 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla |
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I spent most of a wet weekend at the Merisel "Softeach" bash at the Hilton. It was aimed at dealers (some 700 of them). About a dozen vendors ran hourly sessions on their products. I saw so many Melb PC members that we could almost have had a meeting there! Most of us won valuable (or otherwise) goodies. I didn't win any trips to Hawaii, gold ingots, etc. but came home with some additions to my wardrobe, a propeller cap, etc.
The Highlights
CorelDRAW! 3.0 will ship at the end of May (read July deliveries for Oz). It has got to be unbeatable in its field (Harvard Draw and Micrografx Designer were better than the old Corel 2.01). My beta copy doesn't have all the following features but here is a preview:
- Lower RRP but now includes CD-ROM as standard
- Work in colour or wireframe mode
- Easier controls for old features, plus new ones
- Photo-Paint bitmap editor included
- Charting package included
- Presentation package included
- Mosaic now shows images in fall colour
- WFN dumped in favour of TrueType fonts
- Needs VGA minimum (386 and Win 3.1 preferred)
- OLE, DDE, online help and all that good stuff
- Spell checker and thesaurus (what next?)
We hope to have one these products reviewed soon. I am pleased to report that the new version runs well under Windows 3.1. It makes Windows more accessible. The DOS version provides most of the features offered by the Windows package and sounds like a good buy for the DOS user who needs a simple way to manage files and programs.
Symantec Time Line for DOS and Windows
At work most of us used to use (or still do) Project Manager Workbench from Hoskyns for project management Some managers have used earlier versions of Time Line and after seeing the latest versions I was suitably impressed. The DOS and Windows versions are slightly different in function but are interoperabie.
Harvard Graphics
I missed the SPC presentations but picked up a tip of interest to users of Harvard. Graphics. There is a user group for them and membership is free. They meet each month on the fourth Thursday.
Kodak Diconix Printers
The new Kodak ink jet printers were quite impressive. Elsewhere in these pages you should find a report on them. I believe our advertiser Computer Rebuilds will be carrying them, so check out the inside front cover.
Colorado Tape Backups
Colorado showed off their Jumbo 120, Jumbo 250 and CFA 700 tape drives. Their market research shows that during 1991 some 625,000 new PCs were delivered in Australia. That figure was obviously to impress the dealers but it is quite interesting to us if we wonder how few PC users know about or belong to PC user groups.
Summary
Although I am seeing smarter tools coming from many vendors I still don't get the impression of a "total corporate solution". By that I mean that the connectivity to hosts and email is either not mentioned or gets a low-key mention. Windows is helping to get these tools to interact to some extent. I feel that mainframe companies should keep an eye on the PC arena and work with its offerings as part of a "total solution".
Reprinted from the July 1992 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
