Newsbytes - Internationa…ews 1983 May to 1994 June/Newsbytes - International Computing Industry News 1994 Edition - May 1983 - June 1994 - Wayzata Technologies (5045) (1994).iso/pc/text/mac_text/1988/nb880322.248

Text File | 1991-08-18 | 94.5 KB | 2,069 lines

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BIGGEST LOOK AND FEEL BATTLE YET: APPLE VS. HP, MICROSOFT
CUPERTINO, Ca. (NB) -- In a lawsuit expected to have far reaching
consequences in the IBM world, and on an expected generation of
Macintosh "clones," Apple Computer, in an attempt to protect its
copyrighted audio-visual display, has launched a major attack
on friend and ally Microsoft Corporation, and on Hewlett Packard,
charging the firms with copying the "look and feel" of the Macintosh
screen display.   This surprising suit, filed in U.S. District Court
in San Jose, points to two products -- Microsoft Windows 2.03,
and Hewlett Packard's New Wave audio-visual interface, which
requires Windows 2.03 to run.  Apple wants to prevent both
products, now in the hands of developers only, from reaching
retail stores.

Apple had granted a restricted license to Microsoft
for use of certain elements of the Macintosh audio-visual
interface for the development and sale of Windows Version
1.03 but the Redmond, Washington software company never
received a license to make further revisions, Apple
spokeswoman Roni Sarmanian told NEWSBYTES.

The only other firm to receive a legal challenge from Apple in the
past has been Digital Research.  The 1986 dispute over the look
of the GEM interface was settled out of court, Digital officials
admitting that fighting such a suit would be too costly.

It will be interesting to see the effect of this suit on other
icon and window-based products under development, including
the much-anticipated Presentation Manager that Microsoft
is developing for IBM and which is said to resemble the Macintosh
interface.  And it will also be interesting to watch the suit's
effect on Microsoft/Apple relations.  Microsoft is the largest
seller of Macintosh software titles in the world.

[***][3/22/88][***]
HEWLETT PACKARD/MICROSOFT REAX
PALO ALTO, Ca. (NB) -- Hewlett Packard has issued a statement
saying it will "oppose Apple's suit vigorously" and the real
issue behind the suit is innovation.  "We believe HP New Wave
goes well beyond 'visual display and images,' it goes to the very
essence of user interaction with computer systems and networks."
HP calls New Wave "leapfrog technology" that goes "well beyond
what's available today  from other vendors."  Inotherwords, this
could be a long one, as the major players, including Microsoft,
are vowing to fight.  Microsoft's statement says it is convinced
"the case has no merit" and denies any copyright infringement
upon the Apple product.

Observers say the court case could see testimony from Steve Jobs,
who made the original licensing agreement with Microsoft, and
may also see the issue of  the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
where many elements of the Macintosh screen display were invented.

[***][3/22/88][***]
CHIP TENSIONS RISE - ATARI GOES TO COURT AGAINST MICRON
SUNNYVALE, Ca. (NB) -- Atari has taken a supplier of DRAM chips
to court in what may be the most notorious manifestation of
tensions arising from an apparent shortage of memory chips.
Atari says Micron Technology of Boise, Idaho failed to honor a
telephone order for 3 million DRAM chips at $3.75 each and then
tried to sell the chips to Atari at a higher price.

Said Atari President Jack Tramiel, "It's a crazy situation.  First
Micron pleads with the government to impose sanctions on the
Japanese for selling low-cost DRAM chips, then they raise their
own prices to several times their cost of manufacturing the
circuits.  Micron is destroying the competitiveness of the American
microcomputer business."  Atari wants damages from Micron for
breach of contract, bad faith, and violation of antitrust laws.

Micron Technology Vice President and General Counsel Larry
Grant, contacted by NEWSBYTES, said his firm would have no
comment on the suit except to say Micron has been served with
the court papers.

[***][3/22/88][***]
CHIP SHORTAGE CAUSES PRICE HIKES, PRODUCT SHORTAGES
SAN FRANCISCO (NB) -- For the first time in the computer industry's
history, prices are going up, not down.  A survey of peripheral board
makers shows that the shortage of DRAM chips is causing prices on
graphics and memory boards to rise and if the shortage continues,
system makers are expected to be next.  Boca Research has raised prices
on its boards using DRAMS by 33%; IDEAssociates' memory modules
are 20% more expensive.   OPEN MAC of Concord, California, and
AST Research have hiked the prices of add-on memory products by
10-15%.  Others expected to raise prices shortly include Intel and
Quadram.

Everything from 64K to 1 megabit chips are up in price,
sometimes double what they were at the start of the year.
Analysts attribute the shortfall to several factors:  an increase
in demand for DRAM chips, conversion of chip-making facilities
to more powerful microprocessors, and a cutback in Japanese
DRAM exports, a direct result of the US-Japan trade agreement.

[***][3/22/88][***]
JAPANESE FIRMS ACCUSED OF  DISK DUMPING
SUNNYVALE, Ca. (NB) --  Verbatim Corporation is accusing
the Japanese of dumping 3.5" floppy disks on the US market below
cost, thereby creating unfair competition.  Verbatim claims Sony,
among others, is selling its floppies at 41 to 61% less than
fair market value.  Verbatim has filed a petition with the U.S.
government seeking action against the Japanese companies and
the first hearing on the matter is scheduled for March 21.

The charge is particularly ironic given the apparent shortage of
3.5" floppies, caused by increasing demand, in the world market.

[***][3/22/88][***]
MAC PRICE DROP 18%, PLANS BIG PROMOTION
CUPERTINO, Ca. (NB) -- A brand new Macintosh Plus is $400
cheaper now, or about $1800 retail. Apple has slashed the price of the
Macintosh Plus by 18%, saying the move now makes the the
computer "available to a larger group of computer users."  Those
targeted by the price cuts, according to Apple, are those working
at home and small businesses.  Apple plans to follow the price
cuts with a direct-mail campaign aimed at this target audience.
Some 500,000 of them will be  receiving advertisements in the
mail.

Also cut in price were these hard disks:  the HD 20SC is down
to $1,099 from $1,299, the HD 40SC is reduced from $1,999 to
$1,699, and the HD 80SC is now $2,799 compared to $3,199.

While the rest of us can now afford a Mac and hard disk, we may
be getting computers that are obsolete within six months.  That's
normally what happens when a major price reduction in a line
takes place.  The Macintosh SE is expected to eventually become
Apple's entry-level Macintosh offering.

[***][3/22/88][***]
WORDPERFECT FINALLY SHIPS
OREM, Utah (NB) -- Nearly a year past its initial projected release date,
WordPerfect has finally shipped WordPerfect Mac.  As you will recall,
WordPerfect soothed tempers at the MacWorld Expo in January by
selling $99 beta copies of the product with promises of a free
update when the final version comes out.  Takers of the $99 deal will
get their reward in the mail this week, says WordPerfect.  Those
buying the product for the first time will have to pay a whopping
$395.

The product is significant because it combines elements of a variety
of software products in a word processor.  There is a file management
function, desktop publishing features, onboard thesaurus, dictionary, and
word-search function, among other features.

[***][3/22/88][***]
SUN TO BE BIGGER THAN IBM IN 2010?
SAN FRANCISCO, Ca. (NB) -- If Sun Microsystems continues its
skyrocketing growth rate for the next 22 years, it will top IBM in
annual revenues by the year 2010.  This comes from the people at
"California Technology Stock Letter" who cite Sun Microsystem's
stellar growth rate of 35% a year compared to IBM's 11%.   "Sun
would pass them and become the first trillion dollar corporation.
Not bad for a management that would still be in their fifties,"
remarks the authors.  While it seems unlikely that Sun could
sustain this rate of growth, the potential of a unified UNIX operating
system, on which Sun is working with AT&T, presents the company
with a promising future beyond the engineering and scientific
markets where UNIX is popular today.

Meanwhile, Sun has awarded rights to manufacture its SPARC chip
to LSI Logis Corporation of Milpitas.  The RISC-based chip will now
be made by four firms.  SPARC has already been adopted as the
chip of choice by AT&T, Unisys, and Xerox, among others, for its
next generation of computers.

[***][3/22/88][***]
COUPLE ACCUSED IN ALLSTATE COMPUTER THEFTS
SAN FRANCISCO (NB) -- Allstate offices throughout California found
themselves not just reviewing claims, but filing them, as their
computer systems were suddenly discovered missing.  Authorities say
some 200 IBM systems, worth about $5,000 each, were snatched
from Allstate offices by a Mill Valley couple, Steven and
Michaela O'Brien, who virtually made a career of reselling the
systems through a middleman to such legitimate customers as a
bible college in the Midwest.  The pair was nabbed in a police sting
recently and have been convicted by a 10-person jury.   Steven O'Brien
remains on the loose after fleeing an $11,000 bail bond;  his wife
faces sentencing April 11.  The couple's infant has been taken into
protective custody.

[***][3/22/88][***]
IN BRIEF --

BORLAND INTERNATIONAL, Scotts Valley, Ca., has wrapped up its
special 90-day introductory offer for Quattro, its Lotus 1-2-3
competitor, which saw the product offered for $200.  The price
is now up to $247.50.  Borland says more than 100,000 buyers
took advantage of the special deal.

COMPUTER ASSOCIATES, San Jose, Ca., is shipping an OS/2 protected
mode version of SuperProject Expert.  Computer Associates has
consequently become one of the first software developers to begin
shipping OS/2 applications.

HEWLETT PACKARD has started to receive shipments of QMS' JetScript
controller, part of a multimillion dollar order.  The controller offers
the HP LaserJet series II printer Adobe Postscript functionality.

MICROSOFT, Redmond, Wa., is shipping MACH 20, a three-part add-in
card that upgrades 8088-based PCs to 80286-based machines, adds
16K of cache memory, a 16-bit data bus, and a mouse connector.
The price is $495.

SYMANTEC, Cupertino, Ca., has released version 1.01 of its Q&A Write
word processing software.  The product, $199, includes an enhanced
spelling checker, soft hyphenation support, and offers more font and
laser printer support.

XIDEX, Palo Alto, Ca., says it's phasing out its rigid oxide disk
business, a line which made up 20% of the firm's revenues in 1987.
Xidex is banking on the newer thin-film technology for the disks
which make up hard disk drives. The firm says the phase out will
cost between $70 and $90 million.


[***][3/22/88][***]
BELLS ARE QUIETLY ECSTATIC AFTER 2ND LOOK AT JUDGE GREENE'S ORDER
ATLANTA (NB) -- After rereading the latest order from Judge
Harold Greene, the Bell Operating Companies are quietly ecstatic.
They now have the legal power to create gateways nationwide and
store computer-generated files like NEWSBYTES. That realization
set in for real when the Federal Communications Commission agreed
March 16 to drop a planned $5.50/hour "access fee" on online
calls, payable to the Bells. Market trials of some services are
expected this year. Besides new gateways for PC owners, telephone
users can expect sophisticated "voice mail" applications to end
telephone tag, and "voice messaging" systems, in which you can
reach a lot of messages with one phone call, punching your
touchtone phone's buttons to move through menus.

