MacWEEKV07N17

04.26.93 Volume 7 Number 17 1 iE NEE WS ‘WE E’K LY F R MACINTOSH MANAGERS DayMaker 2.0 Pastel polishes PIM interface, odds {tines | ® i< ® 1 = C) See Page 55 Apple pencils in pen-Mac plans: First model limited fo large sites MHz 68030 processor and can accommodate up to 32 Mbytes of RAM, sources said. Like the exist- ing Duos, the pen Mac can be docked for desktop use, but its key- board will be a separate, detach- able unit. According to sources, the first model will use the standard Finder along with a “digital-ink” system extension that stores pen strokes as bit- mapped graphics and allows some checklist-style input to appli- cations such as forms programs. The initial configuration will not support handwriting recognition. According to some sources, Red- wood Shores, Calif.-based Com- munication Intelligence Corp. will See Pen Mac, Page 127 By Matthew Rothenberg Cupertino, Calif. — Apple is reportedly looking to ink deals with major corporate buyers for a pen- based Macintosh Duo designed for sale directly to large sites. ‘The company next month will begin seeding cus- tomers with prototypes of the device as part of a massive _ test-marketing effort that will eventually involve hundreds of proto- type units, sources said. Apple hopes to shipi its first pen product late this summer, although handwriting recognition may not be available until the end of the year. Sources said the device will probably cost several hundred dollars more than current Duo models. The pen device is based on a 33- Security chips trigger alarm under development at the NSA, is Clipper and Capstone open digital back door implement the much-criticized Digital Signature Standard to add authentication capabilities. Its By Mitch Ratcliffe existence was revealed during a Washington — The White briefing at the Massachusetts House and National Security Institute of Technology in Cam- Agency, as part of a wide-ranging _ bridge last week. President Clinton ordered the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish Clipper as a federal standard. Since the gov- ernment is the largest computer customer in the world, its Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) often are imposed on the industry as de facto standards. If Capstone follows Clipper into the FIPS requirements, DSS could usurp RSA Data Security Inc.’s__ public-key —_ encryption scheme, which Apple licensed for See Security, Page 127 retooling of U.S. privacy policies, are preparing two encryption chips for use in the computer and telecommunications industries. Pri- vacy advocates cried foul last week because the chips include a back door that allows police to monitor communications. The Clipper chip announced this month can encrypt voice and data communications at up to 16 Mbps. Clipper is due to debut in secure telephones from AT&T Co. this summer. The second chip, called Capstone and currently NOW SOR AP ER SECOND Class a superset of Clipper that will | Novel, Apple team up to launch Mac system into DOS universe By Mitch Ratcliffe San Francisco — In. a move to prevent Microsoft Corp. from achieving total domi- nation of the corpo- rate desktop, Novell Inc. is putting its cred- ibility with business buyers behind Apple’s efforts to bring a ver- sion of the Macintosh environment to IBM PCs and compatibles. Novell plans to introduce an Intel-compatible version of the Mac Finder and Toolbox, combined with Novell’s DR DOS operating system and network client software, in the first half of next year. For Apple the new software will be the first piece in a family of multi- platform technologies collectively called Companion. The project also involves plans for a thorough over- haul of the Mac interface over sy Macintosh software re, the next several years. ‘The first fruit of the Apple-Novell collabo- ration, running on Intel 386, 486 and Pentium CPUs, will provide a multitasking environment that will run both existing char- acter-based DOS pro- grams and ported ver- sions of Mac appli- cations. The compa- nies reportedly are investigating ways to support Win- dows applications as well, but sources said that problem has not been solved. Intel Corp. is providing Apple and Novell with technical assistance and compatibility testing, sources said. The partners have already explained the plan to cross-platform application vendors, and more devel- opers will be briefed at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference See Apple-Novell, Page 128 Windows alternative faces an uphill course By Mitch Ratcliffe San Francisco — The die has been cast for a new era in Macintosh computing, and developers and ana- lysts are beginning to assess the implications and prospects of the Apple-Novell Inc. plan to bring the Finder and Mac Toolbox to Intel- based personal computers. Apple and Novell reportedly want to pitch the Mac-like operating envi- ronment they are developing to two classes of IBM PC and compatible users who are already facing a transi- tion in their computing environment. First are those who use character- based DOS but are considering mov- ing toa graphical user interface. Since shifting to a GUI in any case requires new applications and training, See Analysis, Page 127 Motorola claims PowerPC chips will outperform Intel Pentium By Henry Norr Austin, Texas — Newly disclosed details about the PowerPC 601 sug- gest that the new RISC processor could give Apple a significant price- performance advantage relative to Intel-based competitors. Motorola Inc., which is develop- ing the chip in collaboration with IBM Corp. and Apple, last week announced that it has begun general sampling of 50- and 66-MHz ver- sions of the first member of the new processor family, which is expected to show up in Apple and IBM sys- tems early next year. According to the Motorola announcement, the 601 will outper- form rival Intel Corp.’s much-herald- ed Pentium processor yet cost system manufacturers significantly less. Based on initial measurements with the industry-standard SPEC- mark92 benchmark suite, Motorola said, the 66-MHz PowerPC 601 is expected to deliver integer perfor- mance of 60 SPECint92 and floating- point performance of 80 SPECfp92; the 50-MHz version will offer about three-quarters the performance. A 66-MHz Pentium, according to Intel, scores 64.5 SPECint92 and 56.9 SPECIp92. ‘Most Mac applications rely pri- marily on integer routines, but pro- grams that do intensive number crunching, including some graphics software, depend heavily on floating- point performance. The 50-MHz PowerPC 601, according to the announcement, will sell for $280 each in volumes of 20,000; the 66-MHz version will be See PowerPC, Page 127 FastCache Quadra Now supports all four Quadras! CUTTTATTAT TTDI Macintosh Quart 950 : Make Your Quapras Even jquapra 700/900 J 7 raster! | ASTER! oie Get the performance upgrade recommended by ALL the editors... The magazine reviews agree, the 100% compor- OLE $/AT ble FastCache Quadra is the recommended upgrade for every Quadra user. As MacUser says... “if you own a Quadra, you're cheating yourself if you don't buy a DayStar FastCache Quadra” You can gel even more power from your Mac! The FastCache Quadra boosts performance in everything you do According to MacWEEK... “it provides the oomph you're looking for”. You'll get up to 40 percent more performance. It averages a substantial 15 to 25 percent speed gain all day long! And it’s cost effective too. In the words of the MacUser Eddy Staff... "the DayStar FastCache Quadra represents an excellent price/performance value... a simple and inexpensive way to accelerate members of the Quadra family”. Simply plug this card in and you're on your way! Choose your card. MacUser states... "two DayStar FastCache Quadra cards, one for the 700 and 900 ($299) and one that works in the Quadra 700, DayStar product by paying the difference in list price”. hh & 5556 Atlanta Highway, Flowery Bronch, GA 30542 + (404) 947-2077, Fax: (404) 967-3018 Other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Product specifiations are subject to (800), 900 and 950 ($449) — inexpensive 128K cache cards”. From DayStar, the leader in acceleration. MacWorld says... "DayStar pays attention to detail — a good indication of quality”. Even more. But that’s not all, Macworld says it best... "DayStar has an impressive three year warranty, a toll-free tech support line and... allows you to upgrade to another Call for an immediate fax brochure! DIAL 4 THEN CHOOSE BROCHURE 3003 + Also available on GSA Schedule #GSO0K9IAGS5047 jout notice. ©1993 DayStar Digital, Inc. New Mac virus set to strike on the next Friday the 13th Capable of infecting all kinds of files By Henry Norr Hanover, N.H. — Yet another new Macintosh virus — the sec- ond this month — has surfaced, and this one apparently is capable of causing serious disruption on infected systems. Tentatively dubbed INIT M, the virus was discovered at Dartmouth College here. According to early analyses by virus experts, it can infect all kinds of files — including extensions, preference files, docu- ments and applications — but only under System 7. The virus is designed to go off on any Friday the 13th, when it will change file and folder names and files’ type and creator codes to ran- dom strings. File creation and modification dates are changed to Jan. 1, 1904, and in some cases one file or folder may be renamed Virus MindCrime. The virus reportedly also creates a file called FSV Prefs in the Prefer- ences folder within the System fold- er oninfected disks. The only Friday the 13th this year is in August. At press time, commercial, share- ware and freeware anti-virus devel- opers reportedly were still working on analyzing the virus and creating search strings and remedies. Central Point Software Inc. of Beaverton, Ore., said it was about to post an antidote for use with its Anti-Virus utility, and other devel- opers said they were working on the problem. A joint statement describing the virus and developers’ plans to offer remedies was expected to be posted on on-line services, as has become customary when new viruses are discovered. The new virus apparently is unre- lated to the INIT 17 virus discov- ered earlier this month (see Mac- WEEK, April 19). QuickTime 1.6 to play movies faster Upgrade lets Macs record CD sound By Nathalie Welch Cupertino, Calif. — Apple next month will ship QuickTime 1.6, an upgrade that will bring better color, sound and performance to the mul- timedia software. The new version will play back movies 10 percent faster than QuickTime 1.5, according to the company. The improved QuickTime will be added to the System 7.1 upgrade kit, bundled with all new Macs and offered through on-line services and user groups. The QuickTime revision in- cludes Sound Manager 3.0, an upgrade that lets Macs with third- party cards record and play CD- quality 16-bit sound. Movie makers will be able to use Sound Manager 3.0 to import sounds from CD sources into a QuickTime 1.6 movie. Apple said it plans to license Sound Manager 3.0 to third-party hardware and soft- ware developers. Support for Apple’s color- matching technology, ColorSync, enables QuickTime 1.6 movies to run on different Macs without color changes. Wider color support, ranging from one-bit black and white to 32-bit color, means movies made with the upgraded multimedia software can be played on a larger variety of Macs, including the four-bit gray-scale PowerBooks and Duos. In addition, the text-track feature of the previous release has been enhanced with TrueType text sup- port to smooth out the jagged edges of text in resized QuickTime movies. The new version dramatically reduces the amount of system mem- ory consumed by loading Quick- Time. Version 1.6 takes up only 18 Kbytes of RAM when not in use, compared with 160 Kbytes for Ver- sion 1.5. Memory needs when the extension is in use, however, have not been reduced. Apple said it plans to offer the new features of Version 1.6 in its QuickTime versions for Microsoft Windows and Unix but declined to say when. "The Windows client will support Microsoft Corp.’s MCI (Media Control Interface) and OLE (Object Linking and Embedding), according to Apple (see Mac- WEEK, April 5). Users can order QuickTime 1.6 for a $10 shipping fee by calling (800) 769-2775, Ext. 6596.0 W 20 20 24 24 28 32 32 36 36 37 37 Toshiba says it fixed Duo drive sleep problem But some users report problems with replacement drives. Start-up puts Macs to the test Company now reaching $2 million in sales reflects technology choices. Gateways Farallon unleashes Ethernet barrage ‘Company says it has caught up to competitors. DCA reveals Avatar support plan Integration scheme calls for aggregate product combining both companies’ terminal emulators. GA Colorocs tones up CMYK laser PS-compatible device does ful-bleed tab pages. PixelCraft readies large-format RGB scanner Pro Imager grabs tabloid-size 24-bit-color images. Tech analysis: Mac scanning software New produets look to high end for direction. BusinessWatch Asanté pulls away from Mac Ethernet pack Competitively priced products pace brisk sales. General Motors puts brakes on Mac purchases Automaker cites steep maintenance costs, single computer standard for switch to Intel-based machines. Opinion Editorial Apple site licensing still out of sight. Commentary/Jean-Louis Gassée I's a numbers game. Letters Two views of MacWrite Pro quality control. Mac Manager/Don Crabb E-mail messages: Crisis or curse? Semiannual printer report MacWEEK looks at new technologies that add features at a lower cost, as well as products that add life to your old printer. MacWEEK VOL.7 NO.I17) 04.26.93 ol Reviews 55 Write Pro for the job Claris’ long-awaited update worth the wait. 55 Oneday ata time DayMaker awaits new features, manages time well. 58 Ray Dream adds depth Graphics tool extrudes PostScript art, type. 60 Deneba gives users the ariWorks Low-end integrated painting and drawing tool blends Canvas, UltraPaint. 