Office 97
, the newest version of
Microsoft's
leading office suite for Windows 95, won BYTE's
Best of Show
award at the recent Fall Comdex '96 show. But although it took top honors, Microsoft was not alone among companies showing new products that are innovative or likely to significantly impact the microcomputer industry.
The most recent Comdex may be remembered as the one in which products based on digital videodisc (DVD) and universal serial bus (USB) arrived in full force. Other products that attracted a considerable amount of attention w
ere new Windows CE-based hand-helds, Java development tools and applications, and speech-recognition programs.
In addition to winning
Best o
f Show
,
Microsoft's
(Redmond, WA,
http://www.microsoft.com/office
)
Office 97
was also named
Best Application
. It adds a wealth of new features to its popular desktop applications, plus the new Outlook e-mail/personal manager/calendaring application.
Finalists were
Stratus's (Marlborough, MA,
http://www.stratus.com
) Isis for Database-ODBC, a database companion that adds continuous availability and protection against system crashes, and Corel's (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada,
http://www.corel.com
) Office for Java, a Java-based cross-platform application suite that's slated to ship in the first quarter of this year.
Best Technology
winner was the
Chinese speech recognition
from the
Lexicus Division of Motorola
(Palo Alto, CA,
http://www.mot.com/lexicus/
). It delivers continuous voice dictation for people speaking the mandarin dialect; Motorola hopes to commercialize the technology in the first half of this year. The
finalists
in this category were Microsoft's Windows CE OS for hand-held computers and the emerging DVD storage standard from Hitach
i, Philips, Pioneer, Sony, Time Warner, and Toshiba.
Two new Web programs from one company won the
Best Web Product
category:
Communicator and Constellation
, from
Netscape
(Mountain View, CA,
http://www.netscape.com
). Communicator combines the latest Navigator browser (version 4.0) with e-mail, workgroup, and conferencing software and other components, while Constellation is a new cross-platform desktop environment that provides a new interface for customizing and organizing information.
Finalists were
Vosaic, from Vosaic LLC (Chicago, IL,
http://www.vosaic.com
), which delivers high-quality streaming MPEG video over the Internet, and Digital's (Littleton, MA,
http://altavista.software.digital.com
) AltaVista Search My Computer Private eXtension, a powerful search tool for desktop and Intranet applications that costs about $30.
Wyse Technology's
(San Jose, CA,
http://www.wyse.com
) 200-MHz
Strong Arm 110 CPU-based Winterm 4000 Series Enhanced Network Computers
, which support the new network-computing model and offer access to legacy hardware (and, soon, shared remote Windows applications), won
for
Best System
.
Finalists were
the upgradable Archistrat 4s-NXS workstation, by The Panda Project (Boca Raton, FL,
http://www.archistrat.com
), and Madura, by Flat Connections (Fremont, CA,
http://www.flatconnect.com
), a system that crams a RISC processor, a 33.6-Kbps modem, RAM, ROM with a Java engine, and RSA security onto a PC Card.
The winner
for
Best Laptop
was
Texas Instruments'
(Temple, TX,
http://www.ti.com
) 5.1-pound
Extensa 900 Series Notebook
, which provides top-of-the-line features, such as an eight-speed CD-ROM, a 12.1- or 11.3-inch display, and a Zoom video PC Card slot. The
finalists were
Fujitsu's (Milpitas, CA,
http://www.fujitsu-pc.com
) ultralight LifeBook 600 Series and Apple Computer's (Cupertino, CA,
http://www.newton.apple.com/
) eMate 300, a rugged 4-pound Newton OS-based portable designed for the education market.
Best Ha
nd-Held
winner was
Philips'
(Sunnyvale, CA,
http://www.velo1.com
)
Velo 1
, a hand-held based on the new Windows CE OS with a built-in modem that delivers strong PC connectivity. The
finalists were
Hewlett-Packard's (Palo Alto, CA,
http://www.hp.com/handheld
) new Palmtop PC for Windows CE, which offers a 640- by 240-pixel display that's wider than that of other Windows CE devices, and the Apple MessagePad 2000, from The Information Appliance Division of Apple Computer (
http://www.newton.apple.com/
). The new MessagePad boasts a powerful 160-MHz StrongArm processor.
