RAndY's RumOR RaG August 1992 A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME Intel is searching for a new name for their soon to be released 586 processor. They are suggesting that vendors refer to it as the P5 until the product is officially announced. Intel recently nixed ads run by DEC which claimed that their computers would be fully upgradeable to the 586. Intel's senior vice president and general manager Dave House said, "The problem we face stems from [a recent court decision] that we couldn't protect the 386 name - even though Boeing is protected with the 747." The courts have not yet decided if the 486 will be protected as an Intel trademark. House said, "there's uncertainty and risk involved." Intel competitors Cyrix and AMD are using the 486 name in their product descriptions. Meanwhile, Intel has announced a naming contest which will convey high speed and compatibility with previous processors. At the same time, Intel has been counseling vendors that have been using the 586 name publicly to cease. --------------- NEWS IN YER FACE Here's a surprise (grin). Microsoft now says that Windows NT will now be released in 1993. The original ship date was late this fall. Dwayne Walker, Microsoft director of Windows NT and network products said, "We expect to go to manufacturing in December, with the product being available to customers sometime in January or February." Industry analysts say that schedule may be optimistic. --------------- Mail-order king DAK Industries filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in US Bankruptcy Court. HAHAHAHAHA --------------- In other Microsoft news, it seems like they're finally going to do something with the long-awaited Windows database Cirrus. Later this year, Cirrus will be introduced with a $99 price tag. It will tap into dBase, Paradox, and SQL data from a Windows front- end. --------------- Virus experts McAfee Associates may go public soon with a stock offering. --------------- WordPerfect claims to have shipped the millionth copy of WordPerfect for Windows about June 15th with two-thirds being full packages rather than upgrades. They expect to take half of Windows word processor new sales in 1992 overall. --------------- Word is that Microsoft will release DOS 6 by March 1993. (I hear it will incorporate Stacker technology.) I hear there will be an interim release of DOS 5.x to fend off DR-DOS 6. Sources are also waiting for a full 32-bit DOS that would be a better foundation for future versions of Windows. YEAH!! --------------- Noticed an advertisement for a new piece of software that is definitely different. "Origins of Pre-History Vol. 1" features adjustable speed animation, graphics, and a large database of facts and theories. It's an introduction to early earth and dinosaurs with subjects including plate tectonics, continental drift, and the history of dinosaurs. It covers the time period from 4.6 billion to 65 million years ago (the end of the dinosaur era). MSRP is $79.95. --------------- IBM now claims to have shipped "more than 1 million copies" of OS/2 2.0 by the end of July. Now multiply that times the 20+ disks in the package and you've got a LOT of floppy disks. --------------- Microsoft was caught off-guard when they underestimated the demand for Windows 3.1 in 3.5-inch format. Demand for the smaller disks made up 80% of the demand. --------------- OS/2 UPDATE This fall, IBM will announce an update to OS/2 2.0 that will be delivered in modular 'Service Packs". Included will be Windows 3.1 compatibility, the 32-bit graphics engine, XGA and SVGA device driver support, and miscellaneous bug fixes. This departs from IBM's traditional Corrective Service Disk updates of the past. Users will be able to select the features they would like to update or fix. This approach was chosen to avoid the "administrative nightmare" of shipping 20+ disks all over again. Users will be able to request what they want via a toll-free number as well as online. A nominal fee is expected to be charged and the update will also be available on CompuServe. --------------- WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE Microsoft's recent aggressive advertisements have Apple, Borland, and WordPerfect considering a joint advertising or public- relations effort. None of the above mentioned firms are ready to file court cases, but there has been discussion of a united effort to combat Microsoft's marketing machine. Microsoft's vice president of marketing strategy dismisses the allegations, calling them nothing but "whining" unless they are backed up with litigation. Borland has run some ads titled "Borland Exposes Microsoft", focusing on inaccurate information in Microsoft ads. Apple has challenged Microsoft's claim that 5,000 applications exist for Windows, saying they can only find 1,380. Apple also challenges Microsoft's claim of 10 million Windows users worldwide. This suggests that Microsoft counts all copies shipped from the factory, including those shipped to distributors and bundled with hardware. Normally quiet WordPerfect has gone so far as to call Bill Gates personally to protest unfair advertising. Microsoft's response was "There are courts if people think they've got a case." One attender of the Microsoft Word Challenge completed a task in WordPerfect for Windows quicker than with Microsoft's product