61 Palomar utility is king of the road On the Road moves to a new beat. 61 — Reviews Forum: How suite it is? 65 72 72 Avid review strikes sour note. ProductWatch The big story on large monitors Finding the right monitor means beefing up on specs. MaclnTouch/Ric Ford Where will we be at this time next year? Ask David Ramsey I think icon, but! can’t. 130 77 78 109 PowerBook prices may never be this low again Re-engineered 1.45 logic board makes it possible. ‘Ad Showcase hail Order Classified 128 Advertiser Index 129 Product Index acWEEK (ISSN 08928118) is pubshed week, with the exception of Aug. 30, Nov. 22, nd Dec. 20 and 27 by Zff Dv Publishing Co, 1 Prk ve, New York, LY. 10016. Single copy price induding postoge: $6. Oneyen subsciption rate U.S. 99, Canada/Mevc US. $200, Internation: U.S. $325 (ama). lords must be prepaid. Dect subsiption inquest Customer Senice Deparment, MacWEEK, c/o J .0. Box 1766, Rito, NJ. 08077-7366; (409) 461-2100. Changes of address equi hata new aplication be filed out completely ond indude both nw ond old adtess. low 4 week for processing. Postmaster Send aes changes fo Ma WEEK, P.O. Box 1766, Riverton, NJ. 08077-7366, Seconds postage aid a New York ond odtona ming ofces. MacWEEKs on independent journal not fice wth Aple Computer In. pl nd Macintosh re ademas of Apple Computer Inc. Ene contents copyright 1993 Coosil Associates Publishing, LP Al igh reserved, Motel in his pubiction may not be eroded non farm without permission, Requests for erision shold be decid to Chant Loveloet, 1 Po Ave, New Yor, N.Y. 10016 Fornormain on reprints in quai of 500 or more, wit Coral Petes, ZffDavs Publishing Co, 1 Parc Av, New York, ALY. 10016, MacWEEK isc regjtred rodeo of if vs Publishing Co Pinte in S.A, Canotian GST reisotion numbers 123601445, News MACWEEK 04.26 +93 Connectix upgrades PB utility Power management enhanced in CPU 2.0 By Raines Cohen and Henry Norr San Mateo, Calif. — Connectix Corp. this month released Connec- tix PowerBook Utilities 2.0, an upgrade to its $99 package of PowerBook utilities. “I can’t think of anything they could have put in but didn’t, yet it’s infinitely more accessible and easier to use,” said Jonathan Crawford, a San Francisco management consul- tant and CPU 2.0 beta tester. “Now when I move from my office, where I don’t care about power usage or security or audio volume, into the field, where those things are critical, it makes the adjustments I want automatically.” Enhancements include: > Power management. Version 2.0 adds control of processor clock speed and more accurately esti- mates remaining battery life, according to the company. Connectix’s en Feplace it with the GE] Eee) Gen) GED Synclet orample CPU 2.0 includes syn- chronization functions, enhanced power ‘| management and a simplified interface. Sea 0 toch + a > Interface. The CPU control panel now lets users adjust all power- management settings with a single slide bar; expert users who want finer control can still go to the separate settings screens used in Version 1.0. > Synchronization. A new sys- tem extension modifies Finder dia- log boxes to add a “Merge” option, enabling users to synchronize fold- ers on different systems. Users can also save synchronization sets that run at start-up or on command. > Network identification. CPU 2.0 can determine if a user is at a known location and adjust printer and other settings accordingly. Upgrades are $19 or, until June 30, free to users who purchased CPU 1.0 after Jan. 1. Users of other PowerBook utility collections can switch to CPU 2.0 for $19. Connectix Corp. is at 2655 Cam- pus Drive, San Mateo, Calif. 94403. Phone (415) 571-5100; fax (415) 571-5195.0 AppleLink adds news, encyclopedia services By Nathalie Welch Cupertino, Calif. When AppleLink subscribers log on this week they will see the first of many new services Apple will offer under its plan to turn the on-line service into a major source of revenue. These services include the Dow Jones News Service, news briefs from USA Today and a searchable data- base of Groliers Encyclopedia. Fea- ture articles, market news and weekly ‘TV listings from Tribune Media Ser- vices are now provided, and Reutersis offering headline news and sports. Ramping up for prospective users of Apple’s future mobile-computing products, AppleLink now includes a Mobile Systems discussion area, a weather service, and a travel area to provide users with travel itineraries and lists of events in selected locations. ZiffNet Selections for AppleLink will also debut this week. The new area offers news, product reviews and downloadable software from Mac- WEEK and other Ziff-Davis Pub- lishing Co. publications, including MacUser and PC Week. Unlike ZiffNeton CompuServe Information Service’s network, however, the AppleLink area will not include two- ‘way messaging forums. Although AppleLink is the most expensive on-line service, Apple said it has no immediate plans to revamp its pricing. Current rates are $37 per daytime hour for 9,600-bps access, and $12 per daytime hour plus about 5 cents per kilocharacter for 2,400-bps access. “Over time we will be restructur- ing pricing to make it simpler and to reflect the value of the information subscribers will be receiving,” said Peter Friedman, director of Apple Online Services. Friedman said future AppleLink offerings will be based on more of a cable-TV approach, with subscribers paying to gain file Edit Mell Boards Network Personel Windows MP AppleLink ST aot soleclons NN ecwect | now features i TiffNet Selec- swear Gone vs Pre Revi tions, which — includes stories | and software eis Archive Etre Chios Awards Maser Mi nee —F from MacUser, PC WEEK and acueer Sofware Seybele SI other Ziff publications. fern sop xtrs 4/21 L access to just the services they want. Apple has awarded Stratus Com- puter Inc. of Marlboro, Mass., a con- tract to supply its Napa, Calif.-based data center with hardware needed to host future enhanced versions. Apple- Link now runs on a General Electric Information Services network. AppleLink Account Administra- tion is at P.O. Box 10600, Herndon, Va. 22070-0600. Phone (408) 974- 3309; fax (703) 318-6701.0 ‘040 accelerator ships Flowery Branch, Ga. — DayStar Digital Inc. this week started ship- ping what it said is the first 40-MHz 68040-based Mac accelerator. The 40-MHz Turbo 040, now available in limited quantities at $2,399, currently fits the processor direct slots of the Mac IIci and Tsi; the company said it will add compati- bility with the SE/30, II, IIx, Icx, Ilvi, Tlvx and Performa 600 machines this spring. The card includes FastCache Turbo, a 128-Kbyte secondary cache that lists separately for $199. DayStar said it expects the price of the card to decline as the still-scarce 40-MHz CPUs become more avail- able over the course of the year. DayStar Digital Inc. is at 5556 Atlanta Highway, Flowery Branch, Ga. 30542. Phone (404) 967-2077 or (800) 962-2077; fax (404) 967-3018.0 News BR Et; 5 Dayna utility gives users access to NetWare servers Salt Lake City, Utah — Dayna Communications Inc. last week shipped a new version of its DOS-mounting utility that gives users access to Novell NetWare servers. The $99.95 DOS Mounter Plus includes Dayna’s NetMounter utility, which give Macs the ability to access NetWare servers by simply clicking a button in the control panel (see MacWEEK, Jan. 11). In addition, DOS Mounter Plus adds support magneto-optical drives and features a new graphical user interface. Users of DOS Mounter or other DOS disk-mounting utilities for the Mac can upgrade to DOS Mounter Plus for $24.95. Dayna Communications Inc. is at Sorenson Research Park, 849 Levoy Drive, Salt Lake City, Utah 84123. Phone (801) 269-7394; fax (801) 269-7363. Likewise bug fix corrects Ethernet driver problems Campbell, Calif. — Mac users should find it easier to do Likewise now that Apple shipped a bug fix for the software-distribution tool. The $129 package, originally developed for use in educational settings, consists of client and administrator applications that update users’ software across LocalTalk and Ethernet networks. The original release was marred by a variety of bugs and com- patibility problems, particularly with System 7.1, some Ethernet drivers, and selected file types on client computers. The company said those problems have now been fixed. Likewise is available from Apple resellers or by calling Apple at (800) 950-2442. Suitcase 2.1.3 fixes bug that caused crashes Baton Rouge, La. — Fifth Generation Systems Inc. this month updated its Suitcase font- and desk accessory-access utility to Ver- sion 2.1.3. The new version contains no new features, only a few minor bug fixes, according to the company. The upgrade fixes a bug that could cause crashes when both System 7. 1's enabler mechanism and Adobe Systems Inc.’s Adobe Type Manager are present when Suitcase loads. The new version also better detects font conflicts at start-up when the user is running System 7.1, which lets users split a font family among multiple font suitcase files. Fifth Generation also took a step into the future by making Suit- case compatible with Apple’s upcoming AOCE (Apple Open Col- laboration Environment), so developers and testers of that pack- age don’t have to stop using Suitcase. An updater application for the new version is available on a number of on-line services and directly from the company. Fifth Generation Systems Inc. is at 10049 N. Reiger Road, Baton Rouge, La. 70809. Phone (504) 291-7221; fax (504) 295-3268. SY THE BOTTOM LINE ‘The HP ScanJet Ic sets a new stan- dard for affordable color scanners. Its engine is fast and well-engineered, and HP's innovative color-callibration soft- ware makes hassle-free, “true”-color scans a reality. Prices at less than $2,000, the HP ScanJet IIc is a best buy in its clas Top honors in every mI 7 i inches. TOP-NOTCH HARDWARE SOFTWARE MAKES HP'S NEW COLOR SCANNER A WINN ct , and black-and-white photos, the ScanJet IIp is an exceptional product. The scanner is just 16 WINNING COMBINATION § To test the HP Scanjet Ic, we used the same set of tests we used for our most recent color-scanner lab report, The results , showed HP's new scan- ner to be the best in its class in both hardware and software. The ScanJet impresses’ from the moment you open the box.’ Other AMED WITH INNOVATIV scanners use a removable screw that locks the scan head for shipping, but HP uses a locking lever that's built into the scan-/ ner itself. There's no screw to lose, and the lever is so easy to use that you'll find yourself locking the scan head more often, thereby increasing its life span. accuracy showed the HP: ScanJet He to be a top performer. In addition to scanning * Wachtth Jd 6 SIAMIAD UMMA The HP ScanJet Ic uses a one-pass scanning method that makes it one off the fastest color scanners we've seen. (lt also provides time-saving color previews that dynamically display any changes you make to the scan, such as exposure, hue, and saturation modification. 