none-1999-06-15-none-Stephen Lee, Doug Dineley, Wendy Coffee, Kathleen Cullen and Jenn Tust

Linux Jamboree

The hungry Linux penguin is big and getting bigger. To the developer community, Linux has long since proven itself. The goal now is to get the open source OS onto the average user's desktop. To that end, distributors are making Linux easier to install, bundling more application software, and slapping graphical interfaces atop the roiling, churning Unix code. They're even providing some semblance of technical support. Could this really be the dawning of a new age?

New SuSE and Red Hat distributions take advantage of the latest Linux kernel, version 2.2.x, that Linus Torvalds and friends have released nine times since January. SuSE's Linux 6.1 is based on Linux 2.2.7, so it offers all the advantages built into the 2.2.x source code: better performance in single and multiprocessor machines, drivers for more multi media hardware (especially 3Dfx Voodoo video cards), support for more non-Intel processors, and full RAID support that lets you hot-swap storage devices. But SuSE has also thrown a friendlier desktop into the mix. The Gnome 1.0 interface can be combined with any window manager to turn SuSE 6.1 into a world of windows, menus, and icons. Or, if you don't like Gnome, you can use KDE 1.1, which now allows menu-driven access to Linux's entire file system. Finally, the package comes bundled with the StarOffice 5 application suite and Corel WordPerfect 8. Scratch together $49.95 and you'll get the whole kit on five CD-ROMs, with a boot floppy and a 450-page manual.

Like SuSE 6.1, Red Hat 6.0 takes advantage of the Linux 2.2.x kernel, includes the KDE and Gnome interfaces, and touts easier installation and use. You can now install Red Hat Linux from a Web server, an NIS server, or a RAID partition, and a new console user option lets system administrators grant users who share a machine easier access to local devices (such as removable disk drives). Red Hat 6.0 is available in five different versions, costing between $39.95 and $79.95. The full kit gives you three CDs, a manual, and installation support. As for software, Red Hat is bundling demos of the StarOffice and Applixware business suites and IBM's ViaVoice speech recognition software. Both the SuSE and Red Hat distributions can be downloaded for free.

Daunted by the bewildering intricacies of installing Linux applications? Fear not. The Zenguin Installer (currently being developed by former SuSE brainiacs) promises to make it easy to install applications on (and uninstall them from) your Linux system, regardless of which distribution you're using. If it works as advertised, the Zenguin Installer could resolve a problem that could keep Linux from going mainstream: different installation routines for different Linux distributions and, hence, a lot of manual configuring. Fingers are crossed that Zenguin will do for Linux what InstallShield has done for Windows. When it's ready, the Zenguin Installer will have a graphical interface and an optional text-based one. Best of all, it'll be open source and free.

Finally, if you're struggling to stay informed about all things Linux, try VA Linux Systems' new portal at www.linux.com. How much do you think VA paid for that name?

Red Hat, 888/733-4281, www.redhat.com. SuSE, 888/875-4689, www.suse.com. Zenguin, info@zenguin.com, www.zenguin.com.

--Stephen Lee

Peering Through Windows 2000

If your business can't resist the siren song of Windows 2000, here's your chance to get a preview. Microsoft has kicked off the Windows 2000 corporate preview program. For $59.95, you get the Professional and Server editions of Windows 2000 in their third beta versions on two CD-ROMs, along with an installation and instruction manual.

A few high-powered vendors have already jumped aboard the Windows 2000 express. Dell, for example, is not only installing the beta version on some of its servers, workstations, and notebooks, but it's also providing an online guide to assessing your old Dell system's readiness for Windows 2000 (www.dell.com/windows2000). Micron, too, is shipping the new OS on selected desktops and servers.

Billed as a marriage of Windows 9.x's device support with Windows NT's stability, Windows 2000 has been garnering mixed reviews. For example, PC Week's labs found that the Professional edition offers attractive features (such as the ability to carry personalized settings as you move from system to system) but isn't worth up grading from NT 4. The same review suggests that the Server edition seems unstable and overly complicated. (See PC Week, May 10, 1999.) The final version of Windows 2000 is expected to ship near the end of the year.

Microsoft, 800/426-9400, www.microsoft.com/windows/preview/order.htm.

--Stephen Lee

Commerce With an E

Hankering to sell your wares on the Web? Already got product and order databases you want your online storefront to tie into? Elemental Software is shipping eStore Builder for Drumbeat 2000, an e-commerce add-on to the company's Web development program for Windows 95, 98, and NT 4 that's geared toward building Web interfaces to existing databases. With eStore Builder and Drumbeat 2000, you can create database-driven Web sites that let customers gather items in virtual shopping carts and process credit card transactions in real time.

