Spring is around the corner, and the Orchids and Onions are sprouting in Dr. Pournelle's garden.
Jerry Pournelle
I am weary of writing about adventures
, and even more weary of having them. Fortunately, although there have been adventures aplenty this month, I can spare you the tales. This column gives my annual User's Choice Awards plus the annual Orchids and Onions parade.
Ground rules: since it is impossible to see and use everything, I can't possibly pretend that I know what's "best." What I can do is tell you about programs and equipment that I consider good enough. In most cas
es, this will be stuff I use myself; and since I can get almost anything I want, this u
sually means I use it in preference to anything else. In all cases, though, these awards are subjective, reflecting my opinions and recommendations.
Second, since I consider a year to end in December instead of in time for the January issue, I present my awards in April. That's still the way it is.
So here we go.
A large half-rotten Onion to Congress, the FCC, and the industry in general for making such a mess of the HDTV standards. We have the technology and more; we need only standards. There are arguments for and against all the proposals, but there has to be a decision. Or let the market decide. But to keep things bottled up while the regulators don't decide is plain silly.
A small Orchid and a large Onion to Sun, both for Java. Java was a good idea, and trying to make it standard is even better, and deserves an Orchid. However, suing Microsoft over Java turns out to do
more harm than good, and gets the Onion. The first result of this was that Netscape took the Java logo off their product. Now that neither major browser even pretends to standard Java, it's probably the end of Java as a standard at all.
It may have been inevitable that Java would fragment into incompatible flavors, but the lawsuit pretty well ensured that. It made Java developers choose between the "pure" stuff with its limitations or the Windows version with development tools and a way of reaching some 90 percent of Web users. It does not seem like a difficult choice.
An enormous Onion to Ralph Nader, with garlic clusters to everyone involved in bringing him into our industry. I don't think we need government, or lawyers, or both, in the computer industry; but even if we do, what need have we of a consumer advocate who doesn't understand computers and has never exhibited the slightest interest in them? I am adding to Pournelle's law: companies that need government to help move their products are in t
rouble; but companies that need "consumer advocates"to compete are ready for Kevorkian.
A big orchid to Borland for Delphi.
When memory and disk storage were limited, and machines were not very fast, it was important that programs be written in languages that generated fast, small, and resource-efficient code. Add to that portability to several platforms and processors, and a huge number of programmers adopted C.
This was unfortunate, because while C has the merit of portable and reasonably efficient code, it is not very readable, and it doesn't do strong type and range checking. C will compile nonsense if you write nonsense, and debugging programs is a significant part of writing them.
By contrast, highly structured languages such as Pascal don't need a lot of debugging; or rather, the debugging takes place as part of compilation. Pascal is fussy about types and ranges. Once you get the program compiled and running, much of the debugging has been done. Unfortunately, Pascal and big brother
Modula-2 did not generate tight and resource-efficient code that ran fast.
Modern machines have resources out the ears. Memory is nearly free. Processor speed is so fast that we benchmark differences in seconds. Disk space is under 50 bucks a gigabyte. It is far more important that programs be out and running fast than that they be resource-efficient.
Delphi is the old Turbo Pascal with a number of multimedia features. It's every bit good enough for many professional applications, and I guarantee you that programs written in Delphi will be out the door quicker and much easier to maintain than the same programs written in C. Many cheers to Borland for fighting the good fight; and we can hope that more programmers will begin to see the light.
Two cheers to Microsoft for delaying Memphis, otherwise known as Windows 98, while they do some more work on it. From experience with the beta versions, we like Windows 98, and I suspect it will get a User's Choice Award next year; meanwhile, a small Orchid fo
r Microsoft for waiting until they can fix some beta-discovered problems.
Big Orchids to both Microsoft and Macromedia for their attention to Web development tools. I was ready to give the Chaos Manor User's Choice Award for Web tools to FrontPage 98, which is pretty nifty; but then Macromedia brought out Dreamweaver, which is even better.