and the Microsoft people "told me I did it wrong and said I had to do it the long way." --------------- MORE MICROSOFT NEWS At the recent Windows NT Developers Conference, Microsoft made a strong push for 32-bit applications. "The message is that developers should target the 32-bit environment," said one senior Microsoft official. Programs written to Win32, the 32-bit application programming interface used in NT, will run under the 16-bit Windows 3.1 environment so long as the application includes Microsoft's Win32s, a subset of Win32 that translates 32-bit system calls to their 16- bit equivalent. In another area, Microsoft admits that Windows font embedding technology is flawed. They're working with typeface and applications vendors to get things straightened out by year's end. They will soon begin beta testing a DLL that greatly simplifies font embedding. Microsoft officials also said that a future implementation of TrueType will support special typographic features such as multiple-weight typefaces and ligatures. Under fear of font theft and the lack of comprehensible standards, some changes have been presented to Microsoft. It has been suggested to change the names of the two current levels of embedding and add a third. Read-only embedding would become "print and preview" which more accurately describes its abilities. Read-write would be renamed "installable" suggesting that the embedded font is permanently installed when encountered by an application. The new level, called "editable" would install the font to allow editing, but purge it from the disk drive each time the document containing the font is closed. To further aid security, the font would be installed with a randomly generated file name not recognizable by Windows' font manager. "Editable embedding is a happy medium," said a spokesperson at one major font vendor. "We want to make things easier for users, but without pulling the rug out from under ourselves." Microsoft recently released plans to announce more new products. Forthcoming will be a multimedia encyclopedia and a movie guide (known as Cinemania), both to be sold on CD for under $100. Visual Basic for DOS will be introduced in the early fall and no word on the CD's. --------------- A BRIGHT IDEA I was just thinking (dangerous for sure). Instead of cranking out more word processors, publishing programs, etc. for Windows, how about a program similar to Banner Maker. How about a banner program for Windows that will use TrueType fonts and let you manipulate and print banners. Maybe Bitstream's Make-up or some similar program has this capability and I don't know it. Anyway, it was just a thought. --------------- COREL DRAW! 3.0 This graphics heavyweight has just gotten better. You can read the specs and features in any advertisement. Combined with the already excellent graphics program (and Trace and Mosaic) is a 24-bit color editor, CorelChart, and CorelShow. Each is a separate module and installing the whole thing (with samples) will eat up 29 megs of your hard drive. It's great to finally be able to edit in preview mode - no more wire frames (unless you want them). The speed is very good and you finally have online help. They've also implemented the common dialog box feature of Windows 3.1 so that all the dialog boxes look the same. I'm glad to see Corel get away from proprietary fonts and use TrueType. The TrueType fonts bundled on the disks are pretty much the same as the old proprietary ones. But there are over 100 more on the CD that comes with the package (see below). The Paint, Chart, and Show modules are all easy to use and work well together. All feature online help and editing in color preview mode. The Mosaic module lets you print out pages of your clipart in a thumbnail type of view. You may want to keep your old Corel clipart disks since most of the bundled clipart is on CD. There's an old adage that states "software sells hardware". Just as Windows 3.1 is selling sound boards, Corel will sell CD-ROM drives. Whether you buy Corel as a new user or as an upgrade, it comes packaged with a CD containing all the programs, more fonts, and a ton of clipart. CD drives have come down drastically in price since last year and there is now no excuse for not having one (never thought I'd say that). But I'll stick my neck out and state that this is the package that will finally make a difference in selling CD-ROM drives. (Make sure you get one compatible with the Kodak Photo CD's if you're interested in that.) Whether you're new to Corel Draw! or wondering if you should upgrade, this is the graphics package to beat. --------------- 586 PRICING STRATEGY In an uncharacteristic move, Intel is planning aggressive pricing and early software support when it introduces the P5 chip. Says Ron Curry, product line manager for Intel, "The first 486 systems were over $10,000. At the P5 launch, you'll see machines in the $6,000 range." The P5 chip is expected to be priced at just less than $700 in quantities of 1,000 compared to the 486DX chip which is priced at $536 in quantities of 1,000. Early indications are that Intel is still on track for a fall introduction of the chip. They've never produced a 3.1 million transistor chip (the 486 has 1.2 million transistors). There are reports of problems with the P5, indicating it does not run reliably at 66 mhz. Intel