[***][3/22/88][***]
MICRON TO BUILD NEW PLANT IN IDAHO AS CHIP SHORTAGE GETS WORSE
BOISE, ID (NB) -- Micron Technologies held up the state of Idaho
for some major concessions, then announced it would build a new
$90 million chip plant near its present offices instead of in
Oregon. Idaho is beefing up courses at Boise State, and promises
of labor, tax and low-cost power were made by Idaho Governor
Cecil Andrus. The plant will open in 9 months.

Meanwhile, the DRAM shortage is getting acute. The San Francisco
Examiner reported March 13 that chips which cost $2.15 per unit a
year ago now go for $5 under contract, and even more on the spot
market. The 1986 semiconductor agreement with Japan is blamed.
Micron had lobbied heavily for protection against Japanese DRAM
imports, which now hold 90% of the market, according to
Dataquest, a market research firm. Micron and Texas Instruments
are the only American players left in the Dynamic RAM (DRAM)
market. (For more on Micron -- suit by Atari -- and the DRAM
shortage, see this week's NEWSBYTES-WEST.)


[***][3/22/88][***]
MARC CANTER ACCUSED OF LETTING VIRUS ONTO ALDUS PAGEMAKER
CHICAGO (NB) -- Marc Canter of MacroMind Inc. here stands accused
of letting the dreaded "March 2 peace message virus" into commercial
copies of Aldus' Freehand drawing program.  Cantor, president of
MacroMind, created the training disks for Freehand but discovered too
late that they were infected by the notorious MACMAG virus.

Apparently, a copy of the virus got into a copy of the FreeHand training
program from MacroMind before it went to the disk duplicator. The
duplicator ran for 3 days, and half of those disks went to retail stores,
thus  spreading the virus.  Somehow the virus migrated from the
training disk to actual commercial copies of Freehand, according to
MACWEEK magazine.

The peace virus originally got into many Macs disguised as part of a
listing of new Apple products on Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs). As
viruses go, this one is pretty harmless -- it is simply set to
display a message of peace. But the potential for harm, and the
fact that it's now showing up on a major commercial product, has
people all in a tizzy.

Aldus pledges to beef up diskette security and has "taken steps to
ensure that this doesn't happen again."  (Inotherwords, from now
on, all incoming disks will be frisked.)


CONTACT: MARC CANTER, MACROMIND, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
PARALLEL PROCESSING SUCCESS AT FEDERAL LAB IN NEW MEXICO
ALBUQUERQUE, NM (NB) Scientists at the Sandia National Laboratory
in New Mexico announced a major success in parallel processing
March 13. They placed 1,024 chips in a hypercube arrangement
(cubes within cubes) and got 1,000 times the power of an
ordinary, Von Neumann architecture computer (which processes data
serially) with it. Each chip is programmed to run with the chips
in outer cubes, so the whole machine is one parallel processor.
Previous parallel processing architectures slowed down under what
was called Amdahl's Law, as the slowest step in a problem limited
overall speed. One key component of the Sandia success, which
came on the complex physics problem of calculating stresses
within a solid metal beam under a load (ordinary computers would
take 2 years to solve it), was the software used to break the
problem apart and then re-compile the results. One scientist,
John Gustafson, told the "Washington Post" that "We have achieved
results that most computer scientists thought impossible a few
years ago."

The Sandia experiment holds great promise for creating new types
of supercomputers, and will be of great interest to Supercomputer
Systems Inc., Steve Chen's Eau Claire, WI supercomputer start-up.
A final note --  today's Cray Y-MP supercomputers use 4 parallel
processors.

[***][3/22/88][***]
RUN YOUR LAPTOP OFF ORDINARY RADIO WAVES
ATLANTA (NB) -- Sonic Electric Energy Corp., based in a downtown
Atlanta office building, is now licensing a technology which
picks RF radio waves out of the air and uses them to power a
laptop computer, a portable TV, or anything you want. Sonic
President Ray Weilage told NEWSBYTES, "We'll have it out by the
end of the year," and estimates that after licensing the
technology to manufacturers, the cigarette-box sized device will
add only $20 to the cost of your PC or TV. The technology is
dimly related to NASA's work in using microwaves to power
ultralight airplanes, only at the opposite end of the radiation
spectrum. It uses the principles of a Tesla coil, and reduces
that coil to the size of a microchip. The work was done by
scientists who left Bell Labs, with help from the Atlanta
University Center, a consortium of all-black colleges.

CONTACT: Ray Weilage, SONIC ELECTRIC ENERGY, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
TI SAYS ITS NEW GALLIUM-ARSENIDE CHIP IS THE FASTEST EVER
DALLAS (NB) -- Working with Control Data under a DARPA (Star
Wars) contract through the Pentagon, Texas Instruments created a
32-bit chip made of gallium arsenide capable of running at 100
Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS), faster than most
mainframes. And the company claims it can get the chip going at
200 MIPS, faster than your average Cray, within a year. TI
combined gallium arsenide fabrication techniques with a RISC
design. RISC uses only a few of the most-used instructions in a
computer to increase speed, and the technology is at the heart of
Hewlett-Packard's Spectrum line and the Sun SPARC chip. The
report of TI's discovery came in "Business Week" magazine, and
the announcement was made in a paper at International Solid State
Circuits Conference in February. "There's no product," a TI
spokesman told NEWSBYTES. "But we believe it's the largest
microprocessor ever made with gallium arsenide, in terms of the
number of gates on it."

CONTACT: Ted Jernigan, TI [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
MERGER MANIA 1 -- TANDY BUYS GRID SYSTEMS
FT. WORTH, TX (NB) -- Tandy Corp. announced March 16 it will pay
$55 million, $2 per share, to buy Grid Systems of Fremont, CA,
one of the first makers of powerful laptop computers. Grid made
waves a few years ago with its light, but expensive, plasma-
screen portables, which for a time ran under a proprietary
operating system. Later versions ran MS-DOS. The buy gives Tandy
a respected top-line laptop -- compare it to Chrysler buying
Maserati. Tandy will buy stock on the open market to pay for
Grid. Grid PCs won't be sold through Radio Shack stores, but Grid
salesmen will sell Tandy PCs, once the deal is done, according to
Tandy Chairman John Roach.

Grid's happy, Tandy's happy. But not everyone's happy. George Morrow
the sage/entrepreneur/author who formerly competed with Grid at
Morrow Designs, was one of many commenting on the merger. "It's a
disaster for both companies.  It's like a country hick trying to
make a debutante happy." (Well, George, if the hick has $55 million
on him, what debutante can resist?)

CONTACT: Michell Ryan, TANDY, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
MERGER MANIA 2 -- NDC AGREES TO BUY-OUT BY WALL STREET SHARPY
ATLANTA (NB) -- National Data Corp. announced March 15 its board
agreed to sell the company for stock valued at $425 million in
Medco Containment Services Inc., a New Jersey firm which sells
drugs by mail through large contracts with employers. NDC, whose
main business is as a credit card authorization processor, always
wanted to be in the medical business, and lost money for years
handling pharmacies' paperwork. Last year it announced a deal to
handle hospitals' insurance paperwork. Now it will own 40% of
Medco, which is run by Martin Wygod, a Wall Street sharpie with
ties to Victor Posner of Miami. Analysts interviewed by NEWSBYTES
expect Wygod to break the company up in search of fat profits for
himself, although a Medco press release said NDC management will
stay on. Henry Bloch of H & R Block, the CompuServe owners which
held 9% of NDC common last August and were rumored to be angling
for a takeover, said he was talking to his investment banker,
Salomon Brothers. Stay tuned.

CONTACT: NDC, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
MERGER MANIA 3 -- CAPITAL LAUNCHES DRIVE FOR NBI
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO (NB) -- Capital Associates, the nation's 6th
largest computer lessor, wants to buy NBI, once a big player in
the "dedicated word processor" arena of the early 1980s, but a
money-loser for 8 straight quarters now. Capital Chairman Richard
Kazan thinks $7/share might be a nice price, but wants to look at
NBI's books before making a firm offer. Trouble is, NBI doesn't
want to let him look. So Kazan, who works out of Redondo Beach,
CA, sent a letter to NBI chairman Thomas Kavanaugh saying
cooperation with Capital's due diligence "would help to
demonstrate to your shareholders and employees that you and your
board of directors are indeed working to enhance shareholder
value." Kazan also hopes publication of the letter will rile NBI
shareholders enough to put NBI "in play" for being bought out.
We'll see.

CONTACT:  Richard Kazan, CAPITAL ASSOCIATES, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
MERGER MANIA 4 -- AT&T BUYS TRIDOM, A DATA SATELLITE MAKER
ATLANTA (NB) -- Tridom Corp., a 70-employee company which creates
satellite-based data communications networks for companies like
hotelier Days Inn and financial conglomerate Prudential-Bache,
running them from a satellite station in Marietta, GA, agreed to
sell out to AT&T March 16 for $26 million. (Announcement of the
price, by Tridom Chairman Dan Cornett, upset AT&T officials who
don't like talking about what they pay for acquisitions.) The
deal should close in 45 days, after a clearance from the Federal
Communications Commission. AT&T will sell Tridom's services as
the SKYLINK Clearlink Network.

CONTACT: Dan Cornett, TRIDOM [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
PECAN CHIPS

AMERITECH, Chicago, will debut its Central Office Information
Manager at Interface '88 in Chicago March 28. The offering can
let you run a "wireless LAN" by connecting all your computers to
Ameritech's central office switches. It's available throughout
the Midwest.

BELLSOUTH, Atlanta, sought to impose metered local service on big
business customers in Georgia, and continued to deny it got
secret data on what AT&T was bidding for two federal switch
contracts last year, despite transcripts obtained by "The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution" showing that salesman John Ross was given
the exact price of AT&T's bid before final bids were submitted
last summer. BellSouth has offered to drop the contracts, but
investigations continue.

DCA, Alpharetta, announced its "strategic partnership" with
Microsoft, specifically its OS/2 LAN Manager, as predicted by
NEWSBYTES March 14. The company also said Siemens will sell DCA'S
System 9000 T-1 speed (1.544 Megabit/second) multiplexers
overseas, in exchange for rights to Siemens packet-switch
technology.

INDIANA LEGISLATORS defeated a proposal for Local Measured
Service after computer users lobbied it heavily. Phone bills for
Illinois Bell computer owners quadrupled after measured service
was put in place there. (The phone companies claim toll charges
for local calls distribute costs more "equitably" -- equitably
for the phone companies, that is.)

INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY, Atlanta, upgraded its nitaReceptionist
voice board, with new scheduling programs and a way to tell if
you're out of the office or just on the phone.

MARIETTA SYSTEMS, Marietta, GA, announced the C-Wndw Toolkit,
with 53 functions for Borland's Turbo C and Microsoft's Quick C
to let you create programs with stacked windows, pull-down menus,
color, and cursor control, as well as other neat things. The
price is $69 in June, but you can get an early version for $9.
(Call 404-565-1560)

MOTOROLA, Schaumburg, IL, announced new versions of its System
8000 workstations, using Motorola's 68030 chip, running at up to
4.5 Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS) for up to 128 users.

NCR, Dayton, OH, launched the Series 10000, Unix-based systems
priced at $31,200 to $266,900, on March 15. The new systems will
be aimed at buyers of the NCR 9000 line, and offer better
connections to PCs, as well as more bang for the buck.