Dreamweaver is better because it writes cleaner HTML and because it knows how to add new stuff without rewriting all the old code. FrontPage 98 is useful, and many professional Web designers like it a lot; but it does tend to be something of a busybody when it comes to rewriting your code. Dreamweaver is just enough better that it gets the User's Choice Award for 1997.
The most useful Windows utilities of the year
are Zip Magic and FreeSpace, both from Mijenix. Both do things you want done: Zip Magic makes dealing with ZIP and CAB files simple and painless. FreeSpace does selective file compression to create more disk space, useful on a desktop and vital
in a laptop. Try both. You'll love them.
Not far behind and definitely on the Orchid list: Golden Bow Systems' Vopt, the best disk defrag utility I know of for DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95; and Executive Software's Diskeeper 3.0, the only disk defrag utility to consider for Windows NT Workstation or Server. All four utilities get User's Choice Awards.
Two User's Choice Awards for video boards: for all-around general-purpose work, the Number Nine Revolution 3D, which works with Windows 95 and NT, is fast enough in both 2-D and 3-D for games, and has good enough color resolution and good steady line definition for text work.
For high-end graphics work, Intergraph's RealiZm II boards have no peers. We have tried a lot of them, and Chaos Manor graphics associate David Em has both the skills and the tasks to stress video boards to their limits; and we are agreed, Intergraph boards are outstanding.
A few months ago, I wrote about the Avant Stellar keyboard from Creative Vision Technologies (
http://www.cvtinc.com/
). It's a great keyboard, and I still recommend it.
But the User's Choice Award for keyboards goes hands down to Ortek Technologies (their U.S. branch is called KBtek America) for their MCK-142 Pro. The MCK-142 has the heft and feel and keyclick of the old Northgate OmniKey. It has function keys across the top and on the side as well. Above the keyboard are 24 keys you can program to do almost anything, including address and signature, and opening programs with parameters; essentially, any text string you like at the touch of a button. The MCK-142 feels good and is as solid as a rock. It doesn't have the "Windows" key, but then that's nothing more than control-escape anyway.
My Northgate OmniKey keyboards are old, and several have broken down. Now I don't worry about that so much. If you li
ked the Northgate OmniKey, you will like the Ortek MCK-142.
The most useful production software of the year
was Adaptec's Easy CD Creator Deluxe. This works with Ricoh, Philips, and Yamaha drives to make CD-ROMs as well as audio CDs. (I'm sure it will work with other makes of drives, but those are the ones I have worked with.) It works easily and painlessly, and can work with CD Recordable (CD-R) and CD Rewritable (CD-RW) drives. It has become well-nigh indispensable here and wins my User's Choice Award for production software.
A User's Choice Award for 3Com/Palm Computing's PalmPilot.
PalmPilot and Apple's Newton are mature PDAs; I like PalmPilot better because it is smaller.
I find I have learned to use the "graffiti" symbols, and I can make notes rapidly with it. It keeps appointments, checklists, expense accounts, telephone numbers, and random notes. I have taken to carrying it on the trail when I go hiking in the hills with my dog, and while I wouldn't use it to write long parag
raphs of notes, it's certainly good enough for memos. Battery life is good, and the interface is good. I believe I have finally found a PDA I will carry.
Toshiba's Libretto 50CT gets a User's Choice Award for palmtops. This one is a bit larger than the Windows CE machines, which means the keyboard is more or less usable. I put it that way because I really am a touch-typist, and 50 years of habits are hard to break.
To properly use a palmtop, including the Libretto, you need to be good at two-finger typing. Some palmtop users have developed a really odd technique using two fingers of the right hand and the left thumb to do shift and space. It looks odd, but they are quite fast at it. As for me, I very much miss the old Gateway HandBook. Still, the Libretto, which reminds me a lot of the Atari Portfolio, is small enough to fit in a briefcase or shoulder bag. The keyboard, while too small, is still large enough to use; and the screen is readable.
