Compaq Notebook Named Best of PC Expo

Compaq Computer's Armada 4100 , a modular notebook PC that can morph from a thin, 5-pound notebook up to a full multimedia system, won BYTE's Best of Show and Best Portable awards at PC Expo. Notebook finalists were Texas Instruments' high-end, Pentium-based TravelMate 6030 and Toshiba's Portégé 650CT, which fits an 11.3-inch active-matrix screen and other features into a 4.8-pound package.

Best Technology winner, Sony Electronics' AIT (Advanced Intelligent Tape), as featured in the company's SDX tape drives, features a 16-Kb memory chip in the cartridge for better performance and reliability.

Best New Applicati on, Corel's WordPerfect Suite 7 for Windows 95 , won in part due to its Internet connectivity. The three finalists were IBM's VoiceType Dictation 3.0 for Win 95, Dragon Systems' DragonDictate 2.5 for Windows, and Macromedia's xRes 2.0 photo-image-editing program for Windows.

Sony Electronics won Best Multimedia Hardware for its Digital Video Still-Image PC Capture Board, the DVBK-1000 , which works with Sony's digital Handycam. By eliminating the A/D-conversion process, the DVBK-1000 enables you to capture higher-quality images. Finalists were Connectix's Color QuickCam digital video camera and Sigma Designs' RealMagic Ultra, a $399 MPEG playback board.

Multimedia Software winner was Fractal Design's Expression , a natural-media, vector-based drawing program with support for animation. Finalists were DeLorme's AAA Map'nGo 2.0, a travel an d mapping program, and Corel Click and Create, a $695 point-and-click authoring tool.

Best Connectivity Hardware winner was Apex Data's ClipperCom World PC Card fax modem, which will work in 31 countries. Finalists were Zyxel's $1095 Prestige 2864I ISDN LAN router, bridge, terminal adapter, and analog modem; and Adtran's $469 Express XRT ISDN modem. Best Connectivity Software went to White Pine Software's Enhanced CU-SeeMe multiple-person videoconferencing and application-sharing program. Finalists were Brooktrout's Show N Tel telephony applications development kit and Castelle's FaxPress Mac Software Option.

Stratus 's fault-tolerant, Pentium Pro-based RADIO (Reliable Architecture for Distributed Input/Output) PC Cluster server won Best System . Finalists were DeskStation Technology's 500-MHz Alpha CPU-based Raptor ReFlex and So ny's PC VAIO (Video Audio Integrated Operation).

Cheyenne Software's ARCserve 6 backup program for NT, with support for a wide range of OS clients, won Best Utility . The Norton Your Eyes Only file-encryption utility, from Symantec, and Adobe Systems' $49.95 ATM Deluxe 4.0 font manager were finalists .

The NEC Superscript 860 , an 8-ppm laser printer that ships with Adobe PrintGear, won Best Printer . Finalists were IBM's new laser printers (they range from the 12-ppm monochrome Network Printer 12 to the IBM Network Color Printer) and Mannesmann Tally's T7070 Color Ink Jet. Best Peripheral winner was ViewSonic's P815 21-inch monitor. The finalists were InFocus's SuperVGA LitePro 620 Projector and Epson's small-footprint PhotoPlus Color Scanner.

Best Internet Product winner, Haht Software's HahtSit e , enables you to create and manage your own Web applications. Maximum Information's Intrachange Web Management software and Folio's Web Retriever 2.0 were both finalists .

The EHPS (Emissary Host Publishing System), Attachmate 's Web-deployment extension for its Extra Developer Series, won Best Development Software . Finalists were Blue Sky Software's Visual SQL development tool for Visual C++ and StarBase's StarTeam Server 2.0, which is a software server that engenders distributed development among teams of programmers.