Dr. Frank S Gilliam

Personal computers of ever-increasing speed havemotivated programmers of multivariate software to adapt theirprograms to be run in Microsoft Windows and Macintoshplatforms. Updated versions of these multivariate programsappear more and more frequently and are marketed inten-sively. In this review we provide a comparative analysis of themost recent versions of three analytical software packages –Canoco for Windows 4.5, PC-ORD version 4and SYN-TAX2000. The three packages share two characteristics. First, themost recent versions are now compatible with the most recentWindows platforms and should therefore be accessible for useby virtually all vegetation scientists. Second, they have capa-bilities for numerous multivariate techniques, although eachpackage has some unique techniques. Thus, any one of thepackages will have much to offer the user.