The American Business Phone Book
                                	
A Review by Scott Darling
                                	
Copyright RIPC © 1993
Resource International Publishing Company
Route 1, Box 168
Milford, TX 76670
CompuServe 70053,1502


System Requirements: IBM-PC or compatible.

Imagine being able to search through 9.3 million listings from over 5,000 Yellow Page directories!  And it only costing a paltry $.05 a listing!  Now, this may not sound like an exciting way to spend a Friday night.  However this software really has some useful features.

At first glance this software looks mediocre.  It is not flashy and really only serves one purpose: to allow searching for a phone number in the entire U.S. and Canada.  This can be done via Directory Assistance but at a much higher cost.  Using this software on a CD-ROM allows a much broader search pattern to be entered.  That pattern can then be progressively narrowed down to a specific target permitting finding telephone numbers that otherwise might not be found.  Directory Assistance can not, or will not perform such a service.  This one feature may make the purchase price worthwhile.

The installation is painless, select the CD-ROM drive path; in my case D: and then type INSTALL.  Only the retrieval software is loaded onto your hard disk.  To run the software you just type PHONE at the command prompt.  The main menu will then appear.  At the main menu you have 4 choices. Search the phone book; the "Electronic Catalog" advertising for other ABI products; the software instructions; and lastly, an interesting item called Business List Counts.  More on this as we progress.

The meat of this program is the Phone Book.  The first screen displays Copyright information.  The next screen is an input screen allowing you to begin your selection process.  You input a name and it searches from that name.  You are allowed to use a wild card in the name field, or you can input an area code and phone number.  You can then narrow down the search via City, State, Zip Code, or Area Codes.  Once you find a short description field that you are looking for, you can then display the information on screen or send it to a printer for printing.  There are numerous misgivings with this software:

The Search engine does not handle hyphens or ampersands at all.  I tried TEL-WEST then just TEL- and it never found the name TEL-WEST until I used just TEL.

When searching via telephone numbers you have to input the entire area code and phone number.  Wild cards or incomplete numbers are not allowed.

The software has a designed-in lock to prevent you from looking up more than 5000 queries.  You need to contact the company if you want to retrieve more.

When printing, a single name, address, phone number is printed on an entire page of paper.  This is not only wasteful, it is also annoying.  Further, there is no way to go forward without exiting the program and re-entering as once you have displayed or printed the desired information, the only way to get back to the main menu is to quit the program.

The information displayed in the address fields is evidently intentionally limited.  I found several addresses with limited information about the name of the street, and none that included the street number.  Obviously, this software is not meant to be utilized for any mailing purposes.

As with any software, it can get out of date rather quickly.  I found several examples of this.  Also I found one entry with the correct address but a three year old phone number.

The last part of this software is something called Business Custom Lists. This contains quite a lengthy database of information concerning various types of business trades like wheat, tobacco growers, etc.  It is based upon a SIC code [of which I am unfamiliar].  It was an interesting database to say the least.  I looked up Beer and Ale Wholesalers and found out Pennsylvania has 1245 of them!  California only has 345!  Various other facts were enlightening and I found a lot of them hard to believe from personal knowledge.

Software System requirements: the software ran on my 386/33 with a 300ms access CD-ROM drive.  The software engine only takes about 600K of hard disk space.  I think it would require at least an EGA video system.  There was no information of required hardware on the CD container.

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Published by: AMERICAN BUSINESS INFORMATION, Optical Products Division, 5711 S. 86th Circle, P.O. Box 27347, Omaha, NE 681270347  Tel: (402) 593-4595  Fax: (402) 331-5481

Retail price $250.00