About Pine Grove Software
We released our first program as shareware for the new Apple IIe to one store in March 1983. As you might have guessed, it was a loan calculator. It sold exactly zero copies.
Encouraged by such unbridled success, we decided to write a series of financial routines for the new IBM PC. These 22 routines were released in two parts in late 1984 as Finance I and Finance II. At the time, we had little money to market these two programs, so again, sales lagged. Consequently, we released them using shareware marketing in late 1985. (One disk vendor that we know of, was still distributing them as late as about 1995.) In 1987 or so, the routines were completely rewritten, combined into one program and released as SolveIT!, The Financial Calculator v2.0. The program has been updated several times and has sold 10s of thousands of copies. The New York Times called SolveIT! "Surprisingly fast." And in 1992 it was the 40th best selling shareware title out of thousands according to an independent survey of shareware disk vendors.
In 1990, we released a subset of the now 32 calculators included in SolveIT!. The new program, known as AmortizeIT!, The Complete Loan Solution includes 6 calculators from the loan part of SolveIT! It was most recently updated in late 2003. It now is a full Windows 32-bit pro gram.
Loan*Calculator! Plus, our first program for MS Windows was released in 1995. In 1996 it was awarded a "Best-of-Category Award" from PC Computing Magazine in their July 1996 issue. Lease*Calculator! Plus was released as an upgrade to Loan*Calculator! Plus. It had 3 new calculators or advisors that are not found in Loan*Calculator! Plus. In October 2003, Lease*Calculator! Plus v2.6 was retired and replaced by AmortizeIT! v3.0.
Rapid*Address!, another FREE for NONCOMMERCIAL use program, was released in July 1998. It was retired in 2003. Rapid*Address! took us away from our roots of writing financial software. What it did was insert into any program address information formatted the way that you wanted. You simply entered a ZIP code into a pop-up window and Rapid*Address! did the rest. Unfortunately, there turned out to be little interest in this program.
In 1996, we got the Web bug. Once our web site was opened, downloads of our financial calculators increased along with sales. The Web site has grown over the years, and in 2004, it was completely redesigned.
Finally, in October 2003, all three of our programs underwent major upgrades.
What's next you ask? We plan to offer a series of free, browser-based, calculators in 2006. However, it's too early at this time to release any details. But we urge you to check back here, particularly if you need calculators to run on your web site.
In addition to our retail programs, Pine Grove Software also designs and writes custom applications for businesses. We will be happy to discuss with you your programming and World Wide Web needs.