Drumbeat 2000 is aimed at code-savvy developers but avoids manual coding through wizards, templates, and ready-made interface elements (drop-down lists, check boxes, radio buttons, edit boxes, etc.) for browsing, searching, and updating databases. Drumbeat 2000 automatically generates code for Microsoft active server pages (ASP) that run on Windows NT 4's Internet information server (and third-party ASP-compliant Web servers) and interact with Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, and other ODBC-compliant databases.

eStore Builder throws in wizards that guide you through building an online storefront and incorporating product, purchase order, and customer databases. You can create a Web site that allows visitors to browse or search an online catalog; add, edit, and delete items from their virtual shopping carts; and place orders with a click. Your e-commerce application can calculate sales tax and shipping charges, enter orders in an order database, send the buyer a confirmation by e-mail, and link to CyberCash CashRegister3 to immediately process credit card transactions. It can also maintain a customer database so buyers don't have to reenter data every time they shop.

Drumbeat 2000 for Windows 95, 98, and NT costs $399. The eStore Builder add-on, which is available only as a download from Elemental Software's Web site, costs $249 through July 31 and $399 thereafter. Drumbeat 2000 eCommerce Edition, which includes both Drumbeat and eStore Builder, costs $599 through July 31 and $798 thereafter.

Elemental Software, 877/378-6232, drumbeat.com.

--Doug Dineley

Thin Is In

Does size matter to you? Several smaller Sony notebook PCs are lined up at the starting gate with the gun scheduled to fire this month and next. Three are from the company's VAIO SuperSlim micronotebook line, and the others are from its more fully equipped and heftier VAIO F200 series.

The high-end SuperSlim book, the Z505SX model, sells for $2,999 and packs an Intel 366MHz Pentium II processor, a 12.1-inch XGA active-matrix display, and 128MB of SDRAM (expandable to 192MB). The 505TR model is the smallest and cheapest of the micro threesome. It weighs only 3.1 pounds, measures less than 1 inch wide, and ships with a $1,999 price tag. It comes with a 300MHz Pentium processor, 64MB of SDRAM, and a 6.4GB hard drive. All three SuperSlim portables ship this month and come with a 56Kbps v.90 modem but without a CD-ROM drive. A 16x CD-ROM drive will cost you about $300 extra.

Sony's F200 series notebooks are about twice as thick and heavy as their SuperSlim counterparts, but they have more features. The top-of-the-line F290 model sports a 400MHz Pentium II processor, 64MB of SDRAM, a 6.4GB hard drive, and a 4x DVD-ROM drive. Available in July for $3,499, the F290 also comes with the first 15-inch XGA active-matrix LCD display on a notebook, according to Sony. The bargain notebook in the F200 series, the F250, sells for a more modest $1,700 and will ship in June with a 366MHz Celeron processor, a 13.1-inch XGA display, 32MB of SDRAM, a 4.3GB hard drive, and a 24x CD-ROM drive.

Sony, 888/315-7669, www.sony.com/pc.

--Wendy Coffee

Are You Pen-Centric?

Fujitsu recently demonstrated its PenCentra 130 at a trade show, but the new handheld PC will not be available until September, and its price is still to be determined. The pen-input computer runs Windows CE 3.0 and promises some extras for businesspeople seriously on the go. According to Fujitsu, this handheld can withstand a 4-foot drop and has two 8-inch color display modes--one backlit for indoor use and one front-lit for outdoor use. Both modes have 640-by-480-pixel resolutions and display 256 colors.

The 8.9-by-6.5-by-1.3-inch device weighs two pounds and sports a 131MHz NEC processor and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that provides 12 hours of computing-on-the-go between recharges. It's packed with 24MB of system ROM, 16MB of SDRAM (expandable to 48MB) for running applications, and 8MB of flash memory (upgradeable to 16MB) for storing your data. Communication Intelligence's Jot and Handwriter and Paragraph's Calligrapher help the PenCentra translate your chicken scratch into text. The handheld also includes WinCE applications Pocket Office, Pocket Outlook, and Accessories.

You can plug peripherals into the PenCentra's USB, serial, and PS/2 ports. There is also an infrared port and mic/headphone jacks. The Pen Centra itself can be plugged into an AC adapter. Accessories for the unit, such as docking stations, specialty slipcases, and mobile keyboards, will be available separately. The pen tether might be a good idea for people who need their mittens pinned to their coats. Tappity-tap!