I recall one night in a Moscow bar enviously watching
journalist Tom Bethell write an entire column pounding on an Atari Portfolio with two fingers. Ever since, I have wished I had a system I could carry in my pocket that I could do a couple of thousand words with. The Libretto is the first one as good as the Portfolio that I've seen since Atari imploded.
I eagerly give my Compaq Armada 4160T the laptop User's Choice Award. I have carried that Armada in four countries, on airplanes and ships, including a Navy missile destroyer. I have used it for writing in cars, hotel rooms, the ship's wardroom, and on top of a mountain; and while I could wish it were lighter, that's my only complaint. The keyboard is good, the screen is bright, the battery life is satisfactory, and the docking and "sleep" software work perfectly. There are a lot of good laptops, but this one is plenty good enough and was the most useful to me in 1997.
It's a bit harder to pick desktop hardware
, because a lot depends on what you want it for.
My User's Choice Award for all-aro
und useful desktop goes to the Compaq Professional Workstation 5000 with dual 200-MHz Pentium Pros. Regular readers will recall I've named her Princess. She runs NT 4.0 (soon to be 5.0), and I use her for almost everything: communications, graphics, Web-page design and maintenance, calculations, printing, manipulating pictures taken with my Olympus digital camera in Photoshop, and a good part of my writing. (I write my novels on an old 486 in the "monk's cell," a room without telephones and modems, and the computer is too slow for most computer games.) Princess is fast and reliable, and I don't hesitate to recommend the Compaq Professional Workstation 5000 for all but the highest-end graphics work.
I have no need for high-end graphics capabilities (e.g., animation of 3-D objects). David Em does, and he reports that for all-around utility, the most useful machine is the Intergraph TDZ 2000 with dual Pentium II chips and dual RealiZm II video-accelerator boards. On the strength of that recommendation plus s
ome personal time spent with that system, I am giving Intergraph the User's Choice Award for 1997 in the graphics workstation category. See David's report in this month's Web Exclusive for more details.
Similarly, I have two User's Choice Awards for monitors. For general all-around use, including writing, you will not find one better than the 21-inch ViewSonic PT813. That is the monitor that is attached to Princess, and I use it every day.
The size and clarity are such that I just sit in front of the system with my keyboard on an ordinary typing table adjusted to the height I like and look straight ahead. No tilting my head to use bifocals, and more important, I have just about given up using my prescription set of computer glasses, except with laptops. It's a great feeling of freedom. ViewSonic has made high-quality big monitors affordable, and if you're not using one, you're depriving yourself.
Incidentally, while artists can use much larger monitors, for writing, a 21-inch monitor is about righ
t. Adjust your word processor window so that you see a full line without swinging your head, and Bob's your uncle.
ViewSonic monitors with a Number Nine Revolution 3D graphics board are more than good enough for nearly anything I do; but for those who need absolute color fidelity, I recommend the Eizo Nanao FlexScan FX E8, also 21 inches, or their larger model if you need even more high-quality display capability. This gives a gorgeous display. Needless to say, it is rock-solid, the straight lines are truly straight, and the images are as steady as if they are painted on. If you need the very best, you will not do much better at any price, and the FX E8 gets my User's Choice Award for high-end graphics monitors.
An honorable mention goes to the ViewSonic flat-panel display, the VPA150. A flat-panel monitor meets some rather specialized needs. It's small and light, and it does not make a lot of heat.
It's not really large enough to write on, but I say that because I am spoiled by 21-inch monitors w
ith bright colors; for years, I did my work on monitors not as good as the ViewSonic flat-panel monitor. For a busy executive with a space problem, it is the answer to a prayer: good enough for daily use, yet handy enough to move out of the way when you need the desk space.
For drawing tools, you will not do better than Wacom.
My User's Choice Award goes to the ArtZ II graphics tablet. Mine has a drawing area of 6 by 8 inches. This serves as my mouse pad as well as a digitizer. It stays hooked up all the time; so long as the pen isn't brought to the pad, the machine ignores it and listens to the mouse.
