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