Nov 95 News

BY: Philip Albinus

If Windows 95 was supposed to instantly vault developers and users alike into a 32-bit world, it hasn't happened yet. Despite all those delays getting the operating system on the market--and in some cases because of them--third-party software developers' strategies run all over the map.

Take askSam Systems, the Perry, Fla.-based maker of the free-form Windows database program. "We were working on the 32-bit version of askSam last March," said president Phil Schnyder. "But when Microsoft announced the delay, we decided to go with a new 16-bit version."

On the other hand, there's Janna Systems, which shipped Janna 95, a contact management application, at the same time as Win95. "We are going Windows 95 all the way," said William Tatham, president of Janna Systems.

Meanwhile, Visio Systems released a key upgrade to its graphics editing application during the long wait. "The lateness has some advantages," said a spokesperson. "This enabled us to do a lot more for the Windows 95 interface--like making Wizards and the user interface consistent with MS Office."

Now, Visio 4.0 comes in 16- and 32-bit versions--in the same box. "If you install the package on Windows 3.1 and move to Windows 95," the spokesperson noted, "you just click the install executable."

Still, some major players are straddling the fence. Novell plans to release a 32-bit version of PerfectOffice by December, but it also plans to release 16-bit versions as long as they're in demand. "We'll miss some early adopters," a spokesperson acknowledged. "But when the corporate customers decide to move to Windows 95, we'll be ready."

BY: John D. Ruley

Beginning with Version 3.5's introduction last spring, Windows NT has become a strong seller in the corporate and enterprise environments. Indeed, installed-base estimates (Microsoft still won't give out actual figures) are now around 2 million units. Those numbers, however, largely reflect NT's installed base on Intel-compatible 486- and Pentium-based systems. RISC is another story.

Optimistically, the installed base of Windows NT on RISC systems is no more than 200,000 units--and that's including Digital Alpha, Mips R4x00 and Motorola PowerPC processors. In other words, NT has no more than 10 percent of the total installed base of RISC systems.

Of course, these are still estimates, but probably good ones; a look at download counts on NT-related files from CompuServe (see the Downloads Tell The Tale graphic below) shows a surprisingly consistent pattern.

BY: Jim Forbes

If you're among the hundreds of thousands of users who plan to buy a new desktop machine in the near future, you may just want to take a quick look under the hood of the latest personal computers now out there.

What you're likely to see is a new-generation system card based on something called the ATX motherboard design. Proposed and first manufactured by Intel earlier this year, the ATX motherboard is expected to make it easier for users and technicians alike to work on systems, as well as simplify the manufacture of new high-performance computers that use components such as the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface.

While systems using the ATX motherboard are only now beginning to make their way to end users, most high-performance systems based on the 150MHz Pentium or Intel's new P6 and due to be manufactured in 1996 will be using this design, industry analysts and observers predict.

The ATX motherboard design also eliminates the need to use half-size cards, works with cooler-running power supplies, allows users to quickly access vital components that may need to be upgraded or replaced (notably expansion cards and memory SIMMs), and repositions the fan so it stays cooler and works more quietly.

"ATX is shared-specification," says Dataquest analyst Martin Reynolds, "and we believe most hardware makers will use it on new systems, particularly those that run Intel P6 processors."

BY: Jim Forbes

Hybrid information sources--combining CD-ROM reference material, links to online services and sophisticated search engines--could open up new frontiers to both home and business multimedia users.

The first offerings on the market include Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia 96, from Compton's NewMedia Encyclopedia, which features a link to America Online as well as various CD-ROM catalogs that link to ordering systems. Microsoft, with the power of its own online offering, Microsoft Network, has some big plans in this area, as do several other companies.

"The idea of online-enabled applications is very exciting," said George Meng, lead product manager for MSN. "There'll be a whole new generation of applications that are designed from the start to work with online services."

Compton's product is a good example of what users can expect. The program includes a set of multimedia-like authoring tools and a copy of AOL's front end and other software. Users looking for more detail on a subject covered in the CD-ROM can tap into AOL's resources.

As for Microsoft, sources say the company or one of its content providers, in tandem with one of its competitors, is readying a product that will use agent technology to locate and retrieve data that meets user-specified criteria.