PICO PUBLISHING, Cedar Rapids, IO, released a $25 program called
Browse, which displays 43 lines of text on EGA monitors and
searches ASCII files without loading a word processor.

STORAGE TECHNOLOGY, Louisville, CO, announced the 4980 cartridge
sub-system, an OEM cartridge sub-system for moving data between
IBM mainframes and non-compatible minis, or for program back-up.
There's up to 2 gigabytes (that's 2 billion bytes) of storage per
tape.

TEXAS CLONING RUMORS have shifted from the Macintosh to the IBM
PS/2 line. Tandy and Dell are both supposedly going to offer PS/2
clones in April, according to "Infoworld." (Considering their
track record with the Mac rumors, take that with a ton or two of
salt.)

UNISYS, Detroit, announced an Intel 80386-based PC running at
16Mhz, called the PW2 850/16. The company also began selling a
Series 2200 mainframe, compatible with the old 1100s and
competitive with the IBM 9300, 4300, and 3090 lines.

[***][3/22/88][***]
AND FINALLY, SOFTWARE PRICE WAR BREAKS OUT IN ST. LOUIS
ST. LOUIS (NB) -- It had to happen. With the success of discount
chains like Egghead Software and Babbage's, it was only a matter
of time before the two chains crossed swords and a price war
broke out. The first skirmish is here in St. Louis, still
smarting over the loss of the Cardinals to Phoenix. St. Louis
computer owners can now get a copy of WordPerfect for $249 at
Egghead and $219 at Babbages, against $360 at Software to Go, a
more traditional software retailer. "Computer + Software News"
writer T.C. Doyle reported that some stores are thinking of
getting out of software sales altogether if the price wars
continue. (Certainly the customers will go elsewhere.)


[***][3/22/88][***]
CROWNTEK SELLOFF CONTINUES WITH EDI UNITS
MARKHAM, Ont. (NB) -- Crowntek Inc. has sold its electronic data
interchange (EDI) operations to two companies, one formed by
former Crowntek managers.

Newly formed Lakestone Systems Inc. of Toronto has taken over
Crowntek's software, consulting, education and training
operations related to EDI, a technology for exchanging business
documents electronically.  Gerry Diamond, formerly Crowntek's
director of corporate marketing, is president of Lakestone.  He
said five people, three of whom will be principals of Lakestone,
left Crowntek to form the new company.

Lakestone will sell EDI software developed by Metro Mark
Integrated Systems Inc. of New York, including Micro Translator
EDI software for PCs and packages for IBM's System/3x
minicomputers.  The company will also sell Translator*MVS, an EDI
package developed jointly by Crowntek and Metro Mark.

Operation of Crowntek's EDI communications services is being
taken over by Ordernet Services of Columbus, Ohio.  Ordernet, a
division of Sterling Software, already has 60 customers in
Canada.

CONTACT: LAKESTONE SYSTEMS INC., 716 Gordon Baker Rd., Suite 212
         Willowdale, Ont. M2H 3B4, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
HCR SELLS UNIX THAT RUNS DOS PROGRAMS
TORONTO (NB) -- Confused about OS/2?  Stuck with a lot of MS-DOS
applications and nightmares of obsolescence?  HCR Corp. of
Toronto believes it has a solution.  The Unix-oriented software
company is now distributing 386/ix, a full implementation of the
Unix System V operating system for 80386-based computers.  One
option with 386/ix is a module called VP/ix, which allow MS-DOS
software to run unchanged.  Michael Tilson, president of HCR,
said the system can even run multiple DOS programs, providing
multitasking just as Unix does with its own applications.

386/ix was developed by Interactive Systems of Santa Monica,
Calif., an HCR became the only Canadian distributor this month.
The price of the software ranges from C$500 for a bare-bones two-
user version up to just over C$3,000 for a system with all the
options, including compilers, a text processor, the VP/ix module
and a user-friendly interface shell, licensed for an unlimited
number of users.

CONTACT: HCR CORP., 130 Bloor St. W., 10th Floor,
         Toronto, Ont.  [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
BELL-NORTHERN UNVEILS FIVE-GIGAHERTZ GALLIUM ARSENIDE CHIP
OTTAWA (NB) -- Bell-Northern Research has announced the
development of an exploratory gallium arsenide circuit that can
handle signals at 5,000 million cycles per second (five
gigahertz).  At that speed, Bell-Northern says, the chip could
transmit the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica through its circuitry
in less than one second.

The circuit attains its speed through a BNR design involving air
bridge technology.  Air bridges form a complex network of highly
conductive metal pathways that direct data through the chip.  The
bridges, made of gold, are held above the circuit by posts to
avoid contact with its surface.

CONTACT: BELL-NORTHERN RESEARCH, P.O. Box 3511, Station C,
         Ottawa, Ont. K1Y 4H7, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
APPLE CANADA CUTS PRICES
MARKHAM, Ont. (NB) -- Apple Canada Inc. has announced price cuts
on the Macintosh Plus and three hard disk drives.  Effective
immediately, suggested retail for the Mac Plus drops from C$3,595
to C$2,995.  The Mac Plus, which despite its name is now the low
end of the Macintosh line, comes with one megabyte of RAM and one
800K disk drive as standard equipment.

Apple also cut prices on three disk drives.  The 20-megabyte HD
20SC is reduced to C$1,697; the 40-megabyte HD 40SC goes to
C$2,696; and the HD 80SC, with 80 megabytes of storage, now costs
C$4,527.  The reductions amount to between 13 and 15 per cent.

CONTACT: APPLE CANADA INC., 7495 Birchmount Rd., Markham, Ont.,
         L3R 5G2, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
DEVELCON CHAIRMAN QUITS, COMPANY ARRANGES FINANCING
SASKATOON (NB) -- Nigel T. Hill has resigned as chairman, chief
executive officer and director of Develcon Electronics Ltd., the
money-losing Saskatchewan telecommunications equipment maker.

Develcon, which has lost money in 13 consecutive quarters, also
announced it has reached "the basis for an agreement" with a
group of investors who would inject about C$8.5 million into the
firm.  Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., the potential investor,
is already a Develcon shareholder.  The communications equipment
vendor stressed that the agreement with Fairfax is subject to a
number of conditions, including governmental and regulatory
approvals.

CONTACT: DEVELCON ELECTRONICS LTD., 856 51st St. E.,
         Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 5C7, [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
OKAY CAMPERS, BOOT UP
WATERLOO, Ont. (NB) -- The University of Waterloo will run its
sixth Arts Computer Experience (ACE '88) day camp this summer.
ACE '88 is for children ages seven to 12.  It includes outdoor
and entertainment activities, as well as a chance for campers to
learn more about the creative and performing arts, and computers.
The camp uses the university's computer facilities as well as its
theatre, studio and music facilities.  Four two-week sessions are
scheduled for July and August.  Cost is $200 per session for the
first, second and fourth sessions, $185 for the third.

CONTACT: UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO, [phone], ext. 2005

[***][3/22/88][***]
BITS, EH?
-- FRANTEK COMPUTER PRODUCTS INC., Ottawa, has been acquired by
Micro D Inc. of Santa Ana, Calif.  Both companies are
distributors of microcomputer products.

-- COGNOS INC., Ottawa, has released a new version of PowerHouse
Architect, a screen-driven option for the Hewlett-Packard HP 3000
version of its PowerHouse application development system.  The
new version allows data definitions to be standardized across
multiple applications.  It also sets database capacities
automatically and identifies non-PowerHouse programs in the
program source file directory.  And the Documenter feature now
writes program descriptions in English, French or German.

-- MITEL CORP., Ottawa, is letting go 410 employees in Canada,
the U.S. and the U.K., about 200 of them in Canada.  The
communications equipment maker said it is making the move in an
effort to become more competitive.

-- NORTHERN TELECOM LTD., Mississauga, Ont., reached a tentative
settlement March 17 with 5,000 striking workers in Ontario and
New Brunswick plants.  That could mean an end soon to a strike
that began Feb. 29.



[***][3/22/88][***]
IBM JAPAN'S PRESIDENT STEPS DOWN FROM MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
TOKYO (NB) -- IBM Japan's President Takeo Shiina will give up his
post as a member of the management committee on April 1.  His
retreat from the committee was announced as part of IBM Japan's
major personnel reshuffle.  Analysts see his retreat as part of an
effort that will allow his successor to go through a smooth transition
process.  IBM top management here will consequently be joined by two other
highly-placed executives, Kakutaro Hojyo and Ken Gotou.  Kakutaro Hojyo
is considered as a strong candidate for the next president.

CONTACT: IBM Japan, 3-2-12 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106

[***][3/22/88][***]
FAMILY COMPUTER GOES EN MASSE TO U.S. & EUROPE
TOKYO (NB) -- Japan's Nintendo will double exports of its
Family Computer to the U.S. and European market soon.  Due to the
popularity of this game machine, the company is planning to ship
900,000 units of the machine per month to those overseas markets.
Meanwhile, Konami, a software maker for Family Computer, says it
will also raise the software exports by 30% to 50% this month.
Here in Japan, shipments of Family Computers have steadily been
decreasing, but the Family Computer still sells in respectable
quantities of 100,000 to 150,000 units per month.

CONTACT: Nintendo of America, Inc., 4820-150th Ave., N.E. Redmond
         WA 98052, U.S.A.

[***][3/22/88][***]
YHP RELEASES 80386 IBM-COMPATIBLE MACHINES
TOKYO (NB) -- Yokogawa-Hewlett Packard has released five types of
IBM PC/AT-compatible personal computers in the Vectra Series.  The
top model, the ES/12, has an 80386 CPU and supports 80286-based
application programs.  Also, the machine supports a Japanese
language feature.  The price is between 567,000 yen ($4,430) and
903,000 yen ($7,055), depending on the models.  All other models
support MS-DOS 3.2.  An English version of OS/2 will be released
next month.  YHP is also planning to release a Japanese version
of OS/2 for the Vectra Series which will be shipped within a year.

CONTACT: Yokogawa-Hewlett Packard, 3-29-21 Takaido-Higashi,
         Suginami-ku, Tokyo 168

[***][3/22/88][***]
32-BIT WORKSTATION FROM MATSUSHITA
TOKYO (NB) -- Matsushita Electronics will release its 32-bit
workstation as early as this fall, reports the NIKKEI newspaper.
The workstation supports Unix System V, as well as Matsushita's
new operating system called *Engine*.  The machine runs Lisp
programs almost ten times faster than current workstations.  It
can also run a wide variety of AI software.  Matsushita has
not announced which CPU will be the heart of the new machine.

Meanwhile, Matsushita will release other 32-bit business
computers, receiving supplies from Fujitsu on an OEM basis
this summer.  Currently Matsushita is selling 16-bit PCs made by
Fujitsu with Matsushita's brand name.

CONTACT: Matsushita Electronics, 1006 Oaza-Kadoma, Kadoma-shi,
         Osaka 571

[***][3/22/88][***]
SHARP'S POCKET COMPUTERS
TOKYO (NB) -- Sharp has released two types of pocket computers
small enough to fit into your palm.  The low-end model, the E200,
has a Z80 CPU and a 24x4-line built-in display.  It can be connected to
desktop computers, such as NEC PC-9801 and Sharp's PCs.  The
E500, another line of pocket computer, supports a 240x32-dot display
with graphics.  It has a 40x4-line display.  Both gadgets have ROM-
based arithmetic calculation programs.

