• Ox
• Rweb
• Splus
• Xlisp
• GenStat

1. The home web page of Genstat is very clear, compact, well organized and smooth-colored.
2. The pictures on the homepage are good guides to the info you want.
3. The search engine is at the outstanding place on the homepage, and very sensitive.
4. The Site Map on the homepage provides the users a clear map to look for the special software they want.
5. The negative is that there is no way to contact the other users.

1. The info on software (update, availability of extensions) is very clear.
2. Downloading is very easy.
3. Links to other sites is handy on the homepage.
4. The negative is that there is no search engine.

Thank goodness we went over this one in class because our group could not figure it out. The web page doesn't have any navigational tools along a side or the top. So it isn't easy to figure out what it contains. All the links are imbedded in the reading so the only way to know where to find something is to read the whole thing. We couldn't find a page advertising its features except for one thing: that it is free. We found one demo, but when we tried to use it, it wouldn't work. It was just too complicated for us to figure out quickly. Now that we've seen this software work and saw how to access it (through Rweb Modules) we see that there are some demo's on the site. This web site just isn't clear for a beginning stat student without a teacher giving instructions.

S-Plus (http://www.mathsoft.com/splus) got the highest rank among the five software web sites. It has several outstanding features.

First this web site gives an announcement about the latest version S-Plus 2000. It tells us S-Plus 2000 has the power to create innovative, cutting-edge analytics for better results. It includes one page on S-Plus 2000 Readiness Disclosure. The feature lists of S-Plus 2000 professional and standard editions are available. From here we can get many updated things about S-Plus 2000.

We can get some information about 2000 S-Plus International User Conference which most of the users may be interested in. Conference Contents, Poster & Technology Session, Conference Presenters, Site, Activities, Pricing and Registration can be found at this web site.

The information of the S-Plus training is complete, detailed and updated. It includes Public Courses, Private Courses, Online Courses and consulting. For each course, the Course Descriptions, Training Schedule(updated) and Registration are available. It seems S-Plus education services can help you reach any S-Plus training.

In the page on S-Plus product support, it provides the latest technical support information and helpful hints on using S-Plus. Here, we can find Tech Tips, FAQ, User Groups, S-Plus library, Downloads, Release Notes, System Requirements, Module Installation Instructions, and Tech Support Policy.

About the S-Plus Industries, Some application fields are listed, such as finance, GIS, Manufacturing and Pharmaceutical. If we would like to discover why the people in these fields rely on S-Plus, we can request free trial CD.

This site does have navigational buttons at the bottom, but it isn't very fancy and doesn't have a lot of information. It hasn't been updated since 1998. It is very simple in its layout but we could only find 7 out of the 24 features of a good web site. Couldn't find a demo of the statistical package. We found exercises listed in a table of contents for a course, but couldn't see where we were supposed to do them. Without an instructor teaching us this site, we couldn't figure it out. Therefore, we didn't find it to be useful at all.

Roxanne Drachenberg
(435) 752-8375
roxanned@pcu.net