** PD/Shareware review / 220 words **

Eliza v1.3
80%

** BC **
Entertainment
Freeware, all Ataris
Author: Mathias Jaap
Email: mjaap@hsw.ifl.uni-hamburg.de
http://www.hh.schule.de/hhs/mjaap/programe.htm
** /BC **

** ELIZA1.IMG here **

In the '70s some boffins created a computer program that supposedly emulated a psychiatrist. Students were recruited to test it and supposedly they believed it was a real person. Now I don't believe this any more than I do Little Red Riding hood but it makes a good story!

Anyway Eliza is a '90s version of the same program. There have been dozens of variants of this program on most platforms but this is the first GEM version I've seen. This release supports iconify, the font selector and clipboard and offers options to connect to the author's homepage or send him an email from menu options via your web browser or email applications. It also has it's own little online help page - it isn't in ST Guide format, but never mind, it's only a page or so.

Eliza responds to everything you put into it but does give special responses to certain text. For example, typing in Pink Floyd results in the reply Jeff Minter! I'm confident Eliza isn't a real person but she's (oops... it's) a good laugh and when you have nothing better to do give this a try - or not.

Matt Burton