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Small biz info on disk
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February 25, 2000: 6:41 a.m. ET
SBA, IRS, other agencies team up to provide 'resource guide' on CD-ROM
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Coming soon to a PC near you: a CD-ROM filled with forms and publications from the Internal Revenue Service, Small Business Administration and other federal agencies.
The best part is, it's free, so long as you only want one copy.
The CD-ROM is designed to be "a one-stop resource for small business," said Marlene Criste, an analyst in the IRS small-business office.
Contents include the SBA's small-business guide, as well as business tax forms, instructions and publications from the IRS, plus information from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Social Security Administration, other government offices and non-profit organizations.
It also comes with an extensive array of links to government and private-sector Web sites for small businesses, as well as options for technical support and e-mail updates.
Browser-accessible format
Content is presented in a browser-accessible format, readable by both MS-DOS and Macintosh computers, and the disk includes current versions of Microsoft's (MSFT: Research, Estimates) Internet Explorer browser, the Apple (AAPL: Research, Estimates) QuickTime movie player and Adobe (ADBE: Research, Estimates) Acrobat client software for handling printer-ready .pdf files.
The IRS and SBA produced a prototype of the "small business resource guide" last spring, offering a limited run of disks through the SBA's nationwide network of business information centers.
"There's a lot of demand for this kind of information and people love to have something they can take home and put in their own computer to use when they want to," said Monika Edwards Harrison, an associate administrator of the SBA who helped coordinate the program.
"The feedback we received was just overwhelmingly positive," Criste added. Users also offered suggestions that were incorporated into the next edition of the disk.
The government is making single copies of the disk available at no charge to users who order from the IRS Web site or call a toll-free number. (Click here for ordering information.) For multiple-disk orders, the cost is $10 per disk plus shipping before publication, scheduled for March 8, or $20 per disk plus shipping after that. 
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