Fujitsu, 800/831-3183, www.fpsi.fujitsu.com.

--Kathleen Cullen

Three All-in-Ones for Windows ...

Hewlett-Packard has introduced a new line of multifunction devices for Windows PCs. The OfficeJet R series all-in-ones combine a color inkjet printer, a flatbed color scanner, and a color photocopier. The $599 OfficeJet R40 is the base model. The $699 R65 adds a 30-page automatic document feeder for batch scanning, and the $799 R80 adds both the automatic scanner feeder and a stand-alone fax machine.

HP says that all three models print up to 11 pages per minute (ppm) in black and 7ppm in color at resolutions up to 600dpi by 600dpi. They can handle plain paper, photo paper, envelopes, transparencies, labels, and card stock in sizes from 4 by 6 inches to 11 by 17 inches. They're equipped with a 100-sheet input tray and a 50-sheet output tray.

The flatbed scanner on these units captures images at a true resolution of 600dpi by 2400dpi (9600dpi enhanced) in 30-bit color. According to HP, you can scan directly into an outgoing e-mail; reduce, enlarge, and "autofit" copies; copy two pages onto one sheet; and create posters by tiling a enlarged document onto multiple sheets.

For folks who like to multi task, the OfficeJet R65 and R80 both come with a 30-page document feeder that lets you scan and copy (and fax, in the case of the R80) multiple pages automatically. The R80's stand-alone fax lets you set 100 speed-dial numbers, and it can store up to 100 incoming and outgoing faxes.

The R series all-in-ones work with Windows 95, 98, NT 4, and 2000. The R40 and R65 are available now, and the R80 is due in June.

Hewlett-Packard, 800/722-6538, www.hp.com.

--Jenn Tust

... And One for the Mac

Canon has unveiled a multifunction device for the iMac, the blue-and-white Power Mac G3, and any other Mac equipped with Mac OS 8.1 (or later) and a USB port. Scheduled to ship in July, the MultiPass C635 handles color printing, color scanning, and color copying chores and lets you send faxes without booting up your Mac.

Based on Canon's BJC-4400 Color Bubble Jet inkjet printer, the MultiPass C635 can print in color and monochrome at resolutions up to 720dpi by 360dpi. Canon says it can crank out 6.5 monochrome pages or 2.5 color pages per minute, and it can print on a variety of media, including envelopes, glossy photo paper, glossy photo cards, high-gloss photo film, high-resolution paper, and transparencies. It can handle up to legal-size documents, and it comes with a 100-sheet input tray.

The C635's color scanner captures 16.7 million colors (24-bit color) at true resolutions up to 360dpi by 360dpi (600dpi enhanced). A 30-sheet document feeder allows you to scan, copy, or fax multiple pages automatically. The unit comes with the TextBridge Professional optical character recognition software, which lets you convert scanned letters into editable text, and Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2, which lets you edit scanned images. The estimated street price of $379 includes color and black ink cartridges and a bidirectional USB-to-parallel cable.

Canon, 800/652-2666, www.ccsi.canon.com.

--Jenn Tust

Web Graphics, 2000-Style

NetStudio has been a time-saver for those not schooled in the finer points of graphic design. A new version of the Web graphics tweaker, NetStudio 2000, boasts interface and feature enhancements, as well as tight integration with FrontPage 2000. Because FrontPage 2000 incorporates NetStudio menus, you can use NetStudio's tools to manipulate graphics within FrontPage. Shipping now, NetStudio 2000 comes with a trial version of Microsoft FrontPage 2000.

Aside from some fine-tuning, Net Studio 2000 mostly rounds out existing features, some of them with submenus that can now be brought up by right-clicking. More shapes and button styles are available and it is easier to apply the style of a button or banner across multiple items. A new filter, Soften Edges, produces a vignette effect subtler than in version 1.

NetStudio 2000 for Win 95, 98, or NT 4/Service Pack 3 costs $99 for new users and is free to owners of NetStudio 1. A free, 30-day trial version of Net Studio 2000 on CD can be ordered. If you want to take a look at some of the things NetStudio can do, you can view a feature demo of version 1 at the company Web site; you can also download a free trial of version 1. NetStudio, 650/903-5000, www.netstudio.com.

--Kathleen Cullen

In Brief

The fastest Power Macintosh G3 just got faster. Apple is now offering a 450MHz PowerPC G3 chip in the machine, as well as 350MHz and 400MHz options. Prices for a Power Mac G3 still start at $1,599, which buys you a 350MHz model with 64MB of SDRAM, 1MB of Level 2 backside cache, an ATI Rage 128 graphics accelerator with 16MB of video SDRAM, a 6GB Ultra ATA hard drive, a 32x CD-ROM drive, a little blue keyboard, and a round, translucent mouse. You'll pay $2,999 for the most affordable 450MHz model, which includes 128MB of SDRAM and a 9GB Ultra2 SCSI hard drive.

