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September 26, 1998
News
- Tremendous prizes to give away today, including a two copies
of Windows 98, a copy of FrontPage 98 and a pair of Kodak DVC323 digital video cameras.
- Well, we’re officially into fall and the fall selling
season and both Compaq and IBM have unveiled their new fall consumer computer lineups.
Compaq’s new Presarios include the $1,299 5150 which features a 350 MHz K6-2
processor and an 8 GB hard drive. For $300 more the 5170 offers a 350 MHz Pentium II and a
10 GB drive. For the education market, Compaq has debuted the 2412ES, which includes a
Cyrix MII chip with a "performance rating" of 300, a 4 GB hard drive and a
14" monitor for $999. Compaq’s new notebooks include the Presario 1235, which
offers a 266 MHz AMD K6, 12.1" dual-scan screen and a 4 GB hard drive for $1,749.
- IBM new Aptivas range from the $899 E2U, which incorporates a
333 MHz AMD K6-2 processor and 48 MB of RAM, to the $1,799 E6U, which features a 400 MHz
Pentium II, 128 MB of RAM, 13.5 GB drive and a DVD-ROM drive. In between there’s also
the E5U, which for $1,399 offers a 350 MHz Pentium II, 96 MB of RAM and an 8 GB hard
drive. In addition, IBM is finally starting to take advantage of some of the great
software technologies it owns and will start bundling their ViaVoice voice recognition
software with all but their lowest end system. With computers getting more generic all the
time, I think this is a smart move that they should have made a lot earlier because it
helps further distinguish their PCs from the competition.
- In other IBM news the company unveiled their IBM Home
Director Professional networking system, which combines the home automation features found
in their previous Home Director products along with a shared wiring scheme for putting
together home networks. Essentially, the product can turn your house into a "smart
home" where things like the lights, heating/air conditioning and security systems can
all be controlled from a central place, as well as providing the necessary wiring to share
video and computer network signals to just about any room in your house. In most cases the
product has to be put in a by a homebuilder or installer, but at prices of $750 to $1,500
it doesn’t sound overly expensive. You can find out more from the link I’ve
provided on my This Week’s Links page.
- Gateway is now one of the few major mail-order companies to
offer a complete PC system, including monitor, for under $1,000. The company’s newly
unveiled E-1200, which is designed specifically for small businesses, features a 333 MHz
Celeron A processor (that’s the good kind), 32 MB of RAM, 3.2 GB hard drive, 4 MB AGP
video card, and built-in Ethernet support, along with a 15" monitor, all for $999.
- Speaking of low-cost computers, a Taiwanese startup called
emachines, which got a lot of press a few weeks ago when it said it would unveil a PC
clone of the iMac that runs Windows 98 next spring for $499, is apparently going to
release the first $399 PCs next month. Amazingly, these emachines systems are supposed to
have reasonable specs, such as a Cyrix MII processor, 32 MB of RAM, CD-ROM drive, 56K
modem, and a 3D graphics card. A monitor for the systems will cost an extra $100.
- AMD is hoping to prime the red-hot low-cost PC notebook
market with the release of their 300 MHz K6 processor that’s specifically designed
for notebooks. Note that this is a K6 design, not the more advanced K6-2, but the cost of
the chip is only about 1/3 the cost of Intel’s new 300 MHz Pentium II (although the
Pentium II is much faster than a K6 in many operations). Compaq is planning to use the
chip in an upcoming new Presario notebook and AMD is hoping to see it notebooks around
$1,500. In addition, many analysts believe it will lead to more price-cutting on existing
233 and 266 MHz-based notebooks—in some cases to prices near $1,000. Bottom line? If
you’re in the market for a PC notebook and you don’t have a lot to spend,
you’re still going to have lots of impressive choices.
- Microsoft is apparently working on a change to the Windows 98
Update feature that will automatically notify Win98 users of any critical bug fixes or
security hole patches that have just been released as soon as they sign onto the Internet.
There’s no official word on when this feature will be added, but when it is, it too,
will come via Windows Update.
- Speaking of Microsoft bug fixes, some people are apparently
having problems with the Office 97 Service Pack 2 bug fix I mentioned (and linked to) last
week. Not only is the patch enormous at 23 Mbytes, but in some situations it may not
install properly. As a result, the company has temporarily pulled the patch and will be
issuing a new one later. If you successfully downloaded and installed patch already, you
don't have to worry about it.
- Apple has officially unveiled AppleWorks 5, formerly
ClarisWorks, which is the integrated word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and
simple graphics program that’s bundled with the iMac. AppleWorks 5, which costs $99
and is available both for the MacOS and for Windows includes HTML import and export and a
large list of convertors for working with files stored in many common Mac and PC file
formats. In conjunction with the release the company has also debuted a new web site that
includes resources for ClarisWorks/AppleWorks users.
- In other Mac software news, Microsoft has released version
4.02 of the Outlook Express e-mail client for the Mac. The new update fixes a potential
problem that could lead to losing messages in certain situations, and fixes some security
holes that could be exploited by file attachments to e-mail messages. Microsoft recommends
that all Mac Outlook Express users upgrade to the new version.
- Finally, PowerQuest has released a new version of their
popular disk partitioning software for PCs. Partition Magic 4.0, which has a suggested
retail price of $69, includes a raft of new features including support for drives over 20
Gbytes, a new graphical boot manager program for loading any one of several different
operating systems on your PCs, support for the Linux ext2 disk format, the ability to
automatically create and resize partitions on the fly with a single operation and more.
Existing users can upgrade to the new version for $29.
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