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Randys Rumor Rag 1992 10
RAndY's RumOR RaG
October 1992
NEWS IN YER FACE
I hear that State of the Art will be acquiring Real World
Accounting. The legwork has been done, now we're just waiting for
an announcement.
---------------
The folks at Banyan Systems and Novell are talking to each
other about improving the interoperability of their products and
cooperating to satisfy the needs of joint customers.
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Microsoft has some new things up it's sleeve. Look for a new
version of Money and the entry-level accounting package from Great
Plains. This integrated package will be called Microsoft Profit.
They've also bundled Works for Windows and Publisher, giving
away a mouse pad, WinFax UltraLITE, and 25 cartoon clip-art images
in the bargain.
Publisher is also being distributed on CD-ROM and includes the
Microsoft Design Pack which has 100 clip-art images, 5 TrueType
fonts, 20 professionally designed templates, and Microsoft Draw.
The Design pack is also available separately.
---------------
Set to debut October 23rd is Hewlett-Packard's new LaserJet IV
printers. These are 600 dpi printers with an Intel 960 chip
inside. You also get a TrueType rasterizer, Compugraphic
Intellifont rasterizer, and the ability to upgrade to PostScript II
with an Adobe ROM cartridge. I hear the price will be in the
$2,300-$2,400 range.
---------------
Borland is looking to jazz up DOS dBase by including a DOS
extender to improve performance. Rumor has it that they'll use
Rational Systems' DOS/16M extender for the project, code-named
Eclipse.
Use of the extender would give dBase access to 16M of memory
and possibly improve performance (depending upon how well it's
implemented). The concern is that the new product would require at
least 4M of RAM and many dBase users are still running on low-end
286 and 386 systems.
---------------
Soon-to-be-released WordPerfect Office 4.0 will include
updated calendaring and scheduling modules, enhanced wide-area
connection management, the ability to pre-set viewer privileges, as
well as the ability to launch other programs from within mail.
You'll be able to view fax forms from within the mail program and
the Windows version will include a thesaurus and spell checker.
Another new product called Informs is a Windows-based forms
package. Included will be separate modules for developing and
using forms, and forms data can be exported to external databases.
Version 6 of DOS WordPerfect has an anticipated ship date of
first quarter 1993. It will feature zoom editing, bulleted
paragraphs, drag-and-drop, hot keys, and collapsible outlining.
Informed sources say the look and feel is similar to Windows.
---------------
Look for November 16th to be the unveiling day for Microsoft's
Windows database Access (formerly known as Cirrus). Beta testers
suggest that a December-January ship date is more realistic than
Microsoft predictions.
In related news, Microsoft will dump Excel's Q+E as a database
access and replace it with perhaps Access.
The boys in Redmond recently unveiled WinLogin, a system
administrator which sets up a central database for Windows
configuration and defaults so that systems are automatically set
each time the user logs on to a network. List price is $29.95.
---------------
Apple is recalling some of the early model PowerBook 100
notebooks due to a circuit board malfunction. It seems that an
electrical short which has shown up in three systems results in the
melting of a small hole in the bottom of the system's outer case.
---------------
Microsoft has been recently overwhelmed with requests for the
Windows NT preliminary SDK. In case you haven't heard, you can get
it for $69 (plus $10 S&H). It requires 12MB of RAM and contains
over 100MB of documentation in PostScript format. You will get
updates as they become available and a final free copy of the
operating system when it hits the market. The SDK ships on a CD
and contains compilers for both Intel and RISC processors.
Microsoft has been getting an average of 500 requests per day for
the CD!!
And speaking of NT, you read it here first last month.
Windows NT will be delayed until first quarter of 1993 (there's a
surprise).
---------------
Meanwhile, in Intel land, they're having trouble with the P5
chip. The original design cannot operate faster than 40MHz without
overheating. This may require Intel to redesign parts of the chip
which would delay production, of course.
---------------
Hewlett-Packard has signed an agreement to acquire Colorado
Memory Systems, manufacturer of tape backup units. When the
acquisition is complete, Colorado will become a subsidiary within
HP's Mass Storage Group.
---------------
MORE MICROSOFT WOES
Microsoft has been under yet another attack recently for
allegedly using undocumented functions in Windows to gain an unfair
competitive advantage. Of course, we all know that such a thing
would never happen (grin).
I guess that Lotus asked Microsoft to fix a function in
Windows 3.1 that affected the way in which charts were rendered on
the screen. Microsoft said that fixing the problem would cause
problems for their own Excel and PowerPoint. Another developer
ridiculed Lotus saying, "undocumented calls are not the reason 1-2-
3 for Windows is a crummy product".
In an attempt to dampen criticism, Microsoft released a 10-
page white paper discussing the 16 functions at issue. The paper
claims that four functions are documented in the SDK, six are
"obsolete", five have documented equivalents, and one is "entirely
useless".