CONTACT: Sharp, Hachiman-cho 8, Ichigaya, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162

[***][3/22/88][***]
PROTOTYPE NON-VON NEUMANN PARALLEL PROCESSOR
TOKYO (NB) -- The government affiliated association
Industrial Technology Electronics General Research Institute
has developed the Sigma 1, a prototype Non-Von Neumann parallel
processor.  1,280 separate processors can be connected with this
machine.  When some high-speed elements are added, an nearly 100 to
1000 times faster "ultra" computer will be created, the Institute said.

The early version of Sigma 1 is already being used and is connected to a
multiple number of workstations.  Currently 128 processors are
connected with telecommunication lines.  The system is designed
to automatically allocate calculations to each processor with a
data flow system.  Ordinary programs for single processor can be
used in this parallel processor.

CONTACT: The Industrial Technology Electronics General Research
         Institute, 1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken

[***][3/22/88][***]
GENERAL PURPOSE PARALLEL COMPUTER FROM FUJITSU
TOKYO (NB) -- Fujitsu Research Laboratory has developed a high-
speed parallel computer, the CAP256.  The computer displays the
process of computing on the screen.  The CAP256 is based on a
16-bit computer with a 2 megabyte memory, and has 256 processor
cells to support parallel processing.  Reportedly, the processing
speed of CAP256 is 1.5 times faster than Fujitsu's large-scale
general purpose computer, the M780/10.

CONTACT: Fujitsu Research Laboratory, 1015 Kamiodanaka,
         Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki-shi 211

[***][3/22/88][***]
AUTOMATIC LANGUAGE TRANSLATION SYSTEM FOR TELECOMMUNICATION
TOKYO (NB) -- Toshiba has developed a Japanese-English automatic
language translation system for telecommunication.  This
prototype system is called the Moji Denwa, which literally means
Letter Telephone in Japanese.  When a user types in a message,
the translated text will appear on a display of the other
party's remote terminal computer, and vice versa.  So, the users
can enjoy a computer version of "conversation" in their own
tongue (either in Japanese or English), supported by a language
translation feature.  The Moji Denwa has about 130,000 words and
it supports about 100,000 grammatical rules for translation.  It
is said the speed of translation is quite fast, compared with
current translation systems.  Currently, this system is being
polished up with the assistance of fellowship researchers who
were invited from Manchester Institute of Technology in England.
It will take some time, however, for the system is ready to come
out of the laboratory.

CONTACT: Toshiba, 1-1-1 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105

[***][3/22/88][***]
TSUKUBA NEW HIGH-TECH TOWN SETS UP PC NETWORK
TOKYO (NB) -- Tsukuba Network, a personal computer-based network
system for high-tech researchers, has just started service in
Tsukuba New High-Tech Town, Ibaraki prefecture.  The
network aims to interconnect the researchers of the ministries
and laboratories in this high-tech town.  The users will exchange
information on various advanced high-tech products and
technologies, including superconductivity and neuro-computers.
So, the network will function as a "brain center" in Japan.

[***][3/22/88][***]
<<< SUSHI BYTES >>>

SPACE QUEST FOR PC-9801 -- ETC, Tokyo, is preparing to release
NEC PC-9801-version of Space Quest this summer.  ETC has been a
Japanese distributor of Sierra Online (U.S.A.), an original
developer of this latest adventure game.

SONY AND TI JAPAN JOINTLY DEVELOPED LSI -- Sony and Texas
Instruments Japan have jointly developed and released a powerful
digital filter LSI for digital audio equipment.  That's part of
their effort to reduce the U.S.-Japan semiconductor trade
friction.  The LSI can be used for several high-quality digital
audio machines, including a CD player, a digital audio tape
recorder, and a visual laser disc player.

EPSON WILL DOUBLE SALES OF NEC-COMPATIBLE PCs -- Seiko-Epson has
set a fiscal 1988 sales target of its NEC-compatible PCs to
150,000 units.  That's 2.5 times more than the previous term.
Epson is just about ready to go full swing into production of the
PCs due to the completion of the new LCD production line.

CONFORM TO SELL KOREAN PC -- Tokyo-based trading firm Conform has
signed an agreement with Korea's Daewoo Electronics, concerning
sales of Daewoo's PC/AT-compatible PC, the PRO-3000, in Japan.
Daewoo has already sold over 100,000 units of IBM-compatible
computers in the U.S.

LOGO EDUCATION LABORATORY IN JAPAN -- Professor Simor Pappart of
Massachusettes Institute of Technology told the press that he
will create Logo Eduction Laboratory in Tokyo this summer.  The
laboratory aims to raise the popularity of this turtle graphic
software through various seminars and lectures in Japan.  A
Japanese language version of Logo program was just released from
Logo Japan.

TOYOTA MOTOR BUYS CRAY -- Toyota Motor, a major car maker, will
purchase a $8-million Cray X-MP/18 supercomputer from Cray
Research in the U.S.  That's the second supercomputer for this
car maker.

LARGEST CORPORATE E-MAIL SYSTEM -- Canon has developed Japan's
largest corporate e-mail system based on the MHS international
standard.  With this mailing system, Canon expects to save $2.7
million on communication fees annually.  The company is planning
to sell the system to other companies later.

IBM JAPAN AT EXPO -- IBM Japan is participating in Saitama Expo
'88 in Kumagaya, Saitama pref. through May 29.  IBM Japan has set
up an audio visual theater, surrounded with nine multiple
screens.  The visitors can also enjoy playing games with Japanese
IBM PS/55 computers.







[***][3/16/88][***]
********************************************************

    Hanover Fair report, Day One, March 16th, 1988

********************************************************

    Prepared by Peter Vekinis, IP2006, NEWSBYTES-EUROPE


NORTH STAR ANNOUNCES "POWER NETWORKING ARCHITECTURE"
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- North Star, the company that
has outlived most of the original personal computer
companies, introduced something it's calling the  Power
Networking Architecture (PNA) which is said to improve the
speed and capabilities of networks. PNA, based on each user
having a dedicated card connecting him, offers wideband
capabilities and high speed. The cards, which can also be
arranged in a stack format (i.e. each one can be put in a
special box and the box connected to the system) offers
theoretically unlimited workstation connections.

North Star also announced the 3D desktop computer which
includes a CPU card that plugs into a passive backplane,
and can be either a 286 12MHz or a 16MHz 386-based CPU. The 3D
can be either a server or a powerful workstation which,
when used with graphics cards, offers high performance at
low cost.


CORDATA OFFERS IBM PS/2 MODEL 25 REPLACEMENT
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Cordata has been trying to
cash in on the market for IBM clone products and may finally
have a hit on its hands.  Introduced at Hanover Fair, the
CS40 is a one-housing, two floppy disk IBM replacement which offers
faster operation and 5.25 inch floppy disks. The CS40,
which offers 512K standard,with MDA, CGA and AT&T 6300
graphics support, retails for US$1095 and will be
available from May 1988. The CS41, offers similar specs
but the graphics offers Hercules and the main memory
increases to 640K and costs about $1200.

In addiion, the company also announed the CS45, which
offers CGA, AT&T and Hercules graphics cards and will
also retail for about $1300.


PHOENIX JUMPS THE GUN; SHOWS BIOS AT WORK
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Phoenix showed a PS/2 model
60 running the new BIOS as released by the company for
those that need BIOS for PS/2 clones. Yeah, but wait a
minute. There are currently no PS/2 clones! "We have
signed more than 20 companies which have said they will be
doing work in that area," said a company spokesman.
The BIOS runs without any problems, and as far as the
company is concerned, it will give a boost to IBM's MCA
architecture, now going head-to-head with AST's new
channel for the 386 system. "Just wait and see what will
happen at spring Comdex," he said. I can't wait!



GERMAN SUPREME COURT ANNOUNCES SOFTWARE COPYING LEGAL
HANOVER FAIR (NB) -- In an unprecedented decision, the
German Supreme Court announced that software copying is
legal and there is nothing companies can do to change
that. Herr Riessenhooper, the judge whose decision has now
become  famous, said that "there is no bearing on the
intellectual property of the owner of software after
sales. Since a person actually purchases the software, he
should be able to do what he wants with it, sort of
becoming a company and selling the product."

The decision, which stirs up the old copy protection
controversy, was taken seriously by companies which have
removed copy protection from their products.

In a related story, it was also announced that shink wrap
licenses are illegal and cannot be used in West Germany --
all in all, rather risky decisions whose effects will be
seen in the months ahead.



IBM ACCEPTS OS/2 BUG - PROMISES WILL LOOK INTO IT
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- "We believe that the OS/2
operating system has some bugs and that it will only run on
real IBM-only hardware," said Ernst Schneider, IBM's
product manager for the OS/2 product here. NEWSBYTES asked him
whether he knew about the fact that when installing OS/2 on
a Seagate ST-4096 or on a Maxtor 1085 hard disk, OS/2
hangs the system upon loading. He said he did not know and
he was going to look into it. Thus the moral of this story
is if someone says that such and such an 80MB system can run
OS/2, check it out first!


48 PIN PRINTER ANNOUNCED BY EPSON - BETTER THAN LASER QUALITY
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Epson took advantage and
introduced the new 48 pin matrix printer at the Fair here
today. Able to print at a speed of 300 cps in draft mode
and 100 cps in letter quality mode. What's more, it offers a
resolution of 360 x 360 pixels which is 50,000 more dots
per square inch than a laser printer! The quality is so
great that when comparing a normal laser output you start
to see "jaggies" which go away with the Epson.

The printer comes with Roman, Prestige, Script, Courier,
OCR-A, OCR-B, Orator and Super Focus fonts and is fully
compatible with the LQ-series (it will be called LQ4800),
the printer will be available from Q3 1988.



COMMODORE ANNOUNCES AMIGA 2500 WORKSTATION
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Commodore, as previously
reported in NEWSBYTES, announced the Amiga 2500 which
uses a 68020 chip at 20MHz and offers a graphics screen
with resolution of 1008 x 1024 pixels putting its
performance up there with dedicated workstations. In addition,
the company also announced a transputer-based system
(although Atari announced a transputer project previously,
Commodore said, "Atari probably had the technology from
before since this product has been in development for
quite a few years at Commodore").

In addition, the AT plug-in board was shown working under
DOS and running Lotus's 1-2-3 to display the compatibility
performance.

Finally, Commodore announced that in the last six months
of 1987, the company shipped 250,000 systems in the German
market with 190,000 low cost systems and 60,000 PCs and
Amiga 2000 professional systems. In the European market,
the company has sold over 540,000 systems representing
revenues of about $370 million.

As far as the transputer system is concerned, Commodore
did not release much information except to say
that the system has been used at a biotechnology
center used to study molecular structures of tissues.


SCHNEIDER ANOUNCES A NEW RANGE OF PRODUCTS
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Schneider, the company that
used to sell Amstrad systems has certainly revamped its
range of products. It announced no less than 6 new
products ranging from the small PC to a 24 pin printer
with the Epson-like name of LQ-3500.