Other vendors are already adding their own touches to the technology. For example, Ventana Communications' WWW Kit, which costs $49.95, includes a CD-ROM-based version of WebWalker, which allows users to click on URLs of Web sites stored on the CD-ROM and instantly be connected to those sites.

BY: Jim Forbes

Time was when the corporate market meant everything. Large developers tirelessly courted large corporations--that was how VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBASE and countless other programs made their mark--and the individual consumer was left to his or her own resources.

But not anymore. Today, consumers are so sophisticated that they lead the way in purchasing not just single-function applications but entire software suites and high-end Pentium PCs. Consequently, Microsoft has pursued the technology equivalent of the little guy with everything from TV "infomercials" to heavy discounts at the store counter.

And the consumer is responding in kind. According to research house SoftTracks, Microsoft will sell well over 10 million copies of Windows 95 to consumers this year. By contrast, only about 700,000 units are expected to go to large corporations.

BY: Jim Forbes

Windows 95 is brand new, but it's breathing life into some old (by high-tech standards) peripherals. Among those getting a boost are joysticks. And one of the companies reinventing them is Microsoft, which this fall began shipping two new joysticks.

Of course, the new releases bear little resemblance to their predecessors. They are completely digital and have been designed from the outset to communicate via Digital OverDrive, a new set of drivers that shipped with Win95.

In addition, like other high-end joysticks, Microsoft's SideWinder 3D series uses digital optical sensors to correlate controller action with on-screen directions. The net effect is that they improve game playing by reducing or even eliminating drift, and by transmitting instructions to the CPU faster.

Although the tech-nology hasn't caught on, game developers believe sales will jump next year. These joysticks "consume up to 14 percent fewer processor cycles," noted Adam Levesque, a producer with game/ simulation developer Papyrus, and "actions initiated by the user with a digital joystick result in near-instantaneous reactions."

Microsoft is capitalizing on its new offerings--which cost between $39 and $79--to launch a new game called Fury. That helps highlight Win95's ability to run multimedia applications, particularly games. And games have become the demonstration platform of choice for just about everyone. For example, during its rollout of the 83MHz Pentium OverDrive Processor, Intel demonstrated the new chip's power by running the Papyrus game NasCar. And behind the scenes, Microsoft still shows off Win95 by running Doom.

BY: Eileen McCooey

Graphics software is going mainstream. Everyone--from corporate bigwigs to mom-and-pop businesses to Mom, Pop and Junior--is dabbling with design programs that have come down to earth in terms of both usability and pricing.

The numbers paint an eye-opening picture. Sales of Windows painting and drawing programs climbed 54 percent during the first quarter of this year compared to last, according to the Software Publishers Association.

"Templates have made this software so much easier to use," says David Wilson, product manager with Micrografx. "You can get started right away and grow into the power."

And there's plenty of power to grow into, even at the low end of the spectrum. Micro-grafx's newest offering, Windows Draw 4.0, has an estimated street price of $49 yet bundles diagramming and image-editing tools with a media manager, 150-plus templates, 10,000 clip-art and photo images, and 250 typefaces. The program uses 32-bit code and features OLE 2.0 in-place editing, right-mouse menus, dockable toolbars and Microsoft Office compatibility.

"Everyone's got a CD-ROM drive now, scanners have gotten a lot cheaper, and you can get a color printer for $200 to $300," Micrografx's Wilson says. "All these technologies are converging, and that's going to drive sales."

BY: John Gartner

Adobe has another trick up its sleeve: Print-Gear, a new architecture composed of software, firmware and a faster imaging processor. It is designed to provide PostScript-like functionality to the SOHO market for the same price as existing products.

Adobe has taken common imaging objects and hard-coded them into silicon. The driver converts documents into common objects, or display lists, which are compressed and sent to the printer. More complex objects have combinations of simple objects, which boosts print speed.

PrintGear has many of the options AdobePS 3 has, including support for watermarks. Printers shipping with PrintGear should be available by the end of the year for less than $1,000, with some units well under that price.