The paper did not explain why Microsoft developed an "entirely
useless" function.
---------------
DASHBOARD
Last month I reported on this new program from Hewlett-Packard
and I now have some details.
It appears constantly at the bottom of a Windows screen and
includes a set of controls for accessing multiple-screen views of
programs and push-button icons for launching applications.
There's a list price of $99 and requires 2M of memory and 1M
of hard drive space. Of course it will work in conjunction with
NewWave.
It can be customized to include three, five, seven, or nine
screen views. Users can switch between applications by selecting
one of the views. Often used screen layouts can also be saved.
There is support for accessing system resources, enabling
users to reconfigure or change default settings. Support for drag-
and-drop is also included. There's a gauge that shows details
about available memory and system resources. An alarm can be
triggered if these drop below user-defined levels.
The screen photographs I've seen of the product look sort of
stupid, but then these are the folks who brought us NewWave.
---------------
CD TALK
Well, I finally did it - that SCSI interface was just sitting
there on my sound card. I had installed a CD-ROM for a customer
and saw the potential. Now I had to have one.
My Pro Audio Spectrum 16 card has a standard 50-pin SCSI
interface, so now it was time to shop for a drive. SCSI CD drives
are not cheap. I was interested in the NEC CDR-84 with their new,
faster technology but a salesperson told me there were problems
with the drive (I have yet to confirm this). Anyway, I ended up
buying a Hitachi-3750. (I just wanted a bare drive with no
software bundle.) The cabling had to be obtained from Media Vision
since CD-ROM manufacturers have yet to standardize the connections
for audio. The kit also came with the necessary drivers for the
Pro Audio Spectrum card. Fortunately, the driver and MSCDEX were
able to load high.
So far, the drive has worked well and I have no complaints.
When a CD is loaded, a dark grey door seals the drive so you know
there's already a disc in there. The Hitachi, like many others,
uses caddies. I find the caddies to be a nuisance, but most drives
seem to use them.
Here's my recommendations for hardware: shop around. Be
careful about low prices. Most of the low priced drives use a
proprietary interface. For example, you often see the Sony-535
advertised at decent prices. While this is a good drive, be aware
that it uses a non-standard SCSI interface. I suggest avoiding the
Mitsumi with it's 700ms access time, these things are slow enough
and there's no reason to get one this slow. If you want
multimedia, do it right with a sound card - you'll save yourself a
slot. Many of the packaged multimedia upgrades include some
excellent software.
OK, you've got the hardware, it's hooked up and running. Now
what will you do for software?
There is a lot of CD software out there, much of it under
$100. Sierra sells several of their games on CD. You get the same
256-color graphics as the floppy-based games, but instead of
reading narration in a box on the screen, the voices of live actors
have been digitized. That means that not only is the narration
spoken, but the characters also speak their parts. For example,
King's Quest V has the digitized voices of 50 different actors.
This brings a new dimension to gaming.
It gets a little tiring when you have to listen to the same
narration repeatedly, like when you've restored a game and need to
go through a particular portion again. But it's still more
realistic than reading text on the screen. Sierra has plans to
convert more of their games to CD which will include digitized
images as well as speech. And the prices are quite reasonable.
Last year, I sent in an entry to the CorelDraw! contest. Just
for entering, they sent me a box of stuff including a mouse pad,
keychain, miscellaneous promo items, and Corel Artshow '91.
Artshow is a CD which contains not only the winning entries from
the previous year's contest, but all of the entries that were sent
in. There's also Alchemy, a JPG compression and conversion
program. Don't forget the Electronic Library of Art, over 1,000
works of art through the ages. My favorite is Corel CD-Audio which
lets you play audio CD's and even remembers the titles, artists,
and tracks on your audio CD's. (If you have the ArtShow CD, run it
through your audio CD player - there are some orchestral tracks
they don't tell you about that are quite nice.) Viewing the
contest winners and entries can be automated through an attractive
Toolbook interface which also includes several MIDI background
tracks.
If you buy a multimedia bundle, you'll likely get some kind of
encyclopedia included. Media Vision bundles a special edition of
Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia.
I bought Microsoft's Bookshelf which is a combination of The
Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, The American Heritage Dictionary,
Roget's Electronic Thesaurus, The World Almanac and Book of Facts
1992, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, the Concise Columbia
Dictionary of Quotations, and the Hammond Atlas. Whew, that's a
mouthful!!
Bookshelf is easy to navigate and includes a QuicKeys utility
which lets you jump to a Bookshelf module to reference a word from
another document. There's a lot to any of these encyclopedias,
especially the multimedia ones. Bookshelf has narrated animations,
animations without narration, musical examples, and lots of
digitized images. Many of the words are pronounced for you, the
Atlas plays national anthems of each country for you (and also has
the words). There's so much here, it would take me reams to
describe it all. You could easily spend hours exploring all the
possibilities.
