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December 12, 1998
News
- The big news this week for those of us who live and/or work
in San Francisco was the big power outage that hit on Tuesday, knocking out power to
virtually the entire city for at least five hours. And along with that power outage came a
big power spike that reportedly fried a good number of computers and other electronic
equipment. If that doesn’t motivate you to go out an get a surge suppressor or, even
better, an uninterruptible power supply (or UPS) then I don’t know what will. But
more than just the practical impact it had, the widespread outage was a quick reminder
both of how dependent on computers and other electrical devices we’ve become, as well
as the fact that we can cope quite well without them, thank you very much. Many people
also consider this power outage to have been like a "dress rehearsal" for Y2K,
but I really don’t think that’s true. First of all, despite numerous reports to
the contrary, the actual power-generating and power-switching equipment used by PG&E
does not depend on any date-dependent computers and so is not vulnerable to any Y2K
issues. And, more than likely PG&E is going to use this incident to shore up their
contingency plans to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. But speaking of Y2K and
even if we falsely presume that similar problems could occur, look what happened. We all
survived, life went on and we certainly didn’t need to horde food or money to make
our way through it. Remember that the next time someone tries to scare you with Y2K
stories.
- In computer news, details of a forthcoming portable iMac-like
device made their way into the general press this week. Although Apple is saying that any
consumer-oriented portable won’t be available until the middle of next year, lots of
folks got excited about the prospect of a sleek-looking, low-cost Mac portable. While
details are still sketchy at this point, the new device is apparently going to be called
the Apple WebMate, and it’s expected to cost around $1,300 – the same as
today’s iMac. Speaking of which, it’s supposed to have iMac-inspired styling and
have a variety of different wired and wireless communications options. We shall see.
Speaking of iMac-inspired computers, Apple will apparently be unveiling a new series of
business desktops, code-named Yosemite, at the MacWorld Expo show in January. The new
machines, which are designed to replace the existing G3 line, will all feature a
translucent plastic mini-tower shape. Inside there will be various types of processors
–including 400 MHz G3s—as well as various connection schemes including UltraSCSI
2, USB and the first appearance of IEEE1394, or FireWire, ports as standard. In addition,
like the iMac they will apparently not have a floppy drive.
- Lots of operating system and other upgrades were made
available this week, including MacOS 8.5.1 which fixes potential data loss problems on
certain hard drives, as well as a variety of other different fixes. You can find out more
by going to the link I have available on my This Week’s Links page. Microsoft also
announced some upgrades, including a Y2K fix for the supposedly Y2K-compliant Windows 98.
The Y2K patch, which Windows 98 users can get via the Windows Update site, fixes quite a
few different potential date problems in the OS as well as related utilities. Again, check
out the link I’ve provided. Finally, in accordance with the preliminary junction
ordered against Microsoft in their court battle with Sun, Microsoft has released an
updated Java Virtual Machine for Internet Explorer that makes it more compliant with
Sun’s pure Java spec. In practical use it probably won’t make a darn bit of
difference in sites you visit or applications you run, but it might make you feel better
to download and install it.
- The Norton arm of Symantec this week reduced the price of
their SystemWorks utility from $99 to $69 and at the same time introduced a new
SystemWorks Professional suite for $99. Both SystemWorks and SystemWorks Professional
contain a new core set of five utilities including Norton Utilities, Norton Anti-Virus,
Norton CrashGuard, Norton CleanSweep (recently acquired from QuarterDeck) and a six-month
subscription to Norton Web Services, which automates the process of finding software and
driver updates. The new professional version adds Norton 2000 – the company’s
Y2K utility – and Norton Ghost, another recently acquired utility that allows you to
quickly back up and restore your hard drive by making cloned copies. In addition to this,
both SystemWorks and SystemWorks Professional now also include Norton Mobile Essentials,
Visual Page, WinFax Basic, Norton Secret Stuff, Norton 2000 BIOS Test & Fix, and
pcAnywher Express, which is a lot of stuff. Mobile Essentials provides a number of handy
utilties for notebook users; Visual Page is a web authoring program; WinFax Basic provides
basic fax software features; Norton Secret Stuff is for encrypting files; Norton 2000 BIOS
Test & Fix is designed solely to deal with BIOS date rollover issues; and pcAnywhere
Express is a browser-based version of the company’s remote control software.
- Finally, Iomega has released a translucent blue USB version
of their 100 MB Zip drive. The $150 drive, which was specifically designed for use with
the iMac, also comes with drivers that will allow it to work with any Windows 98 PC.
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