When I need to draw, or when my hand is tired and I want to use the pen for a mouse, I can do that. When I draw with it, there are programs that make use of the Wacom pressure-sensitivity feature, so the harder I press, the thicker the line. The eraser works just the way a pencil eraser does.
I am no artist, but if I had to produce real artwork, I'd want the right tool; and this is it. Wacom
makes them in several sizes. I like 6 by 8 inches, but you may want a larger one, and some like them smaller.
I have always tended to use CorelDraw simply because I learned an early version, but up to now I haven't strongly recommended the program because of interface idiosyncrasies. Comes now CorelDraw 8, which is quite different. This one is easy to recommend with some enthusiasm. It wins the User's Choice Award for drawing software for 1997. For details, see David's graphics report.
One reason I like my Compaq machines is that they come with
100-Mb Ethernet. Most of my machines are only 10 Mb. Worse, half of them are on coax (thin-wire Ethernet). The other half use 10Base-T. The solution to that was the Garrett Communications Magnum H-80 Personal Hub, which has a coax connector plus six 10Base-T sockets.
Now I have the Garrett Magnum 600ES Personal Hub Plus, which operates at 100 Mb. Obviously, that has no coax slot on it; what it does have is an uplink connector that can be set to eithe
r 10 or 100 Mb as needed. The 100-Mb systems plug into the 600ES, a line goes from the 600ES to the H-80, and the 10-Mb systems are connected to the H-80. It took about 2 minutes to set up, and it all works.
If you have a small network with both 10- and 100-Mb Ethernet, you won't find a simpler or more reliable solution than to get the appropriate Garrett products, plug them in, and forget them. The Garrett Magnum 600ES Personal Hub Plus gets the User's Choice Award in networking hardware for 1997.
There are two printers of the year. First, for all-around printer productivity, get yourself an HP LaserJet 4000 TN. This won the BYTE Best of Comdex award last fall, in part because of the JetSend technology that lets peripherals talk to each other without involving you or your CPU; but I'm giving it the User's Choice Award because it is so blooming convenient.
It is easy to set up, easy to network through Ethernet, and simple to use. It is fast. It goes to sleep when not in use, so it's not heating up
the room; but it wakes up fast when it has a job to do. It has good resolution. I can print novels that look like finished work. It has three, count 'em, three paper sources, and it feeds envelopes and small-size paper well. In a word, it's hard to find anything not to like about the LaserJet 4000 TN.
I had my HP LaserJet II rebuilt into a LaserJet III; it got User's Choice Awards in both configurations and has been in use for so many years I literally can't remember when I installed it. I have finally retired it for the LaserJet 4000TN (which is both smaller and faster), and I have no doubt I'll have that printer for many years. It well deserves the User's Choice Award for the best monochrome printer of 1997.
There are a lot of color printers, and I'm not qualified to comment on high-end production-speed printers, but I can tell you about the Alps MD4000 Color Printer and Scanner that I use. It's not fast, but it makes really good-looking color prints on slick paper. The Micro-Dry process makes colo
rfast copies: I have one print I soaked in water, let dry, and hung in normal light for almost a year. It has not faded, nor did it run or wrinkle. This is unusual for a color printer, most of which use dyes that can't stand either water or sunlight.
If you need a hundred copies of a color report cover, go to Kinko's or your professional graphics shop. For that quick-and-dirty copy of a color page, or for those five color covers, or for the 20 copies of a page with one color graph in it, you will find the MD-4000 just the thing to have around the office. It gets the User's Choice Award for color utility printer.
The User's Choice Award for simulation software
goes to Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell for
Growing Artificial Societies
(Brookings, ISBN 0-262-55025-3), their first report on Sugarscape. You can find my report in the June 1997 issue or on-line at the BYTE site; if you have any interest at all in modeling social sciences or artificial life, read my report and then get their
book.