44We were extremely impressed...7” We'd hate to brag. So we'll let the Mac press do it for us. Macworld awarded both the HP ScanJet IIc and IIp their World Class Award, and named the HP ScanJet IIc as the Best Color Scanner for 1992, and the HP ScanJet Ip as the Best Black & White/ Gray-Scale Scanner. While MacWeek gave their prestigious Diamond Award to the HP ScanJet IIc. HP ScanJet Ic Speed. Simplicity. And accuracy were all applauded. It’s no wonder. HP's single-pass scanning delivers both lightning-fast speed and precise color regis- tration. TWAIN support allows scanning without having to switch between applications. And HP AccuPage technology with 400-dpi resolution can tackle the toughest OCR challenges. What's more, capabilities this advanced have never been this affordable. List price on the HP ScanJet IIc is just HP ScanJet IIp For an all-around scanner offering y color and black-and- high-quality white images, true 400-dpi resolu- tion, and good basic scanning software, HP’s ScanJet Ic can't bé beat. : Hewlett-Packard's ScanJet 1Ip sets a new standard for afford- able desktop gray-scale scanne —— pita 0 17 ail ts $1,599. The HP ScanJet IIp is just $879. And right now, the HP ScanJet IIc includes Adobe™ Photoshop LE. Impressed? Don't just take our word for it, or even the Mac press’. Attend one of our scanning semi- nars that will be held April through September, 1993. To find out more about the HP ScanJet IIc and Ip or seminars in your area, call 1-800- SCANJET, Ext. 7364” And judge for yourself. | HEWLETT PACKARD Company's third entry works at driver level By Robert Hess San Francisco — Alysis Software Corp. this week will toss its hat into the driver-level compression utility ring. The company said it expects to ship this week eDisk, a $149.95 data-compression software package that compresses all data written to a user’s hard disk and decompresses it when itis read from the disk. File-level compression pro- grams, including Alysis’ own SuperDisk! and More Disk Space, compress individual files. eDisk, on the other hand, compresses all data as it is written to disk. Alysis joins Golden Triangle Computers Inc, which shipped TimesTwo last year, and Stac Elec- tronics Inc., which promises to ship Stacker for Macintosh this spring, in offering driver-level compressors. Unlike TimesTwo, but like Stacker, eDisk does not replace the hard disk’s own SCSI driver. Instead, eDisk compresses data as it is transferred from the Mac’s file manager to the disk’s SCSI driver. By Kirsten L. Parkinson Minneapolis — Antley Business Systems Inc. this month released a $5,495. program designed to help users manage documents and pro- jects shared in workgroups. ABSI-Docs, a client-server sys- tem running a Helix Express data- base on a dedicated Mac, combines document-management, work-flow and project-tracking capabilities. Features of ABSI-Docs include: > Document management. ABSI-Does stores documents on the server and downloads a specific file to a user’s machine when select- ed. Compressed documents are MACWEEK 04.26.93 Alysis’ eDisk compresses data as it is written to disk This gives users the ability to choose any SCSI driver they wish and to take advantage of their dri- vers’ special features, such as parti- tioning, mirroring and error detection. Like its driver-level competi- tors, eDisk avoids the usual block- allocation limits in the Mac’s hier- archical file system to better utilize the space on a disk. Ordi- narily, the system divides large hard disks into relatively large minimum-size blocks. When a file smaller than a disk’s block size is written to disk, the unused space in the block is unavailable to other files and effectively lost. Alysis said eDisk customizes block allocation to suit each file’s needs, further enlarging effective disk capacity. eDisk’s installer lets users choose among several compression ratios: 2-, 3- or 4-to-1. The higher com- pression rates slow performance and depend on the type of data being compressed. eDisk comes with a built-in disk optimizer. Users can configure it to begin working automatically after a preset period of inactivity or manu- ally run it through the eDisk installer. Volume licenses are priced at decompressed on the fly as they are downloaded. Users can make changes and then return a new copy on the server. ‘The program automatically records how long the user spent on the doc- ument and saves revised versions in an archive. > Work-flow management. Managers can assign tasks to users, and the assignment will automati- cally appear on the user’s to-do list with any notes. When users have finished their portion of the task, they can forward it to another user. Antley Business Systems said it will also customize the program to F hiie_tai_ Set iow _tnter/tan_duery ry? towntond 4] ABSI-Docs provides a document- management system allow- @ vononbee © tae cuee rity stp cm on cree ing users to electronically route files to other users on the network. Where eDisk fits: Mac 0S File Manager Vendor-specitic SCSI driver - $67.50 per copy for three to 100 copies, $60 per copy for 101 to 499 copies and $49.50 per copy for larger quantities. Alysis Software Inc. is at 1231 31st Ave., San Francisco, Calif. 94122. Phone (415) 566-2263; fax (415) 566-9692. 5 ABSI-Docs helps workgroups manage documents create automatic routes for projects, allowing managers rather than users to determine where each document should be routed after a user has worked on it. > Project tracking. ABSI-Docs records who has any particular doc- ument, who has already worked on it and how much time has been spent on it. The program includes several report forms. Users can export project data to other pro- grams in ASCII text, or SYLK or DIF (Data Interchange Format) formats. Other features of ABSI-Docs include electronic mail, individual calendars for each user and four lev- els of password protection. A mail merge capability lets users create quick documents using a database of boilerplate text. ABSI-Docs’ price does not include the Helix multi-user data- base, which costs about $150 per user. Antley Business Systems Inc. is at 5217 Wayzata Blvd., Suite 213, Minneapolis, Minn. 55416. Phone (612) 542-9651; fax (612) 542- 9665.0 MicroNet brings Raven disk arrays to Quadra 800, adds Bernoulli 150 By Henry Norr Irvine, Calif. — The Raven this month alighted on Apple’s latest high-end Mac. ‘MictoNet Technology Inc. is now shipping its Raven disk arrays in seven capacities for the new Quadra 800. The Raven-800 sys- tems consist of a matched pair of external drives, one connected to the Quadra 800’s single built-in SCSI port, the other to MicroNet’s new high-speed SCSI host adapter, the NuPORT-IIL They offer sus- tained data transfer rates of up to 9.2 ‘Mbytes per second and access times ofas little as 4 milliseconds, accord- ing to the company. Raven-800 configurations range from the Q8e/e-1030R, with a total capacity of 1 Gbyte and a sug- gested retail price of $4,090, to the Q8e/e-5560R, a $14,490 array with a capacity of 5.56 Gbytes. MicroNet also added Iomega Corp.’s Bernoulli MultiDisk 150 to its line of removable-media storage systems. The external MicroNet SBS-B150 lists for $1,245, includ- ing one 150-Mbyte cartridge; addi- tional cartridges are available from MicroNet at $245 each, $665 for a three-pack and $799 for a five-pack. In addition, the company said it has begun shipping the Archive DiamondBack, a digital audio tape drive and auto-loader (see Mac- WEEK, Jan. 4). The full-height external unit, now priced at $6,495, is based on the new Archive Turbo Python mechanism, which has built- in compression. The standard ver- sion can hold four DAT cassettes, but the capacity can be increased to 12 cassettes with an optional maga- zine priced at $295. The auto-loader ships with four 90-meter tapes and Dantz Develop- ment Corp.’s Retrospect Remote 2.0, including a copy of the Retro- spect application and three network clients. MicroNet Technology Inc. is at 20 Mason, Irvine, Calif. 92718. Phone (714) 837-6033; fax (714) 837-1164.0 Rosanne package set to script Mac data-processing functions Six utils clean data, translate formats By Raines Cohen Washington — A set of Mac util- ities that allows scriptable batch processing of large data files such as mailing lists and transaction files is due next month from publisher Main Event. Called Rosanne, the package consists of six utilities that can clean data, convert formats and prepare data for loading into another pro- gram. As they work, the utilities can generate subsets of selected records, count records by category and per- form other analytical operations. All the programs operate on plain-text files and route output to a separate file so the original data remains untouched. The record structure is stored separately from the files so any disk-based text edi- tor can be used to inspect and adjust the data. ‘The company said Rosanne han- dles most standard mainframe data types, including character text, dis- play integers, binary integers, dis- play real numbers, single- and double-precision real numbers, and packed decimal numbers. All the programs can be used interactively by selecting fields and operations in dialog boxes. User operations can be saved as Apple- Script scripts, which can be run later for repeated or batch-processing operations. In addition to Apple- Script, compatible languages com- pliant with Apple’s Open Scripting Architecture can drive the programs. Rosanne will sell for $495 to $695, depending on configuration. The scripting functions require System 7, AppleScript and 4 Mbytes of RAM, but the programs can run with 2 Mbytes and under System 6.0.2 or later. Main Event is at 1814 Belmont Road N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009. Phone (202) 298-9595; fax (703) 551-5155.0 For the record A chart listing SCSI Ethernet adapters in the April 19 issue omitted information regarding Focus Enhancements Inc.’s devices. Focus’ EtherLAN SC supports thick media in addition to the thin mentioned, while the EtherLAN SC-T supports 10BASE T in addition to thin net. -OURNE -POWERBOOK MODEM _ LEAVES GLOBAL VILLAGE SPEECHLESS. =“ top! Don’t do it! And the all-in-one S Don’t buy an dashboard screen everyday modem makes everything when for a few dollars as easy as “point more, you can get the andclick” one that turns your You'll enjoy other PowerBook into a com- state-of-the-art - plete communications features too. Like a center. superfast 14,400 bps Applied Engineering’s transmission speed. DataLink PB" lets you MNP-10 for trouble-~ send and receive data free transmissions. and faxes, just like AppleTalk Remote Global Village’s Power- Access compatibility. Book modem. But only And FAXstf software, the DataLink gives you for special fax fea- a powerful competitive tures like group and edge where you really time-delayed faxing. do business: on the Plugin our telephone. optional Axcell” When you’re making Portable Cellular calls, your PowerBook Interface‘and a cellular becomes a turbo tele- phone, and your com- phone/speakerphone. munications center Spe DATALINK PB’: THE FIRST. AND omy peaieioniaer: phone number listing POWERBOOK™ MODEM THAT HANDLES DATA, FAX thenext room ae ange et AND TWO-WAY VOICE COMMUNICATIONS! Br eee Boggs yon x40" | aivp10, [aunteuPione | Ree | Abs: | Sigtla |, were iemmainaas) — ‘faxes toom can take on- SIRFax & Data | Error Control_|&Speaker Phone| Phone Dialer_| Machine Malhaging . |" Acnvitetog: Taker your car, line notes or™ | AmliedEnsinesring-)~ “Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes and more. check files and |“ Gistatviiess No No No No Re, No me RB With the records as you DataLink PB talk. Your PowerBook will identify callers as calls come installed, you'll be in complete control ofall your com- F A munications ~and your business day. No wonder MacWEEK said _ “Don’t leave home without it.” in¥ and keep complete records of all your calls. It’s like having a personal secretary right in your PowerBook. When you’re away or busy computing, your PowerBook will act as an intelligent answering machine. Delivering individualized messages to,various callers, and storing their responses for retrieval at your convenience. You can even change and retrieve messages from a remote location. . . 