is also pushing software developers to support the chip. It is developing a new suite of compiler programs for porting applications to the new chip. Intel is also positioning the P5 as a competitor to RISC and is actively recruiting RISC applications developers to port their software to the P5. Existing software packages are expected to run twice as fast without modification, but when recompiled for the new chip, are expected to run as much as four times faster. As I write this, Intel has just announced a delay in the introduction of the P5. What had been an expected ship date of fourth quarter, Intel has now changed to first quarter of 1993. While not a great surprise, this gives Intel and various vendors a chance to work out ALL the bugs and be more prepared for the formal introduction. --------------- NEW DRAWPERFECT The new DrawPerfect is now in beta testing with no firm release date set. The anticipated release of the DOS version is September. It will be available in both DOS and Windows versions, both of which will look the same. The DOS product will ship first with the Windows product following by six to eight weeks. The WordPerfect Button Bar will be incorporated into both versions. All popular drawing tools will be included. You will be able to contour text, blend colors and objects, and choose color gradients. Included will be over 100 clip art images. In the charting department, you will choose from 3-D bar charts, surface charts, pie charts, hi-lo charts, and organization charts. It has a split-screen mode where you can enter data and see instantaneous changes in your chart. The new DrawPerfect will support 20 popular sound cards and includes over a hundred MIDI sound files. There will be a combination of vector based tools and bitmap tools in the same package. You can create and edit color bitmap images or convert them to vector images using an auto-trace feature. There will also be a Master Gallery feature giving you a variety of templates for slide presentations. The Outliner feature will let you create an outline or import a WordPerfect outline and create a presentation slide with a single mouse click. Of course, you'll be able to create detailed handout notes and speaker notes. The slide sorter metaphor is also employed for rearranging slides and getting an overview of your presentation. Finally, file formats will be identical between DOS and Windows programs, the same as with WordPerfect. --------------- MORE WINDOWS NT INFO Little details are slowly coming out about Windows NT. Of course, you know that DOS is not required because this is a 32-bit self-booting Windows. You won't need NetWare either because network support is built-in (it will work in conjunction with NetWare, however). Security is improved since you won't be able to do a CTRL-BREAK to abort a batch file. NT will come with a variety of network management tools along with performance monitors. E-mail and scheduling are also built- in. This is not a re-work of an existing product, it's new from the beginning. They're saying that 8 megs will be the minimum memory required. Finally, the preferred distribution format for Windows NT will be CD-ROM. --------------- HIGH-SPEED MODEMS REVISITED This past Christmas, my present to myself was a USR HST Dual Standard modem that one of my suppliers had a great deal on (I deserved it). I reviewed this modem back then and it continues to perform well. I recently had the opportunity to install a different high speed modem in a client's computer and took advantage of the short time to play with it a little. The modem is a Practical Peripherals 14400 internal with send/receive fax. The price is real tempting to begin with - it should sell for under $400 on the streets. Of course it's got the normal alphabet soup of transmission standards for compression, speed, etc. I've sold Practical Peripheral 2400 modems for some time and have found them to be excellent. (Hayes bought out the company a couple of years ago.) Well, this modem performed quite well. I was able to connect with two different high speed modems, one at 9600 and with a Dual Standard at 14400. The only difference I could see from my HST is that it takes a little longer to connect, since each modem has to figure out what features the other supports. In the area of file transfers, it keeps right up with pretty close to an HST-HST connection. The half card is more like a quarter card with a daughter card attached, making it a little on the thick side. The internal model features a 16550AFN UART for the buffering you'll need with Windows. I was unable to test the fax software, though. The software is DOS-based, not a Windows program. I really wish these fax manufacturers would include a Windows fax program with their cards. Every DOS fax program I've seen really sucks. (Well, they do!) Other than that, this is an excellent value in a 14.4 modem. All Practical Peripheral modems carry a lifetime warranty and since Hayes owns the company, you know they're 100% compatible. ================================= DISCLAIMER RAndY's RumOR RaG is published on a monthly basis by AINSWORTH COMPUTER SERVICES and is available on various 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, 360K, and 1.44 MB floppies, 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 GEnie Address: RAG America Online: RumOR RaG