BY: James Miller

Once again, the Video and Electronics Standards Association (VESA) is seeking a standard in an incompatibility-filled arena. This time, the goal is a specification for standardizing the connection between notebook graphics controllers and flat panel displays.

The proposed Flat Panel Display Interface (FPDI-1) standard includes specs for timing, bi-directional communication between the liquid-crystal display and graphics controller, and LCD power up-and-down sequencing. LCD manufacturers currently use a variety of proprietary interface designs, and that's inevitably led to higher prices.

The idea already has backing from AT&T, Dell, Compaq and Hew-lett-Packard. Whether it leads to lower costs for the consumer remains to be seen.

BY: Jim Forbes

Intel and Microsoft have made it clear they'd like native signal processing (NSP)--which allows the central processor to handle functions such as audio, video and other signals that would normally require a digital signal processor--to go mainstream as soon as possible. However, Intel's original NSP has not been optimized for Windows 95.

A revised version of the NSP specification that supports video, audio and other types of multimedia signals was recently demonstrated by Intel and Microsoft. Sources say the new spec is being developed in conjunction with two other projects: the development of the Intel P55c multimedia-enhanced Pentium and Microsoft's Direct X API software, which, among other capabilities, allows Win95-equipped computers to display full-screen video images.

Add-in card makers are expected to use the revised NSP spec in new communications products and other offerings. These products, as well as multimedia PCs that use the updated NSP, are expected in the first half of 1996.

We recently visited Intel's campus in Hillsboro, Ore., to learn more about the P6. Well, it's fully optimized for 32-bit software, will be as fast as two 100MHz Pentiums, and should replace the Pentium as the desktop standard sometime in 1996. (Incidentally, touring Intel's ultra-clean rooms with space-suited technicians everywhere was a little unnerving--our flight had shown the movie Outbreak, and we feared what [computer] viruses could do.)

From the "Don't try this at home!" department: make sure you have plenty--and we mean plenty--of spare time and paper if you want to print the entire Windows 95 Registry. One of our tech editors made this mistake and wound up with more than 100 pages all over his desk. Please--save a tree!

We've noticed that many notebooks still don't come configured with 32-bit disk access. In some cases, you even have to request a driver from the manufacturer. Thankfully, Win95 makes this problem moot, but if you're running WfW 3.11, remember to check for this feature.

We encountered a peculiar problem while testing Windows 95 on a Dell Latitude XPi, a 75MHz Pentium laptop: The machine wasn't coming out of suspend mode properly. It would briefly display the Win95 desktop, then fill the screen with gibberish. We found that we were able to disable the automatic suspend feature--at the cost of battery-charge life--but suspend mode is the laptop's default action when you close the cover. That feature cannot be changed or disabled. Interested parties should note that the problem appears in BIOS revision A00. We were not able to resolve the problem by the time we went to press.

We recently left the lab to attend a Microsoft Exchange Server reviewers' workshop. Here's the news: Exchange is way more than just e-mail, it'll be out this year (you heard it before), and the client provided by Win95 is just the tip of the iceberg. You also get forms, a common database file that uses pointers to share folders, and better inte-gration with Schedule+.

Toshiba has axed the T4800CT 486DX4-75 notebook (WinLab Product Comparisons, January) and replaced it with the Satellite Pro 400CS and 400CDT Pentium models. Meanwhile, as the table (below) shows, that very machine, along with a few other notebooks, is now making exactly the kind of news that we can simply never hear enough of: They're going to cost a little less.

Product                       Reviewed   Formerly    Now
AST Ascentia 910N             August      $3,899    $3,299
Epson ActionNote 880C         March       $4,499    $3,199
Toshiba Satellite Pro 400CDT  September   $4,899    $4,649

Do you have a cool configuration tip to recommend to us? Have you unearthed a bug that somehow got past those software developers? We're always interested in getting information we can pass along to our readers. You can drop us a line at jgartner @cmp.com or fax Notes From The Lab at (516) 733-8390.

