can do it in QueryCalc."
and

"Never be confused for more than 10 minutes. If you're confused for more than 10 minutes, it's time to call the 800 number for help. And you're welcome to call every 10 minutes."


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