1-800-554- ane ext. ag y aa tc = = APPLIED ENGINEERING’ 3210 Beltline, Dallas, TX 75234, 214-241-6060 The Macintosh Enhancement Experts. : *Where Caller ID is available. ©1993. AE Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Brand and product names are registered trademarks of their respective holders. All specifications, terms and descriptions of products and services are subject to change without notice or recourse, Introducing the Laser Writer Pro 600 and 630 printers from Apple. Never before have workgroup printers this affordable produced this level of output. | Offering you true 600-dot-per-inch resolution, they deliver more than four times = the definition of omparably priced 300-dpi printers, Both models ‘rier Pro 600 and incorporate an Apple 630 feature PhotoGrade, an : Apple breakthrough allowing breakthrough in you to ee bd to 91 levels of gray-scale printing 2 as moa called PhotoGrade LaserWriter Ig. A process that intel- ligently adjusts the size and position of every dot in relation to neighboring dots, allowing you to print up to 91 levels of gray at 300 dpi. That’ equivalent to a 1,000-dpi printer costing mountains more. The result is noticeably sharper details and the ability to reproduce the subtle tones of gray in black-and-white photographs. But even when you dont integrate photos into your documents, you'll still notice the difference. Because £ ge The Las Both LaserWriter Pro models come with two paper trays and a host of paper-handling options, including 4 500-sheet feeder and a 75-envelope feeder. Kare: ©1993 4ple compu, Inc.All rights resered. Apple, the Apple logo, Laserifite, Macintosh and "The power to bey ‘are registered trademarks of Hewlet Packard Company. Windous a repseredirdemark of Microsoft Corp. 1D. Power and ‘ssor Apples FinePrint”technology gives your text and line art cleaner edges and smoother curves. So your Truelype"and PostScript ‘pe One fonts have never had more impact. Any way you look at it, your work looks better coming out of a Laser Writer Pro. ‘Wo paper trays come standard, along with an array of options including a 500- sheet feeder and a 75-envelope feeder for a total paper handling capacity of 850 sheets, 92 Compuler End User Salfaction Study, Printer. Study conduced st” ae regilered trademarks, and FinePrint, PhloGrade and TrueBipe NOUNCES of laser printing, able to move even the largest, most compli- | cated image files and print them at speeds You can also select and switch paper trays right from your computer and print a letter, complete with second sheet and enve- lope, without ever leaving your desk. No other printer in the industry allows you to do so much so easily for so little. For high-performance networks, the 630 features built-in Ethernet. So you'll be rivaling any RISC-based printer, And if you happen to work in a mixed environment, both LaserWriter Pro models fit right in. They support PCL page descrip- tion language and can easily accept jobs from Macintosh? and Windows-equipped computers simultaneously, They also provide you with something that no other printer in the world can: Apples renowned plug-and-play simplicity Laser Writer Pro 630 vs. HP LaserJet 4M Oo 64 Truelype 35 PostScript 8 Built in 8MB 51 None ‘ 35 PostScript fi 8 Gray levels: Macintosh fonts: PPM: Ethernet: RAM: Optional 6MB In fact, Apple’ LaserWriter printers were recently ranked highest in Overall Laser Printer Customer Satisfaction by J.D. Power and Associates" Outranking Hewlett-Packard, ‘see why, visit your authorized Apple reseller for a full demonstration. You'll find that the LaserWriter Pro has the power to elevate your work to a level ordi- nary printers can only aspire to. The power not just to look your best. The power to be your best? ‘ The new Laser Writer Pro series from Apple. @ one Or eee Cen Adobe Pp andthe op loo ere rademart of be Sons Incpraewhch may breed in certains. Hell card Laer and PCL for 1707 bss nl sera 848 sess. "Marcel pr, Acta use 8 IF Tad ws ced ag Maca pornal capes and pple Laser printers News OW WACWEEK 04.26.93 Focus jumps into accelerator race By Raines Cohen Woburn, Mass. — Focus Enhancements Inc. last week announced a line of Mac accel- erator cards that include SIMM slots for memory expansion. The company is offering the Focus TurboCards for the Mac Classic, SE and LC I as well as NuBus-equipped systems. The Mac SE and Classic cards include either 25- or 40-MHz 68030 processors and support an optional $50 FPU (floating-point unit). Both allow users to add up to 16 Mbytes of 80-nanosecond SIMMs, using old-style 30- pin SIMMs. The Mac LC and NuBus accelerator cards include a 25-MHz 68040, or for the NuBus card, a 33-MHz option. The processor direct slot LC card does not include any additional SIMM slots, unlike the other cards. Prices range from $439.99 to $1,899, depending on configuration. For instance, a 25-MHz ’030 card for the Mac SE or Classic is priced at $439.99; an ’040-based NuBus card is priced at $1,499 in a 25-MHz version and $1,899 in a 33-MEz version. How TO BE NEAT, PRECISE AND ORGANIZED. WITHOUT BECOMING ONE OF THOSE OBNOXIOUS PEOPLE WHO ARE NEAT, PRECISE AND ORGANIZED. Step 1: Load Now Up-to-Date 2.0, the software that lets you schedule events, set reminders, manage To Do lists, print calendars and keep your associates informed, allowing you to become disgustingly organized. Step 2: Notice how incredibly easy Now Up-to-Date is to use. Totally customizable. 100% non-fascist. Just click on a date, enter your info, bang, you're done. Step 3: Think to yourself, “Wow, calendar software that’s actually faster and easier than TTY the old pen and appointment book approach, Amazing.” las acitth Step 4: If you are on a ¥ network, share events from Now Up-to-Date lets you schedule appointments and To Do's instantly— just click on the date you want and then enter your information. Calendars can be printed in all major appointment book sizes and formats, in a wide variety of views and styles. You can even print out wall charts your calendar with the other folks on your network. In return, they'll no doubt share meeting dates and whatnot with you. Not on a network? No sweat, Now Up-to-Date still works fine all by itself. Step 5: Fly to Zimbabwe and bring up your calendar on your PowerBook. Good. Now change everything. Perfect. Now connect to your office via modem. Presto! All your calen- dars automatically update themselves. Step 6: Pick up Now Up-to-Date 2.0. Or, for more info, call us at 1-800-237-3611. Step uit goofing around reading soft- ware ads and get back to work. nd You've got a lot of stuff to do. RM Now Software, Inc. 319 SW Washington, 1th Floor, Portland, OR 97204. Phone: 503-274-2800, Fax: 303-274-0670. For upgrades eall 800-374-4750 or fax 716-873-0906. Focus said it is manufacturing the cards itself, not reselling another company’ products. The company is best known forits line ofnetworking products, such as Ether'Talk network-interface cards and hubs and AppleTalk Remote Access servers, but it is expanding its line to include a full range of Mac add-ons and peripherals. Focus Enhancements Inc. is at 800 W. Cummings Park, Suite 4500, Woburn, Mass. 01801. Phone (617) 938-8088 or (800) 538- 8866; fax (617) 938-7741. © Media Vision bundles CD drive, speakers By Kirsten L. Parkinson Fremont, Calif. — Media Vision Technolo- gy Inc. this month released a multimedia package for the Mac that bundles a CD-ROM drive, speakers and CD titles. The $899 CD-ROM Multimedia Kit | includes a Sony drive offering an average access time of 295 milliseconds and a data transfer rate of 300 Kbytes per second. ‘The bundle also comes with a speaker sys- tem from Labtec Enterprises and FWB Inc.’s CD-ROM ToolKit, which provides drivers and caching capabilities for the drive (see MacWEEK, April 12). Three CD titles, Compton’ Multimedia Encyclopedia from Compton’ NewMedia Inc. and Interplay Productions’ Battle Chess and Out of This World, are included in the package. Media Vision this month also introduced its Captain Crunch technology, allowing users to perform real-time video compression and decompression on their IBM PCs and com- patibles. The technology, which will be avail- able to developers this quarter, will support video playback on a Mac IIci or more power- ful CPU as well as on PCs. Media Vision Technology Inc. is at 3185 Laurelview Court, Fremont, Calif. 94538. Phone (510) 770-8600 or (800) 348-7116; fax (510) 770-9592..0 Compag cuts price on 20-ppm printer Houston — Compaq Computer Corp. this month rolled back prices 16 percent on the Pagemarq 20, the company’s 20-page-per- minute laser printer. Although it declined to provide list pricing, Compaq said the printer is now available for a street price of about $3,599. The company also said ithas cut the street prices of options such as memory upgrades and LocalTalk and other network interface cards by up to one-third. Compag last month cut the cost of the 15- ppm Pagemarq 15 by a similar margin, to a street price of about $2,599. Both printers handle pages up to tabloid size and have a resolution of 800 by 400 dpi. The Adobe PostScript Level 2 printers were the first to offer a PostScript fax option. Each includes an AMD 29000 RISC chip and can handle up to five simultaneously active interfaces. Compaq Computer Corp. is at 20555 State Highway 249, Houston, Texas 77070. Phone (713) 370-0670; fax (713) 374-1740. 0 News MACWEEK 04.26.93 Focus, Envisio, Mirror readying versions of SyQuest 3.5-inch drive By Kirsten L. Parkinson San Francisco — Riding the 3.5-inch SyQuest wave, three storage vendors next month will ship their versions of the new removable-media drive. With a capacity of 105 Mbytes per cartridge, the drive mechanism offers an average access time of 14.5 milliseconds and a sustained data transfer rate of 1.7 Mbytes per second. All three vendors will include a cartridge with the drive. > Focus Enhancements Ine. is preparing two models of the drive in a vertical configura- tion. The $799.99 Focus 105R will include a single mechanism; the $1,499 Focus 105R Duet will combine two of the drives in one enclosure. The drives will be available directly from the company in black or platinum. They will ship with a collection of utilities from Datawatch Corp. and Golden Triangle Computers Inc., including Virex and Disk- “Maker, respectively. Additional cartridges will be $79.99; a three-pack lists for $229.99. > Envisio Inc. will offer a $999 model of the SyQuest drive as part of its SmartStack line of modular, stackable storage devices. ‘The SmartStack system lets users connect multiple SCSI devices in a vertical stack with a single cable and power supply. Additional cartridges will list for $119. > Mirror Technologies Inc. will ship a $699 external model of the 3.5-inch drive. It will come with a one-year warranty. Additional Mirror cartridges are $99. Focus Enhancements Inc. is at800 W. Cum- mings Park, Suite 4500, Woburn, Mass. 01801. Phone (617) 938-8088; fax (617) 938-7741. Envisio Inc. is at 2640 Patton Road, St. Paul, Minn. 55113. Phone (612) 628-6288; fax (612) 633-1083. Mirror Technologies Inc. is at 2644 Patton Road, Roseville, Minn. 55113. Phone (612) 633-4450; fax (612) 633-3136.0 Toshiba wakes late-sleeping PowerBook drives By Kirsten L. Parkinson San Francisco — Is it safe to put a Toshiba 213-Mbyte drive in your Duo? The answer depends on whom you ask. ‘The Disk Products Division of Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. last month recalled some of its 2.5-inch, 213-Mbyte drives for the PowerBook, citing problems with the model’s standby mode. According to the Irvine, Calif.