The Euro-PC is the smallest and the entry-level system and
includes an 8088 CPU that can operate at either 4.77MHz or
at 9.54MHz. It contains 512KB of RAM, CGA and Hercules
graphic modes, 1 3.5 inch floppy disk and an 86 key
keyboard. The system, which can also connect a 20MB hard
disk, will retail for less than DM2000 (about $1000) and
looks like an Atari ST.

The Tower PC offers a 286 running at 10MHz and has 512KB of
RAM standard. Hercules, CGA and 1 floppy of 3.5 inch or a
floppy and a 20MB hard disk are standard. Shipped with DOS
3.3 and Microsoft Works it will retail for less that DM4000
(less than $2000).

The 2640 is the AT-compatible system which has already
been announced. Finally, as far as systems are concerned,
the TargetPC - the laptop of the Schneider family - offers a
286 at 8MHz,640KB of RAM, a 3.5 inch floppy and a 20MB hard
disk which, costing much lower than the T3100, will
certainly sell by the thousands.

Other announcements include the Personal FAX and the LQ3500
matrix 24 pin printer that offers 160cps draft print and
60cps letter quality.

[***][3/17/88][***]
************************************************

 Hanover Fair Special Report, March 17, 1988

************************************************
   Reported by Peter Vekinis, IP2006, NEWSBYTES-EUROPE


IBM TO ANNOUNCE PRODUCTS DURING AN APRIL 5TH PRESS CONFERENCE
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- IBM has set April 5th as
the day when the company is going to announce the
follow-on product to the PS/2 series. "IBM has made the
decision to reposition its product lines once a year and
to introduce products that will fill in gaps currently in
the PS/2 series," said Michel Dermont, IBM's product
manager for Belgium. In addition, the company is expected
to announce new 9370 series systems.

When one looks at the current PS/2 lineup, there are gaps
in the numbering. There is currently no PS/2 model 40, no
model 70 and no models 20 and 10. Conjecture has it that IBM will
introduce new systems which will fill in these gaps. The
products expected are as follows:

 - PS/2 model 50: Gets a fast 40MB hard disk and is also
available in a diskless version as a LAN server.

 - PS/2 model 40: Supposed to be a laptop, but it may be
delayed.

 - PS/2 model 70: The portable based on a 386 chip with
1MB of RAM, serial and parallel ports, 20MB and a 3.5 inch
floppy and screens which can be either LCD or plasma, as has the
Toshiba T3100.

Whether these products are announced remains to be seen, but
sources close to IBM told NEWSBYTES, "It is expected that
the PS/2 model 70 will cause a few shivers at Compaq's back
and may return this lucrative market back to IBM from Compaq."


IBM ANNOUNCES AIX FUTURE POLICY
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- During what was called a major
press announcement, IBM introduced the future policy for
the AIX product. IBM said that the AIX system will become
the main vehicle for future product integration and will
be used across various systems. IBM intends to replace the
Banyon network with a new software package, not yet named,
which will perform system independent, local area
networking.

In a related story, Microsoft has finally signed
a company to do the communications part of OS/2. DCA of
Georgia, will do the communications part of OS/2 joining
Ashton Tate which will do the database manager and 3Com
which is doing the LAN manager.


GENOA ANNOUNCES SUPER HIGH RESOLUTION VGA CARD AND MOTHERBOARD
HANNOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Genoa, the high flyer of
the graphics world, announced two new products at the Fair
that are designed to offer better and faster graphics
resolution. The SuperVGA 5200B card offers 1024 by 768
resolution at 16 colors and 512 by 512 with 256 colors --
performance similar to high end graphics products. The
SuperVga 5100 is lower-market 5200B.

The company is also entering the motherboard business
with a product that offers 16MHz 286 operation, Chips &
Technologies chip set, and a full EGA, Genoa-compatible
graphics card which can display images at 800 by 600
resolution. The board also offers a parallel port and two
serial ports.

Both cards are expected to sell from the summer with the
motherboard having a distributor price of about $1000.


BRUCE BIERMAN'S FEEL BETTER CALL
HANNOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Bruce Bierman, President of
Intellisoft, the company that is selling the successful
Bookmark product soon to be joined by Bookmark 286 and
Bookmark 386, told me the story of someone calling him one
night for support. "Is this Intellisoft?" asked the caller.
"Yes, Bruce Bierman speaking," he replied. "I have a
question and I am calling from the president's office,"
said the caller with a rather distressed voice. "Sorry,
what president do you mean," said Bierman, thinking it was
the president of the University of California. "The office
of the president of the United States, who else,
Gorbachev?" said the caller. Bierman fell from
his chair and when he was told that the White House uses
Bookmark in every IBM AT it owns, he got back on the
chair and breathed a sigh of relief.

He felt so much better that the next day he decided to take
Meridian Software to court on charges of illegal copying
of Bookmark. Bierman charges that Dejavu, Meridian's
similar product, uses 100 lines that are vital to the
software and have been copyrighted by Intellisoft. He expects to
win. "After being told that Bookmark is used in the White
House, I feel confident about winning the case", he said.


TANDON ANNOUNCES SUPER-FAST 286 SYSTEM
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Tandon announced a new 286
12MHz system that includes a 1.2MB floppy, a 112MB hard
disk and EGA card. The system, which includes the
innovative Tandon Memory Mapper and an asynchronous bus, is
designed to increase the market share Tandon already holds.

Chuck Peddle, the founder of Victor, now president of
Tandon, said, "The new system is designed to be used as
the main vehicle for server applications in the near
future. On top of that, we also offer the removable Data
Pacs and we also use 1MB RAM chips, one of the highest
capacities used in the industry at present which increase
the memory to 5MB." The Memory Mapper is used by the
system to increase the amount of usable memory under DOS
to more than 640K.

"The asynchronous bus permits users with slow cards to use
them in their system with no, or very little degradation,"
he said, echoing a problem that occurs with many fast
systems currently in the market.

Finally, the company announced that it will be designing
and launching this year, adapter cards which can connect
the Data Paks to Amigas, Macs, and other different systems.




[***][3/22/88][***]
NEW PS/2 CLONES ANNOUNCED BY JAPANESE COMPANY ** EXCLUSIVE **
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- A Taiwanese computer manufacturer stole
the show at Hanover Fair by introducing the first PS/2 compatible
system. TwYnhead corporation announced the Superset-30, Supserset-30
Plus, Superset-50, and the Superset-80 systems.

The Superset-30 and the 30-Plus are clones of the PS/2 model 30 and
offers an 8086 and offer MDA, CGA and Hercules graphics built-in (the
model 30) and VGA graphics for the model 30-Plus. The model 50 uses a
286 CHIP running at 12MHz or 16MHz (using the AMD chip - and faster than
the model 50 of IBM which runs at 10MHz) and the model 80 uses the 16Mhz
or 20MHz 386 chip. It also supports both the 80287 and the 80387
coprocessor chips and can have as much as 16MB of zero-wait state
memory. It will be interesting to see what IBM will do about these systems
and whether they have been cloned far too close for IBM's liking. Stay
tuned for more developments out of Taiwan.

[***][3/22/88][***]
UNIX TO BE AVAILABLE ON AMD'S 29000
PARIS, FRANCE (NB) -- UNIX, the popular operating systems which seems to
be stealing the limelight from evergreen DOS in some quarters has been
scheduled to make its appearance on the Advanced Micro Devices 29000
microprocessor. The port of UNIX will be done by UNISOFT, a company with
research facilities in Emeryville, CA, Boston, MA and London, UK which
has had extensive experience with UNIX.

The port will be of the UNIX V, release 3, which is the latest version
available today by AT&T. Donal O'Shea, Unisoft's CEO said that "this
agreement is favorable for both companies. We believe that the AMD 29000
is an amazing chip and are glad it is us who will do the port and not
anyone else."

The agreement not only covers UNIX as such, but also B-NET, a local area
network program and the X-Windows graphics package which offers UNIX
capabilities normally found under Microsoft Windows or GEM.

[***][3/22/88][***]
GERMAN COMPANY ANNOUNCES 110MHz GRAPHICS SYSTEM FOR AT/PS/2
AACHEN, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- ELSA, a German developer of high
performance graphics systems, announced the availability of very fast
graphics controllers based on the Hitachi 63484 video controller chip.
The range of products starts with the XHR Orion which offers 64MHz pixel
rate and 1024 by 7687 by 16 colors and ends with the XXHR 110 which
offers 110MHz operation and 1024 by 1024 by 256 colors.

The XXHR is one of the first boards in the short format so that it can
be used in an XT which offers 1.3MB of fast, dual-ported video RAM and
256 colors supplied from an internal converter chip, which is also used
in the Macintosh II. Prices of the boards range from DM 2400 (about US$
1400) to DM 7000 (about $3800).

[***][3/22/88][***]
IBM NOTES FROM AROUND EUROPE...


 - Italian IBM subsidiary which is responsible for the production
of system 36s, rolled out its 100,000th system making it one of the most
successful minicomputers in the market today. The roll-out was performed
with Valentino, the famous Italian clothes designer, uses the System/36
for internal purposes.

 - IBM Europe announced new architecture for large systems. In fact
the company announced ESA/370 which is to become the architecture of the
future for the 3090 and the 4381 mainframe computers. ESA/370 offers
amongst other things, 2 GB (that is gigabyte) memory, high speed
channel operations and support for IBM's new Systems Applications
Architecture (SAA) which is also the basis of the Presentation Manager
due to be installed under OS/2.

 - A new system to be used by automatic bank teller machines
(which are all over the place in Belgium), the 4737 was announced.  It
offers a color screen which can be connected to a PS/2 model 30 or 50.
The system comes with a full keyboard as well as with a special numeric
keypad used to enter the private PIN codes in the system.

 - IBM Europe has released a new version of the CADAM Personal
Computer aided design system. CADAM CAD, release 21 includes 3D-
structure and 3D-piping possibilities, designed to be used by
engineering and structural analysis users.

 - IBM also announced the availability of Personal Publishing for
models 50, 60 and 80 of the PS/2 series of PCs. The DTP is used in
conjunction with a Postscript-compatible program which translates printer
sequences for Postscript printers. A complete system, which includes a
model 60, a laser printer, and appropriate software, costs around DM24000
(or about $14000).

 - Round-up of Hanover IBM developments - IBM announced that during
a press conference to be held in New York and in Paris on May 5th, the
company is to announce new PS/2 systems as well as new products.
Systems that will be introduced, according to close IBM sources,
include a new PS/2 model 70, a new PS/2 model 40 and a revamped model
50. The new PS/2 model 70 will be a laptop system with a 386 and
various screens. The PS/2 model 50 will get a faster 40MB hard disk
which will also become standard on the model 60. A new model 50 will
also be sold as a diskless LAN workstation.

[***][3/22/88][***]
POSITRONICA STARTS SHIPMENT OF ETHERNET MAC II CONTROLLER
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (NB) -- Positronica, the 3Com Belgian distributor,
announced that shipment of the Etherlink/NB board has started. This
board permits an Apple Macintosh II to be connected to a local area
network composed of Ethernet capabilities. The board uses the Mac II's
expansion bus and uses a 16KB packet buffer. The Nubus allows 32 bit
transfers at high speeds.

