Documenting a Day

Daily Life Usage

    In our everyday lives, we spend multiple hours near any form of technology, whether it be a computer, mobile device, or even a calculator. However, these devices ensure that everyday life becomes easier. Today I am going to review several applications that I commonly use throughout my day, these applications are known as the Microsoft Office applications.



    We sometimes forget to process how many tasks we perform during a session when using a type of application, for daily uses of Microsoft Word, we use so many different tasks, changing fonts, indentations, punctuations, grammar checking, spell checking, creating hyperlinks, and even putting photos into a document. All of these tasks may seem minimal to people who commonly use these applications, but may actually create difficult problems for people who are unfamiliar with how to use these applications, and what application is truly built for. Distinguishing what tasks you are trying to establish during your session will determine what program is best suited for that session. Below I will review and compare different applications to help determine the best uses for a variety of tasks, which will help aid in figuring out what application to use.



Reviewing and Comparing Different processing Applications

    As technology moves steadily in a more advanced way, there are many options available for daily tasks that help assist us, some of these are different processing applications. The applications that will be discussed are about, word processing applications, spreadsheet applications, presentation applications, and database applications. These four different categories are used in everyday circumstances to help with different scenarios. There are a few commonly used applications that will be presented as examples to differentiate the main uses out of these applications and their functionalities that are best suited for their design, the examples being presented are Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and MySQL.

    Microsoft Word is considered to be a mainstream word processing application used across multiple platforms pc, mobile-based operations, and browser-based operations. Microsoft Word is mainly used for writing documents; however, this can also be used in a series of different ways. The most advantageous way to utilizing Microsoft word is through writing papers, emails, important documents, or in some cases as a way to create a document with listings where this would provide the best and quickest method to creating these. Ideally, Microsoft Word can provide some opportunities like making tutorials, and even in some cases charts and tables. However, these optional tasks are more presentable in other applications that are designed for those opportunities. As Vahid (2017) explains, “a word processor is a computer application for creating formatted text” (Section 5.1). In regard to this, these applications all do have some flexibility, for example, photos can be added to Microsoft Word and be useful in describing or creating instructions to help provide guidance. However, a better solution in this example would be based on a presentation-based application such as Microsoft PowerPoint.

    Presentation style applications are helped in providing an audience with knowledge through visual representation explanations. Where word processing applications can blend with this sort of application in some cases, presentation-styled applications are best suited. These applications are designed for visual guidance, applying photos, animations, and in some cases, videos embedded within the presentation. Vahid (2017) expresses that, “a presentation app is a computer application used to create a slideshow of text and graphics, often with animation” (Section 5.3). Elaborating on this, applying different animations to help guide your audience to what they are looking at during a presentation while the presenter expresses what they are trying to provide for information. A great example is adding animation to an arrow pointing at an object within the presentation, this arrow itself can be animated to appear when the presenter is ready to provide that knowledge to their audience. In word processing applications there is less likely to have any form of animation as the program itself was not designed for that purpose. A great time to use a presentation is if someone is needing to present information to an audience that can be shown through visual representation, rather than a long explanation through a word processing application where the audience would have to read through a large amount of text, in most cases, these types of presentations are time-limited, therefore, a visual presentation would be best suited. Some disadvantages to using a presentation application are based on what the user is trying to do, if the user wants to make formal documentation, presentation-styled applications would be very limited. There is only so much a presentation-styled application can provide, there is limited space on each slide for information, very limited formatting regarding text, and limited text spell checking available. Another disadvantage to presentation styled applications is that the ability to add charts or spreadsheets within the presentation is limited to the size of the presentation slide spacing, there are opportunities to grab a portion of a chart or spreadsheet, but this may not provide enough information for the audience, therefore, a spreadsheet application would function better in this scenario.

    Spreadsheet applications have become very advanced in assisting in calculating formulas and overall calculating large amounts of data, which can be transitioned into visual charts to express what the sheet is representing. In Microsoft Excel, this application has many advanced uses for calculations, which is great for different businesses and for personal uses. As Vahid (2017) explains, “an important spreadsheet feature allows a user to type a formula in a cell to compute that cell’s value based on other cell’s values” (Section 5.2). Spreadsheet applications have the ability to pull information from one cell to other using formulas to calculate the cell’s data values. This is a useful concept for organizational purposes, for example, managing inventory. Another example would be financial budgets, by presenting the values of one’s financials a total budget could be represented through a spreadsheet by presenting the expenses and providing a total budget for a certain time period, using formulas one could calculate how much spending or savings they would have after all of their expenses. Spreadsheets like all applications are designed for just their main application usage, they are limited to their ability of flexibility. A spreadsheet would not be best suited for formal writing, and during presentations would be appropriate to use, however, this would only be limited to some information, whereas a presentation application could help better in presenting that data. Even though spreadsheets are great, they are missing critical parts that are only represented in database applications.

    Database applications are collections of data that are organized in ways to have a more efficient way of retrieving information and giving data true meaning. Databases are used to store extensive amounts of data that are helped with the organization just like spreadsheets, however, the information within the databases is pulled from external use, like order processing for example. An order is placed, and that order is sent to a server that sends a message to the database to remove that value ordered from the database or in this example inventory. This is done through automatic transactions when the database is established properly to do so, whereas spreadsheets can do similar transactions, however, would be manually done. As Vahid (2017) explains, “a database is a collection of data organized to enable efficient information retrieval, a company may use a database to gather information regarding current inventory or to forecast trends” (Section 5.4). Utilizing databases are great for having a large selection of data that can be managed efficiently, to help support different businesses, personal usages, and or servers. As Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017) explain, “databases (DB) used as electronic patient records (EPR or electronic medical records [EMR]) have been established in clinical care units (frequently as parts of larger Clinical Information Systems [CIS]), essential for clinical and laboratory data storage” (para. 2). As a great example of how databases establish a very essential part of businesses for storing information. However, even if databases are great, they fall short in their capabilities. They are only good for organizational purposes to ease the access of information and keeping track of data, they do not help in data calculations and formulas where spreadsheet applications work the greatest.

    After establishing what each application does and how they are different, they all have moderate flexibility amongst themselves. Some applications are better suited for different circumstances where others fall short. Most importantly, all of these applications are very critical to everyday use, almost every business uses these applications in one way or another and this helps support the concept that technology is on an upward trend to making businesses have higher opportunities for success






References

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com/


Tüttelmann, F., Luetjens, C. M., & Nieschlag, E. (2006). Optimising workflow in andrology: a new electronic patient record and database. Asian Journal of Andrology, 8(2), 235–241.

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