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June 20, 1998
News
- Thanks to the people who came out for the ABC TechWorld event
and the roundtable I hosted.
- This week marks the official launch of Windows 98. Bill Gates
and a large Microsoft entourage decided not to do the formal introduction in Redmond, but
instead are flying down to San Francisco for a big party/launch this Thursday. I’m
planning on attending, so I’ll let you know how it went.
- Speaking of Microsoft, the company unveiled more details
about the next version of its Office product suite at the PC Expo trade show last week in
New York. The new version, which will be called Office 2000, has even more integrated
links with the web, and will allow you to save files in HTML format and retain all the
formatting. In addition, you’ll even be able to make changes in the document and have
those changes be automatically reflected to a version that was previously posted to a
company intranet or external web site.
- Netscape announced a new version of their Communicator web
software suite, which incorporates their popular Navigator browser. Version 4.5 of
Communicator, a beta of which is expected on their web site in July, includes three
interesting new browser features and several e-mail-related enhancements. On the browser
side, Navigator will allow you to type in search-like keyboards straight into its address
window and it will take people to relevant sites—preferably those that are linked to
or partnered with their NetCenter web portal. This is specifically designed for newcomers
to the net. Another new feature, which uses technology from a product called Alexa, is a
Related Links button that will automatically find other similar links to the one
you’re currently found. Finally, the new version will also support content filtering,
if you want to prevent yourself or your kids from accidentally (or intentionally)
stumbling upon a site with adult content. On the e-mail front, Communicator 4.5 will offer
better support for LDAP, or Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, which enables you to
look up e-mail addresses or other contact information either within your company’s
e-mail system, or over commercial systems on the Internet, such as Four11, BigFoot,
Switchboard, WhoWhere, etc. In addition, the new version offers better support for the
IMAP4 mail protocol, which allows you to do things like read messages remotely but keep a
copy of them on your company and/or ISPs mail server.
- Xerox is trying to make a more aggressive move into the
printer market, announcing both high-end printers designed for company networks, as well
as some low-cost color inkjet printers that it plans to sell. Xerox’ $199 XJ6C and
the$269 XJ9C both offer true four-color printing. The XJ6C offers print speeds of up to
2.5 ppm for color and 5 for black and white and resolutions of 600 x 600 dpi on plain
paper and 1,200 x 600 dpi on special glossy paper. The XJ9C offers 4 ppm color and 8 ppm
black and white as well as true 1,200 x 1,200 dpi resolution, even on plain paper.
- Sony showed off their impressive-looking Vaio 505 ultrathin
notebook computer at PC Expo and, in addition, announced a more expensive, more
full-featured version called the 505GX. Like the $2,000 505, the $2,700 505GX weighs
around three pounds, is less than an inch thick, and features a 10.4" active matrix
display. The 505GX ups the processor to a 266 MHz Mobile Pentium MMX and adds an IEEE 1394
FireWire port as standard, one of the first notebooks to do so.
- In other ultrathin news, Sharp announced the Actius, a
sub-three pound, less than an inch-thick, new notebook that will feature a 266 MHz Pentium
MMX processor, 11.3" active matrix screen, 64 MB of RAM, 3.2 GB hard drive, 56K
software modem, a USB port and a PC Card slot for $2,499. Unfortunately, the computer
isn’t expected until the fall.
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