-based compa- ny, certain PowerBook models power the drive down to 3 volts instead of zero volts when putting it in standby mode. When the drive powers up again from 3 volts, it may not imple- ment the proper reset function, the company said, making the drive fail to wake up. Toshiba representatives said the problem has been corrected and that fixed drives have been shipping since last month. Fewer than 500 drives were affected by the problem, according to the company. “Toshiba has been very, very forthright about the problem,” said Paul McGraw, vice president of APS Technologies Inc., a storage vendor in Independence, Mo., that carries the drive. “It fixed the problem in an incredibly short period of time.” Some users, however, said they have had diffi- culty replacing faulty drives because some Toshiba drives continue to have problems. John Servais, owner of NorthWest House, a consulting firm in Bellingham, Wash., said he ordered two of the Toshiba drives but had to return one when it did not wake up after system sleep. He was unable to get a replace- ment drive from his regular distributor, how- ever, because the company continued to receive faulty drives from Toshiba, he said. Servais said he eventually turned to another reseller for a working drive, but his first try with that company produced another drive with the same problem. “What's obvious is that there was a mess of bad drives going out there, and Toshiba was aware of it but wasn’t doing what we expect it to do,” he said. “It’s causing a hell ofa problem.” Servais said he is now on his third drive, and it seems to be working so far. “I hope I have a good drive, keeping in mind that it’s still a Toshiba drive. It cost us $150 more than the first one, but we don’t care. We just want a drive that works.” 3 Hardware That Fits launches line of storage units By lan G. Jacobs Conroe, Texas — Hardware That Fits last month introduced a new line of storage prod- ucts, and to commemorate the occasion it is bundling Now Software Inc.’s Now Utilities with its drives through May. The mail-order hardware reseller has mar- keted other vendors’ drives in the past, but this is the first time it has offered storage devices under its own RealTech label. ‘The new series includes systems from a long list of vendors. Hard drive offerings range from a 40-Mbyte Maxtor internal drive priced at $269 to a 3.6-Gbyte Micropolis external unit. Removable-media options include SyQuest, Tomega, floptical and magneto-optical drives, and tape backup systems. All drives will ship with System 7.0.1; Real- ‘Tech Drive Utilities, a formatting, diagnostic and driver package based on Transoft Inc.’s SCSI Director; and a shareware collection. Hardware That Fits provides toll-free tech- nical support, a 30-day money-back guaran- tee, and repair or replacement of certain mod- els of failed drives within 24 hours. Hardware That Fits is at 610 S. Frazier, Conroe, Texas 77301. Phone (409) 760-2400 or (800) 364-3838; fax (409) 539-4141.0 BRUSHSTROKES. FOR JUST $99, YOU CAN REDECORATE YOUR WORK SPACE. ( frame not included ) Introducing the first truly powerful, 32-bit color painting program that’s priced for the struggling artist. BrushStrokes" from Claris Clear Choice™ It’s so easy, you can start painting right away without having to learn a complicated program. And it’s loaded with hi-end features to satisfy even the most demanding artist. With BrusbStrokes’step-by- step art lessons, even a novice can create a masterpiece. It even comes with a clip art library. Try BrushStrokes for just $99 (We guarantee your first impression will be a good one.) CLARIS CLEAR CHOICE INTRODUCING BRUSHSTROKES Visit your Clarif dealer or call 1-800-544-8554 to find out about our special trade-in offer. a re ae WN ET {©1993 Claris Corporation, Al igh reed. Ofer valid U.S nly stl 9/3093. *Dealer ric may vary Claris Clear Chu and BrahSirls are tradenarks of Claris Coreation. SOUKCE CODE 185, Apple unleashes Desktop Seminar Toolkit News CD-ROM simplifies multimedia authoring By Henry Norr Cupertino, Calif. — Apple USA’s training department next month will ship a CD-ROM-based author- ing system designed to take some of the hassle out of making fancy mul- timedia presentations. Called Apple Desktop Seminar Toolkit, the $299 package is aimed at | trainers, teachers, consultants, sales reps and others who are not multi- media professionals but need to cre- ate attention-grabbing presentations or seminars in the program’s termi- nology. Based on HyperCard, it pro- vides templates where users can cre- ate an outline, enter text and organize additional elements, including graph- ics, audio and QuickTime movies. Seminar developers can build in interactive exercises for end users, such as multiple-choice tests or matching games that involve drag- ging graphics. The disc includes a seminar on creating seminars, as well as a cost-estimation module. Knowledge of HyperTalk script- ing is not required; users can create their presentations entirely with MACWEEK 04.26.93 & file Edit Go Desktop Seminar Toolkit i 1352 0B indiek 144 avaiable ‘A dood startna point for our cussion of the. nuts. ‘and bolts of bulding a Desktop Seminar, right be (6 Parrative oe vaieeen The Apple Desktop Seminar Toolkit, a CD-ROM-based multimedia authoring system originally developed for internal use at Apple, will be released next month. menu commands and __ buttons, according to the company. Familiari- ty with QuickTime is recommended for users who wish to add video clips. Stacy Vance, a Mac instructor at Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. of Portsmouth, N.H., evaluated a pre- release version of the disc and recom- mended it for producing computer- based training (CBT) materials. “It will be really nice for our CBT devel- ‘opment team,” she said. “Our main focus is sales training, and this will let us do things such as create electronic study materials that include film clips of top-notch sales people in action.” The Apple Desktop Seminar Toolkit will be available through Apple resellers, the Apple Catalog and the Apple training group’s dis- tribution arm, which can be reached at (800) 950-2442..0 New IntelliTalk word processor can talk back to users By Lisa Picarille Richmond, Calif. — What do your mother, your spouse, your kids and IntelliTools Inc.’s IntelliTalk word processor have in common? They can all talk back to you. IntelliTools, previously called Unicorn Engineering, this month shipped a word processor that can read words, sentences and para- graphs aloud after they are typed. Called IntelliTalk, the $39.95 Telepathic 2 speeds word prediction By lan G. Jacobs and Henry Norr Edmonton, Alberta — Madenta Communications Inc. next week will ship a rewritten version of Tele- pathic, its word-prediction soft- ware. Version 2.0 features a more flexible interface, improved perfor- mance and new sound support. The $295 program can guess either the rest of a word being typed or the next word. Predicted words are selected from lists supplied with the package, supplemented by user- imported words and others the pro- gram learns by observing the user’s writing. Predictions are ranked on the basis of frequency and context. Users can define word lists for specific topics or languages, such as a list of biology-related words for use in lab reports. Multiple lists can be open at once. With the new version the sugges- tion list, updated as the user types, can be displayed in any font or size ina floating foreground palette; the user can select the desired word with the mouse or keyboard. Word completion and next-word prediction are dramatically faster than in the original release, Madenta said. Other enhancements include audio playback of letters, words or lists; automatic abbreviation expan- sion or speaking; and support for sin- gle-byte foreign languages such as French and Spanish. Full support for WorldScript and AppleScript will be added soon, the company said. Upgrades are $50, or free to users who bought Version 1.0 in the past six months. Madenta Communications Inc. is at Advanced Technology Centre, Suite 209, 9650 20th Ave., Edmon- ton, Alberta T6N 1G1, Canada. Phone (403) 450-8926 or (800) 661- 8406; fax (403) 428-5376. 0 program is aimed at disabled users, as well a young students and those learning English. It lets users hear the words they entered to veri- fy the text. The program, which requires Apple’s MacInTalk text-to-speech system extension, maintains a dic- tionary of pronunciation exceptions to more accurately pronounce words that sound different from the way they are spelled. Users can add words to the exceptions table by entering the correct spelling of the word and then spelling the word phonetically. IntelliTalk offers two interfaces. ‘The Picture Menus mode, aimed at novice users, includes more than 200 symbols that graphically depict the function of each menu selection. Standard Menus gives users a more traditional Macmenu bar that offers more choices for manipulating type style and size. The company also sells an Apple II version of the program, which requires an external speech synthe- sizer. Both are designed to work with the company’s IntelliKeys keyboard. IntelliTools Inc. is at 5221 Cen- tral Ave., Suite 205, Richmond, Calif. 94804. Phone (510) 528- 0670; fax (510) 528-2225. News Be RIES eS Cartesia ships disc of world maps Lambertville, N.J. — Cartesia Software (formerly MicroMaps Software Inc.) last month shipped a CD-ROM version of its collec- tion of detailed maps. The $299 MapArt World Data Bank contains maps of every country in Adobe Illustrator format. All maps reflect the upheavals and border shifts of the last few years, according to the company. Users of the floppy disk version can upgrade for free to the disc. Cartesia also bundled all of its previous MapArt CD-ROM titles (see MacWEEK, Aug. 3, 1992). The $379 MapArt Bundle con- tains volumes of the USA & International, US States, Global Per- spectives Maps and Metro Areas CD-ROMs. All maps in the bundle are in Encapsulated PostScript format. The CD-ROMs not sold in the bundle contain images in both Encapsulated PostScript and PICT formats and cost $179. Cartesia Software is at P.O. Box 757, Lambertville, N.J 08530. Phone (609) 397-1611 or (800) 334-4291; fax (609) 397-5724. Capital cuts price of debt-collection program Greig, N.Y. — Capital Transactions this month released an update to its debtcollection program and cut the price in half. The $995 Total Collections 1.7, formerly $1,995, presents on- screen scripts to help debt collectors make phone calls to debtors, pro- viding suggested reactions to 10 common responses from debtors. The HyperCard stack can dial work and home phone numbers and mail-merge addresses to send collection notices. Users can generate reports with the five included Microsoft Excel templates. Total Collections can import data from Excel and ASCII text files. Users can sort and search records to track down debtors that owe on more than one account. Capital Transactions is at Star Route 50, Greig, N.Y. 13345. Phone (315) 348-8551. Education manuals aimed at corporate instructors Columbia, Md. —Tectrix Inc. last month released a series of educational manuals aimed at the corporate instructor. The company’s guides, previously available only on a contract basis, cover basic Mac software, including WordPerfect and Microsoft Works. The company also offers manuals for several other classes of products. Each manual is $20. Site licenses are $600, and volume dis- counts are available. Tectrix Inc. is at 10320 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, Md. 21044, Phone (410) 715-1300 or (800) 832-8749; fax (410) 715-1302. | What do you get when you have... 6-10 interviewers working from 6am to 4pm Monday through Friday... 1 supervisor, 2 project coordinators and 2 data entry people & A 1 data analyst 1 reputable, independent research company 10 phone lines, an 800 number and 2 fax machines Rapes, Ws, 8 weeks i mand @ (3,000 phone calls Y 2,008 voice mail detours, 762 phone number look-ups, and 470 busy signals Coming in the May 24 issue of MacWEEK! The annual list of the top 200 Mac installations in the U.S. and Canada. And the top 50 educational sites. Find out what over two months of research has uncovered in this exhaustive MacWEEK survey! MacWEEK’s exclusive feature takes a look at the companies — and industries — banking on Mac technology to take them into the next century. ! 