’Tis But Some Quick News for
You no doubt have been hearing much about Comdex in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. And no wonder. Many new and exciting products were displayed there. Many products that boasted more than they offered were also present. And all of it was decorated with hype and glamour. So, what were the real winners among the throngs of people, salesmen, and corporate leaders? This: Netscape Communicator, Microsoft Office 97, Microsoft Windows CE, and the HPCs that Windows CE runs on. Why? Because they are not merely upgrades or even new products – they’re changes in how we use computers, and, in the case of Windows CE, additions to the computer family. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer will finally have real competition again with Netscape’s new package, Communicator. Communicator may become a Microsoft Office of Internet and intranet communication tools, with the revamped and highly customizable Netscape Navigator, the WYSIWYG HTML editor Composer which is a step above the limited Navigator Gold editor, the new groupware e-mail program Messenger, and more. All the components are integrated with each other, share a similar user interface, and host a variety of different tools that can be used in different modules. Sound familiar (i. e., MS Office’s goal)? Speaking of Office, Office 97 has jumped a whole new level also, with more integration and interaction than ever before, both with itself, and, of course, with the Internet and the Web! Office 95 had a lot of good ideas that weren’t fully implemented which are now complete and quite useful in Office 97, such as the Office Binder, now more stable than before; and the Office Assistant, which is a descendant of the TipWizard and Answer Wizard. Like the new toolbar look in IE 3.0? Office 97 looks like that, but is even more customizable – so customizable, in fact, that you can actually drag the menu bar off the top of the window! Buttons and menu items can intermingle in the same toolbar, because the menu bar itself is a toolbar! Office 97 is being manufactured right now, and won’t be out until early next year, but to get a taste of what Office 97 will look like, go to Office’s Web site. The other thing I mentioned is Windows CE, the new operating system for HPCs (Hand-held Personal Computers). Looks like Windows 95, acts like Windows 95, takes up much less space and computing power than Windows 95! And a good thing too, because the average HPC only has 4MB of storage, which includes storage for the operating system! Luckily, the pocket applications that come with Win CE (Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Internet Explorer, Pocket Inbox, Pocket Calendar, and a few others) generate VERY tiny files, so you probably won’t run out of room for quite a while. And if you do, you can move some of your files over to your main PC just by hooking up a direct serial cable from your HPC to your regular PC (the HPC Explorer takes care of the conversion from the Pocket apps format to the regular PC equivalent format). What a lot of innovation for 1997!
Original page courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
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