Stratus Computer
(Marlboro, MA, 800-RADIO PC;
http://www.stratus.com
) and its fault-tolerant
RADIO PC server
that supports N-way clustering under Windows NT won BYTE Magazine's
Best of Show
and
Best System
awards at COMDEX Spring '96.
Finalists
for Best System were Ross Technology's (Austin, TX, 800-774-ROSS;
http://www.ross.com
) SPARCplug, an add-in workstation for tower PCs; Digital Equipment's (Maynard, MA;
http://www.pc.digital.com
) Prioris ZX 6200MP four-way Pentium Pro PC server; and Hewlett-Packard's (Santa Clara, CA, 408-553-4300;
http://www.hp.com
) quad Pentium Pro-based HP NetServer LX Pro.
Best Technology winner was
FlashPix
,
a technology developed by
Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, Live Picture, and Microsoft
. This new i
maging architecture should make imaging applications easier, faster, and more consistent.
Best
Portable winner was IBM's
ThinkPad 560
,
a 4.1-pound, 1.2-inch thick notebook with a 12.1-inch active-matrix screen (Somers, NY;
http://www.ibm.com
).
Best Portable finalists were
Texas Instrument's high-end 133-MHz Pentium-based TravelMate 5375ST (800-TI-TEXAS;
http://www.ti.com
) and Rockwell International's wearable Pentium-based Trekker 2020 (Cedar Rapids, IA, 800-321-CACD,
http://www.cacd.ro
ckwell.com
).
Quadrant International
's (Malvern, PA, 800-700-0362;
http://www.quadrant.com
)
VideoWave
, a PCI-based video-compression and editing card that uses wavelet video compression, won
Best Multimedia Hardware
.
Finalists were
Matrox Graphics' (Montreal, Canada, 514-685-2630;
http://www.matrox.com/mga
) MGA Mystique, a 2D/3D graphics PC graphics accelerator, and the Color QuickCam, a $229 color digital video camera from Connectix (800-950-5880;
http://www.connectix.com
).
Best Multimedia Software winner, Scala
MultiMedia MM100 for Windows
($249) from Scala (Herndon, VA, 703-713-0900;
http://www.scala.com/mm.html
), lets you create titles with graphics, animation, symbols, text, and music.
Finalists were
EMD Enterprises' (Shrewsbury, PA, 800-8989-EMD;
http://www.emdent.com
) GLView, an $89 3D viewer and VRML browser, and Jamba, a $495 visual authoring tool for creating Java applets, fro
m Aimtech (Nashua, NH, 603-883-0220;
http://www.aimtech.com
).
The award for
Best Connectivity Hardware went to
NetworkEye/270 Frame Server
, a $299 standalone network device that provides one image per second from a Connectix digital camera, from
Microplex Systems
(Burnaby, B.C., 800-665-7798;
http://www.microplex.com
).
Finalists were
the $225 DWInt jack, from Konexx (San Diego, CA, 619-622-1400;
http://www.konexx.com
), and Champion Computer Technologies' FE10/100, a $289 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet Type II PC card (Cleveland, OH, 216-646-2500).
Adobe Systems'
(Mountain View, CA, 800-682-3623;
http://www.adobe.com
) $49
ATM Deluxe 4.0 Type I and TrueType
font management program won as
Best Utility
.
Finalists were
DeskMan/2 for OS/2 from DevTech (Forest Acres, SC, 803-790-9230) and Starfish Internet Utilities (Scotts Valley, CA, 408-461-5899;
http://www.starfishsoftware.com
).
Mannesmann Tally
's (Kent, WA, 800-843-1347;
http://www.tally.com
)
T7070 Color Ink Jet
, was the only clear winner in the
Best Printer
category.
Best Peripheral winner was the
ViewSonic P815
, a 21-inch monitor (Walnut, CA, 909-444-8800;
http://www.viewsonic.com
). Peripheral
finalists were
the Desktop Projector 4100, from Proxima (San Diego, CA, 619-457-5500;
http://www.prxm.com
) and Eastman Kodak's (Rochester, NY, 716-724-4000;
http://www.kodak.com
) DC-20 digital camera.
The
Best Internet Product winner,
EchoSearch from Iconovex
(Bloomington, MN, 800-943-0292;
http://www.iconovex.com/HOMEPAGE.HTM
), is a search tool that analyzes and indexes results from multiple Internet search engines. Level\5's Quest Server tool (Melbourne, FL, 800-444-4303;
http://www.l5r.com/Level5.html
), which lets you publish relational databases to a Web site, and MCI's networkMCI Backup service (770-668-6406;
http://www.mci.com
), which lets you securely backup data over to remote servers,
were finalists
.
Best Connectivity Software winner was
Show N Tel
, an applications development kit for creating telephony applications, from
Brooktrout Technology
(Needham, MA, 617-449-4100;
http://www.brooktrout.com
). The
finalist was
MobileWare Personal Edi
tion for Win 95, a peer-to-peer remote connectivity program (Richardson, TX, 214-952-1269;
http://www.mobileware.com
).
Sybase's Powersoft
group (Concord, MA, 508-287-1500;
http://www.powersoft.com
) won
Best Development Software
for
PowerBuilder 5
, which adds suppfort for applications partitioning, compiled code, and Internet access. The other
finalists were
IBM's VisualAge Generator 2.2, from IBM's Software Group (Somers, NY;
http://www.software.ibm.com
), and Symantec's (Cupertino, CA, 800-441-7234;
http://www.symantec.com
) Café for the Mac.
Stratus PC Server Wins Best of Comdex
