How many nights have you stayed up late working on an estimate that you couldn't complete until you found a price for just one special item? It was a way of life for me until I discovered construction cost books. Although many of the items in these estimating aids were not exactly what I was looking for, the books' price tables were better than a guess. Soon after I discovered computers, I noticed that the same cost data was available on disk. But early programs were cumbersome, and it was still easier to flip through the books and enter the information manually. But times have changed — hard drives are bigger, CPUs are faster, and software is more
