Thank you Dr.Farr!
I will look into astro.com, "free horoscope"........
Yeah! even I feel calculations by hand are much beneficial.
regards,
Sakti
If I may, the problem with long hand calculations vs software calculations is not the implements but the algorithm, equations etc that are used! If those are identical then the calculations should be identical though precision (how many decimal point!) might differ.
That said, with hand calculations there is the possibility of making human errors and so the errors if any would or could vary from one chart to the other. Spreadsheets once the formulae are all in should give more consistent results, I suppose.
OTOH, softwares if inaccurately programmed can lead to errors for each chart
and quite frankly, if I may dare to say, most individuals using software might not be that familiar with the intricacies of calculations and so would not have the know-how of what is wrong etc and so are a bit crippled in that sense.
Then there are the differences in opinions about certain calculations. For example the ashtaka varga points have differences between Parashara and Varahamihira (moon and Jupiter). Also in some of the strength calculations.
In early nineties, when I was playing around with some of the prominent software, and some not so prominent ones, many errors were noted and conveyed to the software designers. I will refrain from using names, but I also noticed that something that got correctly calculated in earlier versions of two software, was giving wrong results in a subsequent version! While some things improved in later versions, certain things (coding etc changed) seemed to slip!
Then add to that the very real fact that birthtimes are not recorded accurately due to a variety of reasons, although it may sound difficult to believe. I have written a few messages either on this forum or other ones I participate in about that matter already.
Birthtime rectification can be a rather tricky matter too, because if events and traits are the means of fine tuning, ayanamsha and dasa duration (which year to use?) come into play and it can get a bit messy. The repercussion of this is not too critical, a few days here or there (though could be more with extremely different ayanamshas and year etc) and so may not matter to most, unless they use dasarambha or I believe kalchakra dasa which is more sensitive to accuracy of birthtime. Narasimha once wrote an article about that on one of the forums where with examples he compared different dashas and their sensitivity to birth-time shifts.
Anyways, I suppose we each figure out for ourselves what is satisfactory and most efficient for their personal use, at this time.
Regards,
Rohiniranjan