Apple Computer, 800/795-1000, www.apple.com.

Umax has trotted out three low-cost flatbed scanners for home and office users. The Umax Astra 2000P ($99) is a parallel port model for Windows 95, 98, and NT, while the Astra 2000U ($129) and Astra 2100U ($169) are USB port models for both Mac and Windows users. All three scan letter-size and smaller documents in 36-bit color at resolutions up to 600dpi by 1200dpi. Unlike the 2000P and 2000U models, the Astra 2100U features three programmable buttons and can be had with a $69 transparency adapter. The scanners come bundled with Adobe PhotoDeluxe, an image editor; Presto PageManager, which allows you to print, copy, e-mail, and fax scanned images; and Caere Omnipage LE OCR, an optical character recognition application that can convert scanned text into editable text.

Umax also cut the price of its Mirage II from $3,795 to $2,595. A large-format professional scanner, the Mirage II scans documents as large as 11.4 by 17 inches in 36-bit color at resolutions as high as 1400dpi by 2800dpi.

Umax, 800/562-0311, www.umax.com.

Extensis is shipping its first upgrade of Suitcase since acquiring the font management program from Symantec earlier this year. According to the company, Suitcase 8 for the Mac adds four key capabilities to the antiquated font manager: full compatibility with Mac OS 8.5 and the blue-and-white Power Mac G3, the ability to group fonts by families and display them in their own typefaces in font menus, the ability to open fonts needed in QuarkXPress documents automatically, and the ability to spot corrupt and duplicate fonts, including matching PostScript and TrueType versions. Suitcase 8 sells for $89.95.

Extensis, 800/803-6921, www.extensis.com.

Hewlett-Packard is shipping version 2.0 of its Web PrintSmart publishing software for Windows. The program lets you gather Web content from different sites--either entire pages or just fragments--into a single document and rip out the page breaks when it's time to print. You can also schedule Web PrintSmart to crank out the hard copies at predetermined times. The program finds the URLs embedded within your document and prints whatever it finds online, which is handy if you want to print updated information. Web PrintSmart (which runs on Windows 95, 98, and NT) is free. A $29.99 version, Web PrintSmart Plus, offers more formatting options.

Hewlett-Packard, 800/322-4772, www.hp.com.

There's yet another XML editor on the block. Vervet Logic's XML Pro 2.0 for Windows uses a graphical interface to let you cut and paste XML elements and view your DTD. It's compliant with the W3C's XML 1.0 specification and comes with IBM's XML4J parser. The editor is available for Windows 95, 98, NT, Solaris, and Linux at Vervet's Web site. You can download it for $149.95 or buy it on CD-ROM for $174.95. A version bundled with Microstar's Near & Far Designer (a DTD editor) costs $299.

Vervet Logic, 812/856-5270, www.vervet.com.

Version 3.0 of FWB Software's Hard Disk Toolkit Personal Edition has hit the street. The company says the upgrade to its utility for formatting and partitioning IDE and SCSI hard disk and removable disk drives adds a simple tabbed interface; compatibility with Mac OS 8.5, the the iMac, and the blue and white G3; the ability to create Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volumes; support for master and slave devices on IDE/ATA buses; and support for IDE drives larger than 8.6GB. The program comes on a bootable CD-ROM and costs $79. Users of previous versions can upgrade for $29.

FWB Software, 415/345-4300, www.fwb.com.

Epsilon Squared has released Install Watch 1.1 Basic for Windows 95, 98, and NT 4, a $15 utility that logs changes that software and hardware installations make to your PC. The company says the utility tracks changes to .ini files, the Windows Registry, and files and folders on your C: drive. InstallWatch 1.1 Basic is a limited version of InstallWatch 1.1 Professional ($79), which lets you monitor changes to any drive on the host PC or a network and define what changes are tracked, including file versions.

Epsilon Squared, 941/752-1470, www.installwatch.com.

MCI WorldCom is now providing dial-up Internet access to Mac users. MCI WorldCom Internet for Mac includes 150 hours of Internet access per month, plus e-mail, chat, instant messaging, parental control software, and space for your personal Web page, for a $4.95 setup fee and an introductory monthly rate of $16.95. After three months, the rate goes up to $19.95.

MCI WorldCom, 800/459-8892, www.mciworld.com.