• Talk about mixed signals: Don't try using the Zoom V.34X FaxModem on the same line as Ma Bell's phone answering service. The modem will not correctly detect a line if your phone generates short beeps to indicate that you have a message. What's really annoying is that you must clear all messages and hope that no one else calls you before you dial out.
• Several readers have questioned the durability of the XJACK connector for PCMCIA cards for quite a while, and now we've seen the problems firsthand. We had a Practical Peripherals 28.8 modem's XJACK connector break after only a few weeks of normal usage.
• If you're running MS Mail 3.2 under Windows 95, you can still open attachments with non-standard extensions (such as Word files with the extension .CPY instead of .DOC). But first, think retro: You'll need Ye Olde File Manager, which still exists in the Windows directory under the name winfile, to create an association to make your attachments clickable. By the way, Program Manager is still there, too, in case you miss the interface you grew up with.

BY: Eileen McCooey

Microsoft has latched onto the idea of providing real-time audio on demand via the Internet. The company announced that RealAudio Player, from Progressive Networks, would be the only product bundled with its Internet Explorer, which was introduced as part of the Windows 95 launch. The product is also featured in the OEM version of Win95 and the Win95 Plus Internet software pack.

Companies that produce the electronic equivalent of the jack-of-all-trades are thriving as economy-minded business and home-office users put their one-trick ponies out to pasture.

Sales of multifunction devices that can print, copy, scan and fax will reach 1.3 million units and $2.8 billion this year--three times higher than last year, according to research firm BIS Strategic Decisions. And sales will more than triple again by 1999, when the marketplace snaps up more than 7 million units at a tab of $10 billion. Low-end devices will account for more than two-thirds of those placements.

Still, to hit these lofty heights, multifunction products will have to become true Renaissance machines that can handle all functions with equal dexterity, warned BIS analyst Barry Tepper. "Right now, many of these devices are stronger at one function than another," he added.

• In the war for the desktop, IBM has cried uncle. In a much-reported speech, IBM CEO Louis Gerstner conceded that Microsoft Windows was clearly the market leader on the desktop--and this was before Windows 95 came along. When several news organizations--particularly The New York Times--subsequently reported the speech as an admission of defeat, Gerstner cried foul, saying he had meant to emphasize that IBM would henceforth focus OS/2 Warp's efforts on the server market, where it has had some success. By then, however, online forums were buzzing with debate on IBM's capitulation.
• Microsoft finally announced pricing of its online services. Fees range from $39.95 per year for the first 500,000 members to a $4.95 standard monthly plan (including three hours per month, with each additional hour costing $2.50). However, the company limited initial membership to 500,000 to ensure smooth running of the service.
• Using 120 workstations and two parallel supercomputers for eight days, a young German hacker cracked a packet of encrypted code belonging to Netscape. The company pointed out that the level of security involved--RC4 algorithm, 40-bit key--is the highest the U.S. government permits to be used overseas. The company currently offers 128-bit security, which would take 1 trillion times greater computing power to decrypt.

• Some 450 books are already available to explain Windows 95 and the applications that run under it.
• Hewlett-Packard is set to roll out a new line of desktop PCs aimed at the consumer market. The 486 and Pentium models in the Pavilion series will ship with Windows 95 pre-loaded; prices start at $1,599.
• IBM is once again focusing on the home market. A new division has been created to oversee Big Blue's Aptiva home PC family and on-line services.
• Digital Equipment Corp. and Microsoft announced a broadening of their three-year partnership by offering midsize server computers featuring Windows NT and Digital's Alpha chip. Microsoft will pick up the cost for training Digital's 1,500 service technicians.
• IBM and Toshiba will build a $1.1-billion chip manufacturing plant in Manassas, Va., to create chips for their own products and those from other makers. The plant is scheduled to start production in late 1997.
• Media Vision, still under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, said it planned to get out of the multimedia upgrade kit business, lay off half of its 200 remaining employees, and focus its attention on audio chips sold to PC makers.
• Microsoft is considering a possible $2 billion investment in Turner Broadcasting so the broadcaster could make a bid for CBS to compete with Westinghouse's $5.4 billion bid. Microsoft is reportedly interested in licensing content from Turner's library, including cartoons, and working with interactive television providers.
• In an unparalleled frenzy on Wall Street, Netscape's initial public offering (IPO) drew $2.7 billion from investors looking for the Microsoft of the Internet market.