Quattro

Borland Quattro was a DOS spreadsheet program written by Adam Bosworth and Lajos Frank.

History

Borland had started work on a Lotus 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet in 1985, while it was not developed in-house like most of their other products it was this time at the least done as a contract manufacturing deal which meant that Borland actually retained the rights to the software. The spreadsheet was released in 1987 as Quattro and received somewhat lukewarm reviews and sluggish sales. While the program mostly matched the Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2 feature set and retailed for only USD 200 at a time when 1-2-3 had an RRP of USD 499 what had happened in the time between the conception of the program in 85 and its release in 87, was that there were a number of alternative options such as VP-Planner had emerged, that also matched the 123 feature set but did so at an even lower price point. For those that wanted the assurance of having the the original Lotus 1-2-3 program the price difference between the two products was not enough, and 1-2-3 was coded entirely in assembly language making it noticeably faster than Quattro.

Version

• 1987: Quattro 1.0

Publications

• Gia L. Rozells, Monica B. Hempel: Compute!'s Quick and Easy Guide to Borland Quattro - COMPUTE! Books 1988, ISBN 087455148X