A User's Choice Award to Encyclopedia Britannica for their CD-ROM encyclopedia. It installs simply either locally or on Ethernet (mine resides permanently on a Pioneer six-pack CD-ROM changer attached to the NT Server), uses either Communicator or Internet Explorer to view its files, and is about as simple to use as the books themselves. In CD-ROM, as in book versions, Britannica is still the encyclopedia to get.
DK Publishing (
http://www.dk.com
) has published so many excellent CD-ROMs this year that I hesitate to single out any one of them; but I have no trouble at all giving the company my User's Choice Award as CD-ROM publisher of the year. Their history series is excellent, their natural science series may be even better, and in general, you can rely on their titles as being about what they claim to be.
There were a large number of really great games last year.
I greatly enjoyed Interplay's Fallout. Strategic Simulations' Imperialism is a well-paced strategy game. MicroProse Software's Civilization II was not as much better than Civilization I as I had hoped, but in a year of less strong competition, it could have been the game of the year. Origin's Wing Commander Prophecy is much closer to the original in terms of fun and sheer playability. There are upgrades of Steel Panthers, Panzer General, and other modern armored warfare games.
However, the Chaos Manor User's Choice Award for game of the year was Diablo, from Blizzard Entertainment, which plays well in both multiplayer and single-player configurations. When the boys were here for Thanksgiving, we spent a lot more time with that one than I should have. If you like that kind of game at all, you will love this one.
The first
book of the month
is Peter Kent's
Poor Richard's Web Site: Geek-Free, Commonsense Advice on Building
a Low-Cost Web Site
. Check out
http://www.poorrichard.com
for details; the title says all that's needed. The second
book of the month
is Elizabeth A. Parker's
Home Page Improvement
(IDG Books, ISBN0-7645-3083-6), another "Gee how did you do that?" Web-page book that's written in English with lots of examples. It may or may not be significant that she is married to Rich Grace, a writer whose works I have admired. In any event, I wish I had had either, or preferably both, of these books when I set out to build a Web site.
Those are my awards. For more Orchids and Onions, see the Web Exclusive section of the column.
Product Information
Alps MD-4000 Color Printer and Scanner......................$449
Alps Electric
San Jo
se, CA
Phone: 800-825-2577
Phone: 408-432-6000
Internet:
http://www.alps.com/
Armada 4160T...............................................$2999
Professional Workstation 5000...................from about $5225
Compaq Computer
Houston, TX
Phone: 800-345-1518
Phone: 281-370-0670
Internet:
http://www.compaq.com/
ArtZ II 6 x 8............................................$389.99
Wacom Technology
Vancouver, WA
Phone: 800-922-9348
Phone: 360-896-9833
Internet:
http://www.wacom.com/
CorelDraw 8.................................................$695
Corel, Inc.
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Phone: 800-772-6735
Phone: 613-728-3733
Internet:
http://www.corel.com/
Diablo....................................................$39.99
Blizzard Entertainment
Irvine, CA
Phone: 800-953-7669
Phone: 714-955-1380
Internet:
http://www.blizzard.com
Diskeeper 3.0 NT Server.....................................$399
Workstation..................................................$75
Executive Software
Glendale, CA
Phone: 800-829-6468
Phone: 818-547-2050
Internet:
http://www.execsoft.com
Dreamweaver...........................................about $499
Macromedia
San Francisco, CA
Phone: 800-326-2128
Phone: 415-252-2000
Internet:
http://www.macromedia.com/
Easy CD Creator Deluxe Edition...............................$99
Adaptec
Milpitas, CA
Phone: 800-442-7274
Phone: 408-945-8600
Internet:
http://www.adaptec.com/
Encyclopedia Britannica CD..................................$125
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
Chicago, IL
Phone: 800-747-8503
Phone: 303-743-4130
Internet:
http://www.britannica.com/
FlexScan FX E8.......................................about $2199
Eizo Nanao Technologies
Cypress, CA
Phone: 800-800-