BesAna v2.11

When you pick up something called BesAna and it runs in DOS, you know exactly what you're getting into. It's not a quest into an elven kingdom, it's not fluff and frills — it's a straightforward, uncompromising tool for working with data and analyzing it.

BesAna v2.11 is a numerical calculation and statistics instrument. You'll find a spreadsheet editor, you can import data, perform simple operations on it, calculate averages, standard deviations and the like. It's not Excel, not even close, but back in the nineties it solved the problem on smaller office machines or home computers with a cheaper price tag and adequate functionality.

If you're looking for a gaming experience here, you're out of luck. This is productivity software, so there's no play involved — it's work. The graphics are purely text-based, the interface is classic DOS through and through: black, white, and possibly grey. Navigation via menus and command line, it works better without a mouse. You never felt a thrill looking at the interface, but you knew your way around it and could figure things out.

Today we'd put that kind of software in a web browser relying on JavaScript to handle it, or we'd just open Google Sheets. BesAna v2.11 has nothing left to show for itself — it's an archival curiosity. You can run it in an emulator, but there's not much point — that era is gone, and with it all practical need for it.

But if you're curious about how people solved data analysis on computers when mice weren't even standard and the internet was sci-fi, it's historically fascinating testimony. For actual use, you should look somewhere else.