1,400 file folders p The 1995 acWWEE The annual MacWEEK 200 is the most anticipated issue of the year. Don’t miss this special report on the buying trends of the biggest Mac sites in North America... with an in-depth profile of the top five corporate sites and the top five educational sites. & 112,000 sheets of paper? You get... Issue Date: May 24 Advertisers Note: Display advertising close is Thursday, May 13. Showcase close is May 11. Special Bonus Distribution: Comdex/Spring, Atlanta News MACWEEK 04.26.93 Rapidly growing start-up puts its Macs to the test Running asmall business from the Mac is not all plug and play. By Mitch Ratcliffe When Bill Rosenzweig left the world of high technology to start his tea company, he took his Mac- intoshes with him. Now he’s won- dering if the Macis up to the book- keeping and communications challenges he faces in a rapidly growing business. The Republic of Tea Inc., Rosen- zweig’s specialty tea company based in San Rafael, Calif, opened its doors in January 1992. The first products, 26 different teas and herbs, shipped in May that year. Since then, the Republic’s monthly orders have grown 1,500 percent, and the company may reach $2 mil- lion in sales this year, more than a year ahead of schedule. “[ started this business in my basement with my Mac and a fax modem,” Rosenzweig said as he poured several cups of the Repub- lic’s new Rainforest Tea. The for- mer president of San Francisco- based Clement Mok Design, he bootstrapped the Republic using four of his own Macs. “You need to have an infrastructure in place that will accommodate your growth, and I’m not sure that we chose the right computers,” he said. The company, which he started with Banana Republic Inc. founders Meland Patricia Ziegler, was launched with only three employ- ees: Rosenzweig, an office manager and an assistant. The original busi- ness plan, published recently as part ofa book about the company’s founding, called for the hiring of two additional people after one year and recruitment of a controller after two years. Nine months into the Republic’s life, it employed seven full-time workers and anoth- er half-dozen part-timers. From the very beginning, the Republic has relied on computers to automate the simple, repetitive tasks that can take up large portions ofan employee’s day. “We will use technology to work smart,” Rosen- zweig wrote to the Zieglers during the planning stage of the start-up. Every new employee must have basic computer skills, Rosenzweig said. He has acted as administrator for the Republic’s electronic-mail system, QuickMail from CE Soft- ware Inc. of West Des Moines, Towa, which each employee is required to use religiously. “E-mail must be read and responded to every day; communication is critical to our success,” he said. Macintoshes have eased some of the burden of training new hires; QuickMail introductions always go quickly, he said. At the same time, technology has been a stumbling block in the implementation of the company’s motto, which advises that life and work should be taken sip by sip rather than gulp by gulp. “We have staff meetings about the zen of efficiency in movement, but one of the biggest wastes of time isall the waiting for the computer,” Rosenzweig said. The Republic uses Database Accounting Library from SBT Accounting Systems Corp. of Sausalito, Calif., to track the accounts of 700 retail and catalog customers. “It can take an hour just to generate weekly reports.” Ilsi or NetWare server? Accounting software has been a par- ticularly sticky point for the Repub- lic. Its entire operation revolves around SBT’s software, which is based on Microsoft Corp.’s FoxBASE+. The system, which until recently ran ona Mac IIsi, tracks customer orders, an inventory that includes hundreds of teas and herbs, and shipping information. Employees in the Republic’s ware- house and accounting department complained that SBT is too slow. An SBT client running on a Ici workstation in the Republic’s ware- house is outperformed by the ancient Southall and Smith Ltd. tea packaging machine, a 15-foot-tall iron and glass contraption that uses brass weights to control the volume of teas in a package. The old tea machine works quickly and is easy to reset for different teas. Generating a shipping order and invoice, by contrast, can take as long as five minutes and has delayed processing of customer orders until after the last Federal Express drop- off of the day. A Novell NetWare server was recently installed. The SBT server was the first application migrated to the IBM PC clone. “Performance has really improved,” said Robert Lally, min- ister of the interior for the Repub- lic. He manages the company’s books and supervises the processing of orders. “Backing up the server used to take an hour. Now it takes five minutes,” he said. The improvement may be the result of changes in the server back- up configuration. Instead of back- ing up all 50 Mbytes of the compa- ny’s files and applications to a digi- tal audio tape drive, the NetWare server backs up only 30 Mbytes of accounting data. “Tr’s much faster than the Mac server,” Lally said, He added that SBT printing and report generation is still too slow for the Republic, even after the switch to NetWare. ‘There’s little chance the company will go with Intel clients exclusively in the near term, Lally said. “We've got so much tied up in this, it would be a $50,000 decision to switch hardware and software. That’s a decision we're not ready to make.” Graphics after all these years. Where the Mac really delivers for the Republic is in the graphics department. The company offers 26 different teas, each with unique packaging. “The labels cost us about $25,000 to develop vs. the $250,000 it would have cost to do the same project at Clement Mok Design,” Rosenzweig said. By doing the designs in-house “it wasn’t hard to justify the cost ofa color scanner or a 24-bit-color accelerator,” he said. The Republic shares after-hours time ona local color pre-press sys- tem to save money on trade-show booth and marketing materials and new product packaging. “We're creating a movement, not just selling tea,” said Gina Amador, minister of design. She said the company’s unusual packag- ing —steel canisters with colorful, recycled paper labels — are designed to convert customers to the experience of specialty tea. The packaging has a very personal appeal, the teas are given thought- provoking names (Sky Between the Branches is the name of one green tea), and collage images scanned into Adobe Photoshop provide a compelling dash of color. The packaging did the work of earning customer attention. Most specialty tea is shipped in bags. Full-leaf teas, such as those offered by the Republic and which are especially prized by tea drinkers, are not often packaged successfully. “T’ve been carrying full-leaf estate teas for years, and these guys are doing great packaging,” said Ari Weinzweig, a partner in Zinger- man’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor, Mich. “You look at the design and presentation of information about the tea; the effort that went into it is apparent.” Amador used the Mac to design and lay outa catalog of teas and accessories, which the Republic has used as a capabilities brochure with retail outlets and as a direct-sales tool sent to individual mail-order customers. “So far, the catalog has produced a 22 percent return,” Rosenzweig said. Producing test packaging has proved to be the Mac’s other forte. Amador said that for only a few hours of work, the company can try out new tea ideas, packaging design and marketing concepts. As it prepares for its eventual move into mass- market retail outlets, such as grocery stores, it is experimenting with new package designs constantly. “When you’re working in-house, no one pays for each comp, so you have to work cheap,” Amador said. Keeping up with change. Rosenzweig said the Republic is outgrowing its computers and soft- ware, often before the company can earn a return on its current technol- ogy investments. Some of the problems the Republicis having with technology can be attributed to its lack of com- puter savvy. Rosenzweig said his 15-person business cannot afford a full-time technologist to keep up to date, and he cannot deliver the guidance he once could because the tea business is going so well. ‘See Tea, Page 16 sane Republic of Tea staffers Robert Lally, Gina Amador, Luis Ibarra and Suzy Schuman are shown above with their colorful Mac-designed packages of tea. erver Sentry AppleShare 3.0 Remote Management. Server Sentry is the first and only Apple Events interface package to allow complete server management. Server Sentry can be used to remotely: control access to the server, get server log/statistics, provide alarms if problems occur, copy/manage users & groups between multiple servers, remotely launch/quit applications, remotely shutdown the server, and much more. All of these tasks are done from an interface which is identical to the familiar AppleShare 3.0 Admin. interface. Use all AppleShare 3.0 Admin. features remotely. Auto Disconnect Users. Guest to Macintosh Name Time/User based Access Mapping. Restriction to Server. Time restrict access fegitered wrens >) =] oo o bere eeae is Oe” InterServer Management Perens allows Users and Groups to int ie be copied across multiple Ges) [am) servers. Server Alarms can be sent to Pager, Screen & log. Prosser aso onzat ® @ fo Server Usage Graph & Server Profile provides the Server Statistics Log (to determine hardware and software who logged in/out and when) configuration of the server(s). Smart Copy allows folders to be copied across servers while maintaining ownership and access privileges. Server Sentry ata dmin To order, or for more information, call: 1-800-535-0725 Sonic Systems, Inc. © 1993 Sonic Systems, Inc. 333 W El Camino Real #280, Sunnyvale, CA 94087, 408-736-1900, Fax 408-736-7228, Server Sentry isa trademarks of Sonic Systems, Inc. All other product names are trademarks or registered trademarks oftheir respective companies. News MACWEEK 04.26.93 Tea From Page 14 He travels at least a week a month, and on the afternoon that MacWEEK visited the company, he had four meetings. So, the Republic operates without the benefit of its chief technologist. Despite his early commitment to using technology to leverage the skills of his employees, Rosenzweig said he cannot keep up with the changing computing market. For example, the company ordered its NetWare server before it was aware that Apple would soon ship its new Apple Work- group Servers. “A company our size has to rely on consul- tants for advice,” Lally said. “Bill just doesn’t have time to deal with all this stuff; it really doesn’t make sense that our CEO is also our QuickMail administrator, either.” Rosenzweig agreed. “I used to have a more in-depth comfort level with technology. I’m so busy that we have to rely on outside con- sultants, and that’s frustrating. We had a power outage the other day that crashed the NetWare server, and no one knew how to reboot it after the power came back on, including me.” Identifying the best consultant has been a key to the Republic’s computing progress. Rosenzweig said the trait he looks for in con- sultants is personal involvement with the Republic’s mission. “The safe ground is to find a consultant who you can trust, which. means they take an interest in the success of your business beyond billing you by the hour. “I wanted the technology to be invisible. But it hasn’t been because of the order-entry and inventory problems,” Rosenzweig said late in the afternoon over a cup of Pi Lo Chun green tea. “Every small business needs to budget for consulting, butyou also need something that can grow with your business. That’s where the Mac has fallen down.” 0 Calendar of Events APRIL 29-May 2: MCN International Consultants Conference, Peachtree City, Ga. Includes product reviews, presentations and interac- tion with developers. Contact the Macintosh Consultants Network at (209) 545-0569 or (800) 729-4626; fax (209) 545-0279. MAY 3-5: Managing Apple Computers in Information Systems, San Antonio. Biannual conference of Mac managers’ organization. Contact MaciS at (513) 398-7500; fax (513) 398-7503. 3-7: DB/Expo '93, San Francisco. Client- server and information technology solutions trade show and conference. Contact NDN Enterprises at (415) 966-8440 or (800) 232- 3976; fax (415) 966-8934. 