In a related story, the company announced that the Macintosh SE and the
II models will also be able to run the 3Com 3+ local area network
manager.  This will enable these systems to be connected in a network
composed of of IBM PCs and other normally incompatible systems.

[***][3/22/88][***]
TOSHIBA ANNOUNCES OS/2 SUPPORT FOR ITS SYSTEMS
NEUSS, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- Toshiba announced that it will be offering
the OS/2 operating system on its 286 and 386 based systems, which include
the T3100/20, the T3200, and the T5100. The OS will include both the
release 1.0 -- currently available -- and 1.1, which is the Presentation
Manager. "New possibilities envisioned by OS/2 will make the Toshiba
range of laptops and our other systems more user friendly than currently
available," said Atsutoshi Nishida, Toshiba's European vice president.

[***][3/22/88][***]
FINNISH COMPANY OFFERS MAGNIFICENT FLAT PANEL DISPLAYS
HELSINKI, FINLAND (NB) -- Lohja Corporation has been a secret success in
European computer circles since the company started shipping electro-
luminescent displays for PCs. The company offers three main models, the
MD640.200, the MD640.400 and the MD512.256, which offer resolutions of
640 by 200, 640 by 400 and 512 by 256 pixels. The screen contents are
displayed in bright yellow, making it one of the easiest to read screens
in the market today. The displays use a "Atomic Layer Epitaxy" process
which has been developed by the company. It is rumoured that the new
laptops now coming on the market may use this display, which only draws
15W of power.

[***][3/22/88][***]
HEARD SOMETHING SIMILAR AT YOUR USED-CAR DEALER?
HANOVER, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- "This board runs at 16Mhz," said the
beautiful Oriental lady, clad in a rather tight dress. "We make
millions of this board and everyone uses it," she continued. I took a
look at the board and I could find nowhere a 32MHz crystal, or oscillator
which would provide the 16Mhz. "I am sorry but how can this board runs at
16MHz if the crystal says 24 Mhz," I said. "What you say?" she said with
a really innocent look about her. "Where is the crystal?" she asked. At
that point I knew I was talking to a computer 'expert.' "This little
silver thing over here," I said pointing to the general direction where
the crystal lay on the board. "Oh, but I don't know. I was told to tell
people that it runs at 16Mhz," she said, again with those innocent eyes
one gets to find on kittens. "But where does it say, that this thing
runs at 16Mhz?" I asked again. "Well, you see on the screen, there it
says, it runs at 16Mhz," she said triumphantly, giving a sigh for the
obvious reason that she got out of a real tough situation. "Yes, but
that is the landmark rating," I said. "It says nothing about the speed
of the real system," I added and suddenly it dawned on me that almost
everyone I saw had the Landmark program running on their system telling
everybody that their "landmark" speed was like 16MHz.

It seems that the old Norton rating just did not give good results
(good in this, meaning best) and thus the landmark is used for the
purpose now. Who knows, in the future, we may have the Widget test that
says that the original PC had a 'real' speed of 24Mhz, instead the old-
meaning-real of 4.77 Mhz!!

[***][3/22/88][***]
COMMODORE PC-20 STILL NUMBER 1 ACCORDING TO CHIP MAGAZINE
MUNICH, WEST GERMANY (NB) -- The Commodore PC-20 heads the list for the
second month in a row, of personal computers followed by the IBM PS/2
model 60, the Mac II, the Mac SE, the PS/2 model 30, the Commodore PC-
40, the Tandon PCA, the Apple IIgs, The Tandon XPC and the Deskpro 286.

As far as home computers are concerned, the Commodore 64 has returned to
the number one slot after being pushed out of it by the Amiga 500,
followed by the Amiga 500, the Commodore 128D, the Schneider CPC464 and
the Schneider 6128.

In the semi-professional market, the Atari 1040 ST remains number 1 for
the 6th month in a row, followed by the Atari 520STM, the Commodore
Amiga 2000, the Atari Mega ST and the Schneider PC1512.

[***][3/22/88][***]
WRAP UP OF HANNOVER 1988...

        Well it was tiring. Walking, what seemed like miles of corridors
and display booths, asking the same questions ("Hi there. Anything new
on display this year or thereabouts), I wondered whether my job could
be done by someone else, or a machine perhaps. It is just as good there
is a shuttle service for the press around the fairgrounds every time,
which just makes my job a little better. I think I managed to see as
much as I could, but I missed again the Munchner halle, that huge
bar with a seating capacity of 7500 people. I missed the show, given
every year since 1981, of the Japanese CEO who gets up on the
bandstand and does a Japanese Samurai dance; or the Canadian director of
marketing,  he also gets up and also does a dance in the midst of fits,
screams and beer-mat throwing amongst the patrons.  Yes, even in the
computer industry, people change after a few drinks.

A few drinks? The beer comes by those hefty German waitresses in quart
sized glasses, which in combination with a shnaps drink (which when the
small glass containing the shnaps is physically thrown into the beer
glass and as it reaches bottom makes what is called, a submarine) is
enough to put people out of action for a while. It is for this reason
why there are enough people on the booth the first day at 9am and why
they all show up at 10am for the following days!

The show was again big, in area and in people. More than 400,000
expected and everyone wondering where the great stuff is. "Nothing was
shown" said a colleague expecting to find the machines out in the open.
"They are out of view, as every year," I said to him, and I continued
"and the only way you can get to see them is to know how to ask." I
managed to see the ACERaPS/2 compatibles, the upcoming Japanese A3
laser printer, the upcoming new laptop, and a few other odds and ends.

Some manufacturers were keen to offer reliable products. I asked
Genoa's Larry Lien about his choice of Harris for his 16MHz 286 chip,
instead of the AMD part and he said, "We feel that Harris has a better
product. We believe that the AMD part has some faults in it." I have an
AMD part and it runs fine. The 256K RAM shortage caused a lot of
companies (except IBM and Commodore - they make their own chips) to
offer boards without RAM chips. When I told a lady representing another
computer manufacturer that I have 60ns RAM chips (courtesy of NMB), she
wanted to buy them at $20 dollars each. I was, however, not moved! I am a
firm believer that the computer market can be another black market as
soon as the essential commodities go missing!



[***][3/22/88][***]
FCC BLINKS, WILL DROP ACCESS CHARGE PROPOSAL
WASHINGTON (NB) -- Facing strong, organized opposition from
computer users and sniping in Congress, the Federal
Communications Commission will drop proposed access charges for
commercial computer bulletin boards and news services. Staff from
FCC Chairman Dennis Patrick let staff who work for Rep. Edward
Markey (D-Mass.) of Patrick's decision to scrap the proposal.
Markey, chairman of a key telecommunications subcommittee, had
vowed to pass legislation to overturn the fees if the FCC moved
forward.

The FCC decision is a win for the hundreds of thousands of
computer users who used their telecommunications capability to
organize themselves and oppose the FCC plan. "There is no doubt
about it, the users were a key to making this happen," a Markey
subcommittee aide told NEWSBYTES. "They deluged the FCC with
comments opposed to the rule, like nothing the agency has ever
seen before." Markey plans to keep watching the FCC to make sure
they organization doesn't try to resurrect the plan, which could
have cost users of services such as The Source $4.50 per month in
extra charges.

[***][3/22/88][***]
IBM OWNS THE FLOPPY, TOO, SAYS JUDGE
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (NB) -- A federal judge has ruled in favor of
International Business Machines in a patent dispute over the
lowly floppy disk. The judge concluded that Nashua Corp. had
infringed on IBM patents for more than six years and ordered the
New Hampshire office equipment company to pay Big Blue royalties
estimated at several millions of dollars. Nashua officials say
the disks in question account for only about 5 percent of
Nashua's sales, which totaled $865 million last year.

Big Blue won its floppy patent in 1972 (Patent No. 3,668,658),
but the company has never made money from licenses or royalties.
Dataquest Inc. estimates that floppy disk sales in 1988 will
total $1.9 billion, as users around the world buy 1.7 disks.
Nashua is a little fish in this market, which is dominated by
whales such as 3M, Eastman Kodak, and Hitachi.


[***][3/22/88][***]
LOTUS SHIPS NEW METRO WITH SWAPPER
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (NB) -- Lotus Development Corp. has begun
shipping Release 1.1 of its Metro memory resident desktop
management software. The key development of the new version is
Swapper, a memory management tool that allows Metro to use as
little as 64K bytes of RAM, while giving access to 320K of Metro
utilities. Retail price is $85, with version 1.0 users on the
upgrade path for $35. The swapper approach is similar to the way
that Borland is handling its new Sidekick Plus. Swapping allows
larger desktop accessories, with better features, but at a cost
of some speed.

Also on the Lotus front, the company has entered into a joint
marketing agreement with Computer Asset Management of Salt Lake
City. It gives investors access to end-of-day stock quotes from
the major exchanges and works with the Lotus FM sideband network.

[***][3/22/88][***]
AT&T TRIES AGAIN WITH PC CLONES
NEW YORK (NB) -- AT&T has launched a new, small-footprint, PC
clone, called the AT&T 6300 WorkGroup System. Prices range from
$1,411 for a single-floppy model to $2,091 for a single floppy
and 20 MB hard drive. AT&T says the new model needs only 70
percent of the desk space of previous entrants in the 6300 line.
The new 6300 uses an Intel 8086 CPU running at 10 megaHertz,
which should make it a fairly speedy performer at the low scale
of PCs. It also features seven expansion slots. No indications of
whether AT&T intends for the new 6300 to be a Unix workstation,
although that may make some sense for the company.

In other news at AT&T, Gordon Bridge, 45, formerly with IBM, will
be the new head AT&T's computer sales force. He reports to
Vittorio Cassoni, head of AT&T's struggling data systems group.
Bridge was selected after what the WALL STREET JOURNAL describes
as "an arduous five-month search." Bridge is known as a risk
taker. Given AT&T's history in computer sales, some might refer
to Bridge's job as "mission impossible."

[***][3/22/88][***]
INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER PIRATES STOLE $4.1 BILLION, SAYS AGENCY
WASHINGTON (NB) -- Blackbeard never had it so good. The
International Trade Commission, a U.S. government agency that
polices trade disputes, says overseas hardware and software
pirates ripped off U.S. companies to the tune of $4.1 billion in
1986. Who are the chief offenders? Brazil, India, Japan, Mexico,
South Korea, and Taiwan. Taiwanese pirates hauled in $530 million
on computer booty, according to the ITC, while the boys from
Brazil walked off with $528 million. A 1984 study of 10 countries
by the International Intellectual Property Alliance found
software piracy losses of $130 million per year. The new ITC
report is titled, "Foreign Protection of Intellectual Property
Rights and the Effect on US Industry and Trade."

CONTACT: International Trade Commission, 202-523-0161.

[***][3/22/88][***]
SPA OFFERS BOUNTY FOR PIRATE BOARDS
WASHINGTON (NB) -- Avast, matey! Another dispatch from pirate-
infested waters. Software Publishers Association will pay a $50
bounty for information about pirate bulletin boards offering
commercial software. SPA wants the name, address, and telephone
numbers of the sysop; a printout of the commercial software the
board is offering; and logon information including passwords,
and the date. The first informant to blow the whistle on the
board get the bounty. Put it in writing. SPA says informants'
identities will be protected. "We are looking for real pirate
boards here," SPA Executive Director Ken Wasch told NEWSBYTES.
"We're not after some board that has 8,000 public domain programs
and one commercial program accidentally got slipped in." The
current offer runs through June 1. A similar bounty program last
spring closed down 30 boards and resulted in $3,000 in bounties
(SPA was offering $100 then).