I wish they had these things when I was in school (pre-PC
days). Just bring up a topic, select Edit-Copy to copy the text to
the clipboard, load up the word processor and paste the text. Need
the flag of Ethiopia? Just bring up the information for that
country, copy the flag to the clipboard, then paste it where you
want it. JEEZ, I could have done great in school.
As you surely know by now, CorelDraw! now comes with a CD.
You'll need a CD-ROM to get to the 12,000+ clipart images contained
therein. There's also a ton of fonts and symbols on the CD as well
as animated sequences and more. You can even set it up to run
Corel from the CD and save hard drive space if you wish.
Multimedia Beethoven: The Ninth Symphony is an exhaustive CD
combining text, graphics, and an audio CD performance of this
famous work that is absolutely stunning. You can study the life
and times of Beethoven as well as take a music lesson which
includes a glossary of musical terms. When listening to the work,
explanatory notes guide you with commentary on what musical devices
are used in each passage. There's no way I can adequately describe
what this CD is all about. You must experience it for yourself.
Remember, I'm a rock-and-roller and this one blew me away!
---------------
VENTURA PUBLISHER 4.1
Ventura Publisher has just released a new version with a new
interface that includes flexible menus and dialog box positioning,
multiple zoom levels, and a customizable 3-D buttonbar. Also new
are frame tags which let you define, apply, and revise frame
attributes as you do with paragraphs.
You can set tabs, margins, indents and outdents with a mouse.
Paragraph and text modes have been combined into one.
This new version includes Ventura Scan and Ventura Separator
which were previously separate products. I just hope the damned
thing is more stable than past versions.
Another new product is Ventura AdPro, which is an advertising
design and layout program. You can create, comp, and produce ads,
flyers, and other single-page promo pieces.
---------------
NEW BORLAND STUFF
I just returned from the Borland Power Breakfast. This is an
event Borland uses to roll out new products. Resellers are treated
to a free breakfast, sit through a sales pitch, and go home with
evaluation software. When I went to the rollout for Quattro Pro 3
and Paradox 3.5, the food was fantastic. Today, well, I've had
better breakfasts at McDonald's (and I should know). The program
was OK and I got to see demonstrations of Quattro Pro 4 for DOS,
Quattro Pro for Windows, and Paradox 4. Paradox for Windows is
still in beta testing and will be released when Borland feels it's
ready - no timetable given.
Both Quattro Pro's looked real good. They continue to enhance
their offerings and the Windows version will likely give Excel a
run. The notebook metaphor doesn't excite me, nor do the Object
Operators, but they're well done and the public should love these
and other features. They've done an especially good job in making
slideshows easy to produce. As I mentioned in the RaG last month,
they are bundling both versions of Quattro Pro for the price of
one. That's an outrageous deal.
Paradox is still the fastest relational database around.
They've given the interface a facelift, but if you prefer the old
style, it's still there as an option. All of these products are
mouseable and network ready.
---------------
NEW TEAC DRIVE
A while back I reported on the new floppy drive by TEAC. I
just had the occasion to install this new drive which contains a
1.44MB and a 1.2MB floppy in a single half-height space. If drive
space is a concern (maybe you want to add a CD or tape drive and
don't have the room) then check out the TEAC FD-505. You only
connect one drive cable and jumpers on the back let you set which
drive is "A".
I usually don't like floppy drives that use buttons to release
the disk, but this one has a very secure feel. I may end up
getting one for myself.
Be aware that you cannot write in 360K format. This is not as
big a deal as you may think - you shouldn't write in 360K format in
a high density drive anyway.
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=================================
DISCLAIMER
RAndY's RumOR RaG is published on a monthly basis by AINSWORTH
COMPUTER SERVICES and is available on various local BBS's, GEnie,
and America Online as well as in Modem News.
In case anyone cares, RAndY's RumOR RaG is produced on a DTK
386-33 with 16 megs of memory, Cyrix Fasmath co-processor, ATI VGA
Wonder+ card (1 MB), 105 MB Toshiba IDE hard drive, Teac 1.2 MB and
1.44 MB floppies, Hitachi 3750 CD ROM drive, Sceptre SVGA display,
Microsoft mouse, WordPerfect for Windows and transmitted through a
US Robotics HST Dual Standard modem.
Opinions expressed are those of the author. Comments should
be addressed to Ainsworth Computer Services on GEnie, America
Online, phone, analog mail, or whatever method makes you feel good.
AINSWORTH COMPUTER SERVICES
605 W. Wishkah
Aberdeen, WA 98520-6031
(206) 533-6647
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