3-6: Interactive ’93, Anaheim, Calif. Multi- Datawatch Citadel with a secure document shredder. Citadel feted at ee acer fretting devel: Shredder is a Macworld ws also lets you lock the Mac screen opers expo, as well as many discussion Magazine Editors’ Choic Citadel after a pre-selected period of time to eer aeperenad CHA hee ag : Sanna st guard your system from browsers and : i among security products Enno awe 4-5: MacNorthwest ‘93, Portland, Ore. because it’s a complete, easy- Regional Mac trade show plus conference to-use disk and file vit a f on emerging technologies. Contact Chem- USE ASK Ot SECUrUY sea ‘asy-to-Use eketa Community College Information solution. faite Though Citadel has all the security Technology Group at (503) 399-6064; : ough Citadel has all the security fax (503) 399-4898. features you need, you macworto Airtight Disk and File Security won't find it hard to set up or use. In fact, 9-12: SUGI 18 Conference, New York. Statistical-analysis conference with special problem-solving booths to cover specific soft- ware snags. Contact SAS Institute Inc, at (919) 677-8000; fax (919) 677-8166. Macworld magazine called it “Feature packed; easy to use” (Macworld, 6/92), and chose it as its Editors’ Choice among security products (Macworld, 2/93). Citadel offers a full array of security features that let you protect your Mac and its data from unauthorized access. Citadel a lets you lock hard drives, and lets you lock or completely disable floppy drives. 9-13: Apple Worldwide Developers Confer- ence, San Jose, Calf, Presentations on Mac and other Apple technologies and marketing techniques. Contact CMI at (415) 705-8050; fax (415) 291-0126. So to protect your precious data without a lot of hassle, see your favorite retailer for Citadel today. Or call us for your free Citadel Overview at (919)490-1277, ext 327. Citadel lets you encrypt individual files and folders, and its Shredder feature turns the Macintosh trash can into 11-13: Computer Storage Exposition and Conference, Anaheim, Calif, Storage security and PCMCIA will be discussed, IDATAWATCH Datawatch Corporation Triangle Software Division PO Box 51489 Durham, NC 27717 (919) 490-1277 ext. 327 PAX:490-6672, BBS: 419-1602 (8,1,N) (© 1999 Datawatch Corporation. Datawatch sa registered trademark and Datawatch Citadel with Shredder isa trademark of Datavatch Corporation. Other product names are trademarks oftheir especve holders. and new technologies will be displayed. Contact Eberhard & Co. at (212) 486-6186; fax (212) 486-6481. Please submit notices of conferences, trade shows and other Mac-related events to Calendar, MacWEEK, 301 Howard St., 15th Floor, San Francisco, Calif. 94105, or fax to (415) 243-3650. No training or educational seminars please. After all the thinking we put into it, we still cant say whether itSanotebook computer ora desktop computer Actually it’s the be And the easiest way to g These days, most people think you need one computer that fits your desktop and another that fits your briefcase. Maybe what you really need is one computer that fits your life: The Apple’ PowerBook Duo’ System. Its a stunningly practical idea — a single computer that gives you the best of both worlds. The PowerBook Duo System has two parts: The sleek 4.2-pound PowerBook Duo, with all the features that have made PowerBook” the country’s best-selling notebook computer. And, for your desk- top, a Duo Dock, which instantly turns your notebook into a powerful and fully expandable office computer. But unlike any computer “docking station” you've ever seen, the Duo Dock is more than a mere mechanical device. Thanks to Apple PowerLatch* technology, ithas an intelligence all its own. When you insert the PowerBook Duo, the Duo Dock gently pulls it in, making a perfect connection. Then it automatically sets up your printer, server and network connections and configures itself for your No compromises. fn the office, your sleek notebook lurns into a complete desktop setup with a ful-size keyboard and up to Configures itself. All you have to do is insert the PowerBook Duo the Duo Dock makes the connection and sels itself up for your office resources. Thousands of programs. You can run over 5,000 Macintosh’ applications, With the right software, you can even run MS-DOS and Windows programs. 4 16-inch color display. (©1993 ple Computer Ili reseed pp te pple oo, Aplal, Mac and "Te power ob our be” are register ademarks of ope Computer, PoverBzo, PowerBook Dun PoverLatch and QuickTime ae rademarks st of both worlds. et from one to the other. color display and any peripheral devices that may be attached. In fact, you can use your PowerBook Duo with different Duo Docks in different offices, and no matter where you decide towork, the system will automatically set 210 and 230 both feature he Motorola itself up for your connected resources. Easy connections. The office is always near. All you need is AppleTalk” Remote Access software and the optional high-speed data/fax Apple PowerBook Express Modem. ‘Two models. The PowerBook Duo No risk. Jf you try to eject the 68030 processor, running at 25 MHz PowerBook Duo while you have / unsaved files on-screen, you'll be nd 33 MHz, ively, reminded to save them first. and 33 MHz, respectively. Multimedia power. Apple QuickTime” Portable power, The PowerBook Duo software (included) lets you make is a full-featured computer with a gray- ‘on-the-spot presentations with video, scale supertwist display. It works up to sound and animation. 45 hours on a single battery charge. Expandable. 7he Duo Dock has two ‘NuBus" expansion slots (for such additions as 24-bit graphics and Ethernet) and ports Sor up to six peripherals. Plenty of storage. You have one set of Jiles, wherever you go. PowerBook Duo ‘stores up to 80MB (with the option of L20MB in the PowerBook Duo 230). Flexible. Use the Duo Dock as a single _— shared setup for the entire sales force, a home office or a way to expand in the future. It fits almost any plan. Award-winning design. The built-in palm rest and centered trackball make working outside of the office noticeably more comfortable. 1 9pe Compute, Motorola arg rademark of Motor, ne. MS-DOS a restr rademar of Serf Corporation. NuBus ca rademark of Tas hrm Ths ad wa rated ug Macias pera compas When youre ready to leave, you just press the eject button, and the Duo Dock releases the notebook, much like a VCR ejects a videocassette. (Unless you have unsaved files on the screen —in which case it has the good sense to point that out before you disconnect.) To witness a truly intelligent display of technology, see the PowerBook Duo System at an authorized Apple reseller today. Call 800-732-3131, ext. 100, for the name of one near you. (In Canada, call 800-665-2775, ext. 910) You'll find that when you have the best of both worlds, all in one computer, you can enjoy the most satisfying kind of power. The power to be your best? The PowerBook Duo System from Apples. Gateways = By April Streeter Alameda, Calif. — In a quest to regain a pre-eminent role in Macin- tosh networking, Farallon Comput- ing Inc. last week filled in what it termed “the outstanding gaps” in its Ethernet product line. Farallon introduced an upgrade for its LOBASE T hub that provides in- band SNMP (Simple Network Man- agement Protocol) data; a new ver- sion of its NetAtlas network-mapping Farallon turns up heat in Ethernet competition software; Ethernet transceivers; and a variety of Ethernet adapters, includ- ing external SCSI devices and cards for the latest Mac CPUs. Farallon said this latest wave of Ethernet product introductions is part of the company’s quest to retake ground lost to Asanté Technologies Inc. and other vendors during Faral- lon’s foray into non-networking areas such as multimedia. See Farallon, Page 22 Version 2.0 of [is fa ew Hew spect winsow —— er NetAtlas from = Teiwonk TST Farallon allows serene (cama ey ra users to choose oe = Il oe to map a select- aes pret Tartan 8 nie It ored ed zone instead — cae ba mal Coens coe entire network. oe — == — ae" met 108 mee owes 4 Bo EtherPrint also gets 2nd Local Talk port By lan G. Jacobs and April Streeter Salt Lake City — Dayna Commu- nications Inc. this month shipped a 24-port Ethernet hub that gives small workgroups room to expand their networks. The rack-mountable $1,399 DaynaSTAR Hub-24 is bundled with Network Vital Signs, the company’s $449 network-management software. Dayna’s $995 12-port DaynaSTAR Hub-12 will no longer be sold. The Hub-24 has 24 10BASE T ports and two other 10BASE T out- lets for cascading additional hubs. Single BNC and AUI (attachment unit interface) connectors also let managers link the device to a thin- or thick-net backbone. Each 10BASE T port has three LEDs that show network activity, link status and when hyperactive nodes have been shut down, or partitioned, from the rest of the network because Dayna rolls out 24-port Ethernet hub of excessive network traffic errors. Marvin Price, systems manager at Motown Records in Hollywood, Calif., said the hub’s automatic par- titioning capability helped him hunt down a nagging problem. “We have Macs doing sound editing, and our graphics depart- ment is using Quadras,” he said. “But the LEDs helped me find out the problem [was] in a Duo Dock that was babbling to the network.” In other news, Dayna added a sec- ond Local Talk port to its $499 Ether- Print print server and cut the price of the four-port EtherPrint Plus and EtherPrint-T Plus to $599, down from $649. New software for both print servers, Version 2.0, includes a utility that lets managers name devices attached to the servers, place them in specific Apple Talk zones and apply password protection. The software upgrade is $99. Dayna Communications Inc. is at Sorenson Research Park, 849 Levoy Drive, Salt Lake City, Utah 84123. Phone (801) 269-7394; fax (801) 269-7363.0 | DCA to support products acquired in Avatar buyout By Nathalie Welch Alpharetta, Ga. — Users some- times lose out when two similar companies join forces. But Digital Communications Associates Inc. last week announced an unusual effort to continue support for the Mac-to-IBM connectivity products it acquired through its buyout of rival Avatar Technologies Corp. DCA last December gained own- ership of Avatar’s MacMainFrame Workstation, MainPrint print emu- lation product and Netway gateways/ routers. The deal left some cus- tomers concerned about the future of these products. > Workstation. DCA last week said that come fall it plans to release an aggregate product, combining features of Avatar’s MacMainFrame Workstation and DCA’s Irma- Workstation for Mac, that will include support for all existing MacMainFrame interfaces and third-party applications. The prod- uct is expected to be called Irma- Workstation for Macintosh 4.0. Before the combined product is released, users can expect a couple EtherPeek 2.0, = shown here, and ‘aoe 23 fa] LocalPeek 2.0 oo woof | both indude Sie 1) windows that me 3 2] | graph the per- ae oe 22} | centage of net- AIP fep/ZIP fone Rot ary work traffic Ate ecynee catstat cae being captured in ‘scale x user-specified Filters tached: 99 protocols. EtherPeek, LocalPeek revisions offer more packet-sleuthing tools By Leonard Heymann Walnut Creek, Calif. — The AG Group Inc. last week shipped new versions of its EtherPeek and Local- Peek network-analysis tools that make it easier for users to detect and dissect wayward network packets. Version 2.0 of both products adds new filtering mechanisms to isolate protocols during and after packet capture. The upgrades also offer a feature called “thread intelligence” that lets users zero in on specific network conversations. > Filters and triggers. LocalPeek includes 250 prefabricated filters for AppleTalk and MacTCP. EtherPeek ships 350 filters, adding decoders for Internet Protocol, Vines IP, DECnet and NetWare’s IPX (Internetwork See DCA, Page 22 | Packet Exchange), among others. Fil- Apple stacks up MacTCP update By April Streeter Cupertino, Calif. — Apple this week is expected to ship a long- awaited upgrade to MacT'CP, but users who aren’t in the know won’t be able to find it on the company’s price lists. MacTCP 2.0 is part of Apple’s forthcoming TCP/IP Connection for Macintosh, which also includes an SNMP (Simple Network Man- agement Protocol) client. The upgraded MacTCP includes acontrol panel that can find and dis- play lists of more than 400 zones without the slowdown of previous versions, a ping application that notifies administrators when a port cannot be contacted, and a feature that notifies users of Internet Proto- col address conflicts. TCP/IP Connection for Macin- tosh will be $59 for a single-user ver- sion and $499 for a 20-user pack. ‘TCP/IP Administration for Macin- tosh, a network manager version with additional configuration software and manuals, will be priced at $499. When Apple first announced TCP/IP Connection last October, it sent developers a contract addendum reserving the right to stop them from bundling MacT CP with their prod- ucts starting six months after the general commercial availability of the stack, But Apple Product Manag- er Alistair Woodman last week said the company has no current plans to invoke the contract clause. While that puts one controversy to rest for the moment, Apple has yet to resolve a dispute with InterCon Sys- tems Corp. of Herndon, Va., over the produc’s name. InterCon sells TCP/Connect Il, an application that offers a TCP/IP terminal, network news and electronic-mail services, and has threatened to sue Apple to prevent it from using the name TCP/IP Con- nection for Macintosh. 