CONTACT: Software Publisher Association, 1101 Connecticut Avenue
NW, Suite 901, Washington DC, 20036, 202-452-1600.

[***][3/22/88][***]
KODAK GOES FOR UNIX
ROCHESTER, N.Y, (NB) -- Eastman Kodak Co. has acquired a major
supplier of Unix software and services, Interactive Systems Corp.
of Santa Monica. Interactive will report to Kodak's new software
systems division and will make the photo giant a major player in
the burgeoning Unix market. Interactive offers Unix services to
major computer suppliers and sells an integrated family of
systems software. The company has offices in Boston, New York
City, Boulder, Dallas, and Washington, D.C., and international
headquarters in Toronto.

[***][3/22/88][***]
IBM TO SPEAK UNIX AT HIGH END
RYE BROOK, N.Y. (NB) -- IBM appears to be going for Unix whole
hog. The computer giant has announced that AIX, it's special
flavor of Unix, will now work on the company's most powerful
computers. With the introduction of AIX/370, IBM now has a
consistent, Unix-based operating system across all its products.
That goes a long way toward toppling the Tower of Babel in
operating systems that has given companies such as Digital
Equipment Corp. a marketing edge in recent years. Big Blue says
its VM operating system will support AIX/370 across the
System/370 processor families from the 9370 to the 3090.

Also from IBM, scientists at the Yorktown Heights research
facility have successfully made circuits using the tiny but
powerful transistors the company announced recently. The circuits
have a 13-picosecond (a picosecond is a trillionth of a second)
switching time, doubling previous records. Don't look for these
in your PS/2 any time soon -- the circuits require cooling with
liquid nitrogen.

[***][3/22/88][***]
GCA TO MERGE WITH GENERAL SIGNAL CORP.
ANDOVER, Mass. (NB) -- Troubled GCA Corp., manufacturer of
semiconductor equipment, has found a friendly buy-out partner in
General Signal Corp. GCA will operate as a subsidiary of General
Signal, with the transaction to be accomplished through a stock
swap. GCA went into a tailspin when the computer market hit the
skids in 1986, and never fully recovered. Lately, however, the
company's performance improved, making it a logical candidate for
a takeover, according to Wall Street analysts.

[***][3/22/88][***]
NEWS NIBBLES FROM AROUND THE REGION

GOLD HILL COMPUTERS of Cambridge, Mass., has hired Robert Lamkin
as vice president of sales and customer service. Lamkin was vice
president of sales at Symbolics. Gold Hill is an artificial
intelligence company making products for PCs.

Demand for AI experts has doubled since 1984 and will remain
robust over the next five years, according to HALBRECHT
ASSOCIATES, a Stamford, Conn., executive search firm.

AGFA-GEVAERT of Ridgefield Park, N.J., plans to buy out the 17
percent of Compugraphic Corp. currently in public hands. Agfa
already owns 83 percent of the printing and typesetting equipment
manufacturer.

UNISYS CORP. of Blue Bell, Pa., has launched a news series of
midrange computers, priced at $180,000 to $950,000. The new 2200
line is said to be four times more powerful than the 1100 series
they are designed to replace. Unisys has had great success
selling the 1100 models to government agencies.

DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORP. of Maynard, Mass., has won a $100 million
contract by the Veterans Administration for a decentralized
health-care system. Digital is also the largest subcontractor in
the $1 billion DOD health care system awarded earlier in March to
Science Applications International. Digital's share of that plum
is estimated at $400 million.

PRIME COMPUTER of Natick, Mass., has named Horst von Berg vice
president of international sales at recently-acquired
Computervision. Von Berg joined Computervision in 1981.

CENTRONICS CORP. of Nashua, N.H., says its chairman, Thomas Kamp,
has resigned voluntarily. The former printer company sold its
printer business a year ago and recently acquired Ekco
Housewares, which makes kitchen tools and gadgets.

James Frank Benton, executive director of the COMPUTER DEALERS
AND LESSORS ASSOCIATION in Washington, is dead of cardiac arrest.
He was 57.




[***][3/8/88][***]
An interview with Frank Iveson, Vice President of Marketing,
DIGITAL RESEARCH Inc., Monterey, California.

Monterey, California, March 8th, 1988, Conducted by Peter Vekinis for
   NEWSBYTES


ED:  Frank Iveson has been with Digital Research Inc, for the last
five years. He is responsible for the worldwide marketing of the
company's products. He was the Managing Director of Digital Research
United Kingdom and previous to that, he was with Tektronix.

How is Digital Research doing today?.

Well DRI is doing great! In 1984 everyone thought that the company
would not last but we have managed to turn this around and we are
profitable for 1987. What's more we are growing and also paying
back a loan we got during the difficult years we have had.

Do you personally regret the fact that IBM chose Microsoft for
their operating system instead of DRI?

First of all, IBM did not choose Microsoft because of price as a
lot of people have been saying. IBM went to Microsoft because they
wanted to have an operating system that was not compatible and which
would force people to re-write software. This way they would have
created an "IBM standard."  As far as DRI is concerned, we have to
produce something faster, smaller in order for people to realize
DRI is there and offering solutions for their needs.

What is the strategy for FLEXOS, DRI's protected mode operating system?

FLEXOS, is an operating system which has been developed for control
applications and is used  by manufacturers and OEMs that are in the
control and process industry.

Yes, but it is very similar to OS/2. How do you explain this?

Well, for one thing, there have been no engineers moving between
DRI and MICROSOFT. Of course there are similarities between every
operating system. FLEXOS is a product we are putting alot of
emphasis in. We feel that the process control environment is
very important.

Why are you offering GEM with FLEXOS?

Because, part of every control application, is graphics. In fact
many process control system have a limited keyboard and a graphics
screen. Something that GEM excels in.


You are shipping GEM/3. What is it?

GEM/3 is an enhancement of GEM. It offers font control in that
many fonts that are loaded in the system take memory and we offer
paging mechanisms that load and unload fonts as needed. It also
offers much faster screen operations that previously available.

I heard that Ventura Publicher is switching to Windows from GEM. Is
that true?

Well, the truth is that Ventura is not switching into MS-Windows. What
XEROX has said, is that since people have expressed interest in Ventura
under Windows, they may offer it. However, it seems that is not easy
to produce Ventura under Windows due to the fact that Windows is just
not fast enough on PCs and ATs. They however will offer it under
OS/2's presentation manager.

In Europe, DRI is doing very well. What is the revenue percentage
generated by Europe?

Europe is generating 50% of the revenues currently. There are also
differences in the markets. In the US the life of a system is about
12 to 18 months while in Europe the life can be up to 5 years before
any upgrade is done. Europe expects a lot more functionality than
the US. Thus DRI, because it offers products with a lot more
functionality, has an advantage in Europe.

Amstrad, the big European  computer manufacturer obviously ships
GEM with every product. If Amstrad was not there, which means that
you would not get 300,000 sales of GEM in Europe, would that hurt?

Well, Amstrad accounting for a percentage of 10% is important.
However, we have other customers in Europe that have a higher
revenue percentage that Amstrad.

What has happened to your language business. I am a fan of C and
I wonder whether you are planning to offer a new version of this
compiler.

Well, DRI made a decision to stop the language business. After
this was done, DRI  did not ship any more languages in the
marketplace.  In fact, the buildings you see around enclose
the development for the GEM products and other derivatives
while Concurrent DOS development takes place in the UK. Currently,
DRI has made agreements with manufacturers, such as Metaware, to
offer third party compilers.

What about the operating system business?

In the operating system business we are not as important as
Hunter&ready or Intel but we have been making some headway,
especially with the Flexos OS. We feel that our future is with
the manufacturing environment because this is where we have strengths.

We have heard that DRI is planning to release a multitasking
graphics operating system, which as we know is not GEM. Are
you planning to come out with such a new product?

GEM was designed from day one, to be an extension to the operating
system. It offers unparalleled graphics performance. You see,
Microsoft with Windows did not actually sell the product but
gave it away with every copy of MSDOS. That is why there are
1.4 million MS-Windows out there. The reason being that Windows
does not solve anything because it is very slow on PCs and ATs.
At least GEM, which is does not try to do too much, works better.

I have an AT and I use MS-Windows on it. Granted, if you run
Excel, MS-Write and the comms program, it is very slow. But
then graphics applications are very CPU intensive. What about
a Windows-like GEM?

Well we will not offer such a product. In fact, Microsoft has
only sold 300,000 licenses of Windows. Dont even take my word
for it. Phone INFOCORP and ask for Bill Hayes. He will tell
you the same. In fact, a Windows-like environment has just
not been successful. The idea of putting multi-tasking on top
of a single tasking OS is just not viable. The PC or the AT
does not have the power. The 386 is the only CHIP that has
the power and the memory needed to offer a graphics-like program.

We are also planning to offer GEM under the Presentation manager
of OS/2. In this way, we will be able to offer users GEM like
capabilities on top of the Presentation manager. The problem
with many graphics program is the sheer count of drivers one
has to offer. We currently have about 160 to 200 drivers for
GEM. When we support the presentation manager, the drivers
will be the responsibility of Microsoft and IBM and thus we
will be able to offer our product quicker without the worries
of the drivers.

What languages do you use for your internal development?

We use C and assembler. We started using our C compiler and
then switched to the Lattice C compiler. After a while, we
changed to the Metaware C compiler which gave us better speed
and code size. We know that Microsoft has a good C compiler and
obviously produces better code for real mode DOS program. When
you enter the protected mode environment, you need a compiler,
such as Metaware's that offers facilities not available with
Microsoft. They also have cross-development environments running
on UNIX and VMS environments which Microsoft does not have.
One of the reasons why GEM is on the Atari is because it was
written to be very portable. Thus, if a new CPU, such as a
new RISC based chip comes out, it would be a fairly simple
job to offer it to the market.

What were the revenues of DRI for 1987?

For the last fiscal year, which ended in August 1987, we
grossed about $35 million and we were profitable for the
first time in a few years.

You must of course feel a little sorry that Microsoft from a
smaller company grew to a size much bigger than DRI's. Do you
have any comments?

Well, hindsight is of course important. Going through some mistakes
we have made in 1985, I would have though we should have learned
that we should have tightened our belts. Yes, there were some
decisions that should not have been made. I mean look at the IBM
experiment. When the PC came out we had the chance together with
Microsoft's DOS to offer two Operating systems. When IBM offered
DOS for $60 and CP/M-86 for $295, the market decision was already
done. We could not have set the price because as part of the
agreement, we signed IBM to decide on the price. Also, IBM wanted
to have a new operating system, which would require the market to
re-write its software and follow the DOS standard. Basically, DOS
is a CP/M rip-off because the company that did DOS, Seattle Computer,
had a source license for CP/M. We feel that DOS was a copy of CP/M.
We did not take the company to court because IBM asked us to sign
in the agreement that we would not take Seattle to court. Thus we
were stuck.

