from the June 1991 Bits of Blue

Harvey Bruneau was the sole speaker for the entire meeting. Software Publishing had to cancel its scheduled presentation on GeoGraphics. It is believed that the local representative had to attend a seminar about the new product that SPC is about to announce. Steve Speairs was to give a presentation but had to cancel at the last minute. Seems that Steve’s company had a system crash on their mid-west server. What with air freighting new material and having to go to work at 4 in the morning, Steve has an interesting (?) career.

Harvey spoke about some recent product announcements. Some of the items were:

· Version 5 of DOS is scheduled for release in June. The upgrade price is $100.

· WordPerfect for Windows is due to be released in July. It will be called Version 6. The product was demonstrated at Harvey’s office and Harvey said that it looks great. He also reported that anyone buying WordPerfect between 4/1/91 and until 30 days after the product release is announced, registered users can get an updated license from WordPerfect. It will cost $15 to get the update disk, $29 for the manual, and $19 for the work book – plus $5 for shipping and handling.

· MicroSoft’s Trackball was shown. It attaches to the side of the keyboard. The trackball is packaged with its own case and several varieties of clamps to fit the side edge of keyboards. If you want to attach the trackball to a regular desktop PC, you need an extension cable since the supplied cable is rather short. The coiled cable is of an adequate length for laptops or portables. Logitech offers a similar device.

· Hewlett-Packard has lowered its price for the Desk Jet printer. They have announced the Laser Jet IIIP with a price of $1595; same 4 ppm as the IIP but with the new engine of the III model (resolution enhancement). For $1895, you can get the laser jet fax which routes fax material to the laser printer.

· Hewlett-Packard now offers a palm-top computer with Lotus built into it. The keyboard is very small and would be awkward for touch typists. But if you’re only entering numbers into Lotus, it’s adequate.

· Okidata has a new 24 pin printer being offered for $349.

· Tandy (Radio Shack) is allowing up to $500 for your old PC toward the purchase of certain new PCs that Tandy offers.

· Version 7 of PCTOOLS is now available. List price is $179; upgrade price will be $49 until July 1st. Until August 1st, anyone with a competing product will be able to get the new version for $59. It is said to have a Windows-like appearance. It will offer back-up through Windows, launch Window program applications and protection or detection of over 600 computer viruses.

· Prodigy has been accused of accessing data on user machines. The Los Angeles District Attorney is checking this allegation. One of the members spoke about seeing some of his records in one of Prodigy’s .DAT files.

· Virus problem. America On-Line distribution disks may be corrupted. One member reported that the virus seems to affect floppy disk behavior. He said that he couldn’t copy files to a floppy disk. And that the middle half of his directory listing was gone. He reported the problem to America On-Line and they said they were not aware of it. He called three weeks later to check and again they said that they were not aware of the problem!

· Permission had been obtained to extend the 4/30 deadline on the Geoworks coupons for another 10 days. These coupons enable a buyer to get the Geoworks Ensemble for $50, a tremendous saving compared to the list price. The street price is between 130-150 dollars.

· Comments on the working demo of Ami-Pro were solicited. A member reported that he was quite impressed with the features of this high-end word processor. It’s easier to work with than the DOS version of WordPerfect. It can substitute as a desktop publishing program. He remarked that, although there were virtually no instructions supplied, it was quite intuitive - very user-friendly. He also said that, as with most Window applications, there is no UNinstall procedure. The working copy WILL comb the physical hard drive to find Windows. When it finds it, it installs itself into Windows. To uninstall it, you have to modify the various .INI files then remove the pertinent files.

LAP LINK Presentation:

Harvey demonstrated Version 3 of Lap Link, a software package that enables two PCs to be connected for file management. Both serial and parallel connector cables are supplied with the package. The software splits the screen and shows both the local and the remote machine. He noted that the ports on both machines must agree. And that parallel hookups were preferred for their speed as compared to serial transfers.

This program enables you to copy files to/from one PC to another when incompatible floppy drives are installed on the PCs. Harvey showed just how easy it was to copy and delete files on either the local or the remote machine. You do have to be careful and keep track of which part of the screen represents the local or the remote PC. He said that it took about 35-45 minutes to copy over 100 meg of data between two machines.

SECRETARY’S COMMENT:

Our president deserves a round of applause and our thanks for the great job he did at our last meeting. It was unfortunate that the scheduled speakers had to cancel. But as they say in the vernacular, Stuff happens. So, Harvey had to carry the whole meeting by himself. He’s always ready to fill-in if one of the scheduled speakers has to cancel; but to carry both ends speaks well of his willingness to help our users group. Thanks Harvey, for a job well done under trying circumstances. u