9 ters and triggers are stored outside the application so they do not use memory when not in use. An unlimited number of filters and triggers can be set up for both prod- ucts. The filters can be set to capture packets based on source and destina- tion, protocol, offset, and error speci- fications. Filters can be created based ona particular type of packet and can be color-coded to help users identify packets that meet their criteria. After capture, users can apply various combinations of filters suc- cessively — without reloading the buffer for each pass — using hide and unhide commands. Statistics can be updated after each operation. A Filter Statistics window displays the packets passing the filters as a percentage of overall traffic. “The filtering architecture ismuch more coherent,” said Dr. Steven Erde, director of academic comput- ing at Cornell University Medical College in New York, where he beta tested EtherPeek 2.0. “EtherPeek is an order of magnitude better than Network General [Corp.’s] Sniffer,” he said. The leading PC-based ana- lyzer, the Sniffer is priced starting at $15,500. > SmartDecoders. The analyz- ers can identify node-to-node sessions that are part of the overall stream of traffic by tracking requests and corresponding response packets. The program can also decode the session packets to the upper layers automatically. Alerts from the analyzers can now be received via PagerPro from Car- avelle Networks Corp., in addition to Notify! from Ex Machina Inc. EtherPeek is $795, while upgrades are $120. LocalPeekis $495; upgrades are $75. Upgrades are free to users under warranty or service contracts. The AG Group Ine. is at 254 Camino Diablo, Suite 202, Walnut Creek, Calif. 94596. Phone (510) 937-7900; fax (510) 937-2479. Now that you have the new Apples, call the only company that can network the entire orchard. Introducing new Ethernet solutions from the only complete Macintosh networking family, As Apple Computer releases Asanté: Fastest Data Transfer* more and more Macs,° only Asanté™ is keeping pace with Ethernet® solu- tions for all of them. Introducing the MacCon+™ LC II cua eee tia ™: Ethernet adapter for the brand new Macintosh® LCI and Color Classic. It's a high-performance card that plugs into the LC III's 32-bit expansion slot for simple Thin and 10BaseT Ethernet connectivity. This adapter is also backward com- patible with earlier models in the LC family, and the Performa 400. Only Asanté has an Ethernet adapter for every Apple. The MacCon+ LC IIL is just the latest innovation from the only networking company with an Ethernet solution for every Apple CPU, Asanté’s family tree includes the FriendlyNet" line of exter- nal adapters that connect Macs with built-in Ethernet, such as the Centris 610, 650, and the Quadra 800, to Thick, Thin and 10BaseT networks. We also offer the new Mini EN/SC, the smallest and lightest SCSI-to-Ethernet adapter in the world. It’s the perfect space-saving networking solution for any Macintosh without PowerBook 165c | Mini EN/SC available expansion slots, and was Mac LC IIL MacCon+ LC IL specifically designed for portable use with the PowerBook line. So if you have Apples that are ripe for high-speed networking, Centris 610 & 650 | FriendlyNet Quadra 800 | Media Adapters and you want to get all your Ethernet solutions from a single source, call Asanté, the only company capable of networking the entire orchard, = at 800.662.9686, Vi, A S A N sf E extension 201. ALL THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS™ Resellers: Asanté products are available from Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Merisel and Gates/FA. Asanté Technologies, Inc., 821 Fox Lane, San Jose, CA 95131. Tel: (408) 435-8388, ©1998 Asanté Technologies, Inc. ll brand names and products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders, *Apple with builtin Ethernet. Gateways MACWEEK 04.26.93 Concorde Express makes WAN transfers fly PacerForum 2.0 opens wider view of information to users, administrators By April Streeter Aptos, Calif. — Engage Commu- nication Inc. last week shipped soft- | ware that speeds up file transfers over wide-area connections or in Ethernet LANs. Concorde Express, available for $499, works with local- or wide- area Engage routers or in tandem with other connection software to speed up file transfers between Eth- ernet Macs, Macs connected via leased lines or over satellite links. The software dials through an Engage router to a receiving Mac and commandeers space on the hard drive for direct data transfer to a designated folder. It uses a streamlined error-correction pro- tocol to bypass the Finder’s typical DA From Page 20 of minor bug fixes and feature enhancements to both MacMain- Frame Workstation and Irma- Workstation for Mac products. > Gateways. Avatar’s MacMain- Frame Gateway will be maintained and enhanced in its current form with no significant changes _ planned, according to Scott Schroeder, DCA marketing manager for Mac products. The Netway 2000 communica- tions gateway and LAN router that Avatar obtained via its acquisition of Tri-Data Systems Inc. in 1992 supports AppleTalk and IPX (Inter- | network Packet Exchange) for departmental-level routing. Because | of the product’s somewhat limited client support on the DOS and Windows side, DCA will port the TrmaWorkstation for Windows and IrmaWorkstation for DOS pack- ages to the Netway 2000. > Network interface cards. In the short term, Avatar’s network interface cards netted in the acquisi- tion will be supported, but plans to consolidate similar cards from both companies into redesigned offerings are in the works. The release of the redesigned card, with improved per- formance and combined functions, is likely to coincide with the release of the aggregate client software this fal. > Printer products. For now, DCA will continue to market both Avatar’s MainPrint CX and DCA’s own IrmaPrint2, as is. Digital Communications Associ- ates Inc. is at 1000 Alderman Drive, Alpharetta, Ga. 30202. Phone (404) 442-4000; fax (404) 442-4368. 0 Farallon “What this introduction means for us is we're through playing catch-up,” said Steve Holtzman, Farallon vice president of market- ing. “It would have been easier if we had gotten into [the Ethernet mar- ket] two years earlier, but we’ve now filled in with all the necessary net- work plumbing pieces.” > Etherl0-T StarController. Farallon has changed the name of the StarController EN to Ether10-T StarController. Ether10-T supports 12 client nodes and has an extra port for connecting to an Ethernet back- bone. Starting in June, network man- agers can upgrade the hub for $200 to an Etherl0-T StarController/557, which adds in-band management capabilities. With the in-band feature managers can use StarCommand Version 3.2 or any SNMP console program to manage the hub. > NetAtlas 2.0. Available now, Version 2.0 of the $695 NetAtlas lets users choose to map specific zones rather than entire networks, Information about network devices, such as routers, can be viewed by double-clicking icons on the map. > EtherMac adapters. Farallon has rounded out its EtherMac line with adapters for Macs released in the past year. A 7-inch NuBus card From Page 20 | that fits the Duo Dock, Centris 610 and 650, and Performa 600 is $189 for dual 10BASE T and thick-net media connectors or dual thick and thin connectors. A version with all three media will cost $249. A slightly tweaked EtherMac card for the LC III that also fits the Perfor- ma 400, 405, 430 and 450 will be $189 for two-media versions and $249 for a three-in-one version. With a math coprocessor, the price of the card rises to $305 for the two-media versions and $359 for three-in-one versions. The cards will support Apple’s implementation and are due next month, Farallon said. The non-PowerBook SCSI adapters for either thin or 10BASE T Ethernet are $339; versions that include the PowerBook HDI-30 SCSI cord are $359. The SCSI adapters are available now. > Transceivers. Farallon’s trans- ceivers will be available in versions to support standard Ethernet AUI (attachment unit interface) or Apple’s own AUI connector. Faral- lon’s EtherThin connects to thin-net networks and will ship in June, while Etherl0-T transceivers work with 10BASE T and are available now. The transceivers cost $85. Packages of 10 cost $799. Farallon Computing Inc. is at 2470 Mariner Square Loop, Alame- da, Calif. 94501. Phone (510) 814- 5100; fax (510) 814-5020. a acknowledgment delays during file transfers. Engage said receiving Macs don’t need to be dedicated, but a user could experience slowdowns during a transfer. In company benchmarks, Con- corde Express boosted file transfer speeds over satellite links by about 100 times, since satellite relay delays are reduced significantly. Transfers over leased lines, such as Tl, achieved throughput of 1 Mbps, four to six times faster than standard file transfer rates. Mac-to-Mac transfers in local Ethernets were also improved, according to Engage: Two Quadra 950s on Ethernet transferred a 1-Mbyte file at about 586 Kbps. When using Concorde Express, the transfer rate increased to 2.9 Mbps. The company said it is working ona version of Concorde Express to work over modems and AppleTalk Remote Access connections. Engage Communication Inc. is at 9053 Soquel Drive, Aptos, Calif. 95003. Phone (408) 688-1021; fax (408) 688-1421.5 The latest crop of fax modems : By Nathalie Welch LaJolla, Calif. — Pacer Software Inc. this week is shipping Pacer- Forum 2.0, an updated bulletin board system for AppleTalk LANs that lets users tailor their views of available conferences and infor- mation. Version 2.0, available in a five-user pack for $549 or a 25-user pack for $1,995, provides users with a more detailed view of all forums available, including the number of topics each contains, the time and date of the last modification, and users’ access rights toa specific forum. “PacerForum is a workgroup BBS,” said Andy Harris, president of Telemorphix Inc,, an interactive TV production company in San Francisco. “It combines the ease of administration with an easy-to-use interface we require.” Harris said PacerForum 2.0 serves his company well by communicating that the sta- tus of a project has moved to “argent” without intervention from an administrator. A more powerful pop-up notifier now displays a few lines of a response, and a double-click takes the user directly to the new topic or response. The new capability to post aliases will keep server disk space clear when users want to enclose references to large attach- ments, such as QuickTime files. Administration improvements in- clude a server usage log and the capa- bility to add new users by importing a user file from another server. Admin- istrators can now also modify user privileges in groups and create descriptive topic icons to aid users locating information on the server and organizing forums on their hard disks. Customers who purchased PacerForum 1.0 before Jan. 1 can get a five-pack upgrade for $109.95 or a 25-pack upgrade for $399.95. Upgrades are $14.95 for those who purchased Version 1.0 after that. Pacer Software Inc. is at 7911 Herschel Ave., Suite 402, La Jolla, Calif 92037. Phone (619) 454- | 0565; fax (619) 454-6267. BASE PRIMARY BUNDLED PHYSICAL COMPANY PRODUCT SPEEDS (BPS) PROTOCOLS | SOFTWARE PRICE FEATURES BESTDATAPRODUCTSINC. MacTraveler 2,400 data V.A2bis, MNP 2-5 Quicklink 11 $199 2.75x5x1.25 inches 9304 Deering Ave. 9600 send fax Chatsworth, Colif. 91311 4,800 receive fox (818) 773-9600 BOCA RESEARCH INC. BocaModem 14,400 dato, V.32bis, V.17, FAXstfond $495 7.5x7.5x1.25 inches 6413 Congress Ave. send-ond-receive fax V.A2bi