DOS was an operating system that was badly designed. It did not even
had a function to move the cursor except the facility which is in
the BIOS which ties it in the hardware. It is not an industry
standard operating system. The only reason IBM made it, is because
the company is big enough to create the markets it feels are necessary.

And finally, how do you see the future of DRI?

We feel that we have a great future ahead of us. We have been in the
situation where a few years ago we have had some problems. We now
feel confident that our future is in the two areas we cover, that
is the GEM extension and Concurrent DOS together with OS/2
enhancements, will ensure that we can only grow from now on
hoping to catch the momentum we have had earlier.



[***][3/22/88][***]
ATARI LAUNCHES PC RANGE IN UK
Slough, Berkshire (NB) -- Although previewed at last year's
Personal Computer World Show, the Atari PC series has not,
surprisingly, been formally launched in the UK.  NEWSBYTES UK got
a copy of the official product price list last week and the Atari
PC series looks even better value than it did last September.

Three models of the Atari PC will be available in the UK - the
PC2-SD at #599-99, the PC2-DD at #649-99, and the PC2-HD at #949-
99.  Unusually for Atari, these prices exclude VAT, which is
levied at 15 per cent in the UK.

All three machines feature an 8088 microprocessor running at
4.77/8.00MHz into 512K of Ram (expandable to 640K).  All models
support EGA, CGA, Hercules and standard monochrome graphics, and
use 5.25 inch floppy disks.  The entry-level machine has a single
floppy, whilst the PC2-DD has twin floppies.  The top-priced
model features a 30Mb integral hard disk as well.

Too bad NEWSBYTES UK just bought a second PC for use as backup...

CONTACT: ATARI UK, Atari House, Railway Terrace, Slough,
         Berkshire SL2 5BZ.             Tel: [phone].

[***][3/22/88][***]
CD-ROM BOOK SERVICE DEBUTS
London, UK (NB) -- CD-ROMS are attracting a great deal of
attention in the US, but little or no interest has been shown on
this side of the Atlantic, probably because of the lack of *real*
applications in the British market.

It's cheering to report then, that J. Whitaker & Sons, a company
that specializes in supplying information to the book trade, has
launched a CD-ROM directory of all UK books in print.  Whitaker's
Bookbank service provides details of the 500,000-odd books
available in print in the UK.  Collated from 13,000-plus
publishers, the information is crammed onto a single compact
disk, and supplied with PC software for interactively accessing
the information itself.  Disks are issued monthly - at a price.
An annual subscription costs #980.  Gulp.

"Ours is a very specialist area in which there aren't many
experts," said David Whitaker, chairman of J. Whitaker & Sons.
"We have to anticipate customer requirements and then pioneer our
own solutions.  We've been at the leading edge in a number of
developments, which has led us to work closely with our software
suppliers and Philips, in exploiting the CD-ROM technology," he
added.

 * NEWSBYTES UK has an audio CD player in the front room.  We
placed the Whitaker Bookbank in the Philips player and were
amazed to see the word DATA appear on the player's LED display.
Connecting a PC serial port to the CD player's digital output
socket resulted in a stream of data pouring into the PC.
NEWSBYTES UK hasn't got a CD-ROM player as such, but we can now
access the information on the disks without too much trouble.

CONTACT: J. WHITAKER & SONS LTD., 12 Dyott Street,
         London WC1A 1DF.        Tel: [phone].

[***][3/22/88][***]
MERCURY COMMUNICATIONS - THE 1ST YEAR
London, UK (NB) -- Hands up those modem users who want to cut
their phone bills by up to 40 per cent.  NEWSBYTES UK managed it
by switching all long distance and international calls through
Mercury.  And all with an annual subscription cost of #7-50, plus
a tone-dial phone costing #51-95 including VAT.

It looks like 7,000 other firms and households managed reductions
as well, since Mercury has released first year figures showing
that 7,000 phone subscribers signed up to its alternative
service.  1,000-odd of these customers are major organizations
such as the London Stock Exchange.  The remainder are the small
fry.  NEWSBYTES UK doesn't mind being in a minority.  We save
#1,600 a year in phone bills.  Perhaps you could too.

CONTACT: MERCURY COMMUNICATIONS, PO Box 316, London WC2E 9RE.
         Tel: [phone]

[***][3/22/88][***]
PROCOMM PLUS - WITH VIEWDATA - REAL SOON NOW
Tonbridge, Kent (NB) -- Procomm Plus, the commercial successor to
the popular Procomm shareware communications package, will soon
be available in Europe, complete with viewdata emulation.

UK distribution of Procomm Plus will be via Shareware Marketing,
a small (but growing) company, specializing in the not-for-profit
distribution of public domain and shareware packages.

"We expect to see Procomm Plus out in the UK shortly with a
target price of #49-95 plus VAT," said Steve Townsley of
Shareware Marketing.  "We're anglicising the manual, and - in
about three months - will have a viewdata emulation version of
the package available with a provisional pricetag of #69-95," he
added.

Danish software house Dortec is handling the viewdata conversion
on behalf of Datastorm Technologies in the US.  Dortec will also
handle European distribution of Procomm Plus, again on behalf of
Datastorm Technologies.

Not that the existing Procomm shareware package is fading away --
Shareware Marketing is the authorized agent for UK (and European)
registration to Procomm.  The company also has a technical
support BBS and voice line to help registered users of the
package.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that users of
Procomm or Procomm Plus who have registered or bought their
packages direct from Datastorm won't be able to use Shareware
Marketing's support service.  NEWSBYTES UK notes this slight
potential problem, but individual users of either package should
be able to work something out between themselves and Shareware
Marketing.

CONTACT: SHAREWARE MARKETING, 87 High Street, Tonbridge,
         Kent, TN9 1RX.                Tel: [phone].

[***][3/22/88][***]
SAGESOFT ENTERS THE PUBLISHING MARKET
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Uk (NB) -- After considerable success in the
budget business software and networking market, Sagesoft has gone
into the publishing industry with its first book under the PC
Library logo.

The first book is entitled 'Using Accountancy Software in
Business,' and will sell for #12-95.  The book is aimed at non-
technical computer users with accountancy needs, according to
David Goldman, MD of Sagesoft.

"If there's one thing typical about small business, it's that few
of them are typical," he said.  "The authors of this book have
been careful to bear this in mind," he added.

"Using Accountancy Software in Business" is published by
Heinemann-Newtech - ISBN 0-434-91238-7 - price #12-95.

CONTACT: SAGESOFT PLC, NEI House, Regent Centre, Gosforth,
         Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE3 3DS.  Tel: [phone].

[***][3/22/88][***]
WORLDLINK COMMUNICATIONS BOARD DEBUTS
Sevenoaks, Kent (NB) -- Some e-mail services offer an incoming
mail service so that, when an item is received into your mailbox,
the central computer dials your PC up and dumps the message,
ready for the morning when you wake up.

That's the theory - but what if you turned the PC off?  No
problem with Worldlink Mail*Call, a PC plug-in card with two
modems, onboard software and battery power back-up.  The PC card
operates as a bulletin board in its own right, with 64K of Ram,
multiple log-ins and time-deferred delivery of E-mail.

The catch is in the unit's price.  At #845, it's a mite expensive
for most user's tastes, but if you're after an idiot-proof email
terminal or system, then Mail*Call could be just for you.

CONTACT: WORLDLINK COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED, 166 High Street,
         Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 1XE.        Tel: [phone].

[***][3/22/88][***]
18,000BPS OVER A STANDARD PHONE LINE
London, UK (NB) -- APL Data Communications has launched the
Trailblazer modem, a unit with a rated 18,000 bps (bits per
second) capability, as well as V21, V22, V22Bis and V23 speeds.
Unlike other high speed modems such as the US Robotics Courier
HST and Dowty Trailblazer, the APL Trailblazer does not employ
any data compression systems to achieve such baud rates.

If that sounds good - it is, but the bad news is that the modem
costs #1,795 and only works at the 18,000bps speed with other APL
Trailblazers.  That means you must buy at least two of the units
to use the high speed baud rate.  At these price levels,
NEWSBYTES UK will stick to the time-honoured method of dropping a
floppy disk in a reinforced envelope and mailing it!

CONTACT: APL DATA COMMUNICATIONS, Canada House, Blackburn Road,
         London NW6 1RZ.                      Tel: [phone].
[***][3/22/88][***]
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+ BRITBYTES - Bytes of news from around the UK... +
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

ALDUS EUROPE has confirmed that ALDUS FREEHAND will be released
on 25 March in the UK.  The Apple Mac graphics creation package
will retail for #450.

APPLIED MICROSYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY of London has announced an 20MHz
80286-based PC AT compatible based around the CHIPS &
TECHNOLOGIES chip set launched earlier this year.  The AMT
286/20 will ship next month at #2,495.

FERRANTI has become the first licensed value added reseller of
the IBM PS/2 RANGE.  The deal allows Ferranti to sell PS/2 kit,
badged under the ferranti logo, as part of its industrial systems
control computer range.

GOUPIL has launched OS/2 on its 80286 and 80386-based range of
PCs.  The OS/2 kit costs #250 for the end-user configuration, and
#500, complete with tool kit and other software developer
utilities.

MANDARIN SOFTWARE of Macclesfield will release STARQUAKE at #19-
95 on the Atari ST and IBM PC series of micros on 21 April.  The
best-seller was previously available on a variety of 8-bit
micros.

MICROLINK has announced that its MULTI-SPEED MODEM now has
British Telecom approval.  The V21/V22/V23 modem is now on sale
to send users.

NCR has launched the NCR System 10000, a series of super
minicomputers, in the UK.  The machines are based around a
proprietary 32-bit VLSI chipset and start at #16,350 ranging up
to $98,000.

NEC EUROPE has launched the MULTISYNC VIDEO ADAPTOR 1024 in the
UK.  The MVA 1024 professional graphics card centres around a
Texas Instruments chipset and supports a graphics resolution of
1024 by 768 pixels.  Don't ask the price - #990.  Phew!

REALTIME SYSTEMS of Douglas, Isle of Man, has released the IDRIS
3.0 operating systems for the Atari ST.  The #595 package was
developed by Computer Tools International in the US and includes
a C compiler as well as a set of Idris development utilities.

RICHARD CUMMING & ASSOCIATES of Leatherhead in Surrey has landed
a #50,000 deal with the ABBEY NATIONAL BUILDING SOCIETY for the
supply of its MULTICOM viewdata software.

[***][3/22/88][***]
UK DATES FOR YOUR DIARY...

Event:         Information for Profit
Dates:         6/8 April 1988
Location:      London
Organisers:    IBC - 01-489-0849

Event:         Basic Supervision
Dates:         16/19 May 1988
Location:      Hinkley, Leeds, London, Maidenhead
Organisers:    Keye Productivity - 01-759-5355

Event:         Strategic Information Systems Planning
Dates:         18/19 May 1988
Location:      London
Organisers:    Monadnock International - 01-871-2546

Event:         Integrated Communications Management Systems
Dates:         26 May 1988
Location:      London
Organisers:    IBC/TMA - 01-236-4080

Event:         Effective Computer Marketing
Dates:         2/3 June 1988
Location:      London
Organisers:    Monadnock International - 01-871-2546