Symantec's
(Cupertino, CA,
http://www.symantec.com
)
Visual Café Pro
, a visual rapid application tool for developing applications and applets that connect to relational databases, won for
Best Development Software
.
Finalists were
Borland's (Scotts Valley, CA,
http://www.borland.com
) Open J Builder "Latt
é,;" a visual Java development tool, and Borland's C++ Builder "Ebony," a C++ RAD development tool.
Play, Incorporated's
(Rancho Cordova, CA,
http://www.play.com/
),
Trinity PC-based video-production system
for broadcast-quality production won for
Best Multimedia Hardware
.
Finalists were
miro's (Palo Alto, CA,
http://www.miro.com
) miroVideo DV100, which directly accepts digital camera output, and Ricoh's (West Caldwell, NJ,
http://www.ricohcpg.com
) RDC-2 digital camera, which sports an optional LCD viewer and records sound as well as video.
In the
Best Multimedia Software
category,
Apple's
QuickDraw 3D 1.5
won due to its cross-platform nature and ability to support multiple renderings from the same 3-D model.
Finalists were
Voice Pilot Technologies' (Miami, FL, dslach @ibm.net) Voice Pilot for Windows 95 voice-command and dictation program and MGI Software's (
http://www.mgisoft.com
) MGI VideoWave, a consumer-level video-editing application.
The award in the
Best Connectivity Hardware
category went to
Xirc
om's
(Thousand Oaks, CA,
http://www.xircom.com
)
CardBus Ethernet 10/100 Adapter
, a
32-bit CardBus
10-/100-Mbps Ethernet adapter.
Finalists were
Cardinal Technologies' (Lancaster, PA,
http://www.cardtech.com
) 5210-Cardinal Upgradable Modem, which is ISDN- and 56-Kbps-ready, and CNF's (Morgan Town, CA,
http://www.cnfinc.com
) Digitari Universal Dockstation for No
tebooks, which provides connectivity for notebook computers from a variety of vendors.
Winner of the
Best Connectivity Software
award was
IBM's
(Armonk, NY,
http://www.hursley.ibm.com
)
MQSeries commercial messaging middleware
, which provides reliable data transfer between distributed applications.
Finalists were
Nterprise, from Exodus Technologies (Bellevue, WA,
http://www.exodustech.com
), which delivers NT and Unix applications on a Unix workstation, and Sequel Technologies' (Bellevue, WA,
http://www.sequeltech.com
) Sequel Net Access Manager, which enables network administrators to manage their Internet usage.
Octopus Technologies'
(Yardley, PA,
http://www.octopustech.com
)
Octopus for Windows NT
, which offers real-time server and data protection, won for
Best Utility
. The
finalists were
Acceleration Software International's (Seattle, WA,
http://www.accelerationsw.com
) Superfassst Windows acceleration software and Trend Micro's (Cupertino, CA,
http://www.antivirus.com
) ScanMail antivirus program for Microsoft Exchange Server.
Best Peripheral
winner was
Seagate's
(Scotts Valley, CA,
http://www.seagate.com
) fast
Cheetah hard drive
. Peripheral
finalists were
ViewSonic's (Walnut, CA,
http://www.viewsonic.com
) PV140 ViewPanel, a 14-inch active-matrix LCD monitor, and Delorme's (Freeport, ME,
http://www.delorme.com
) spiffy Tripmate GPS receiver/software bundle.
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TI's Extensa notebook packs many features into a 5.1-pound package.
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Xircom's Ethernet 10/100 Adapter suppports the 32-bit CardBus standard.
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Office 97's new print-preview features should save a few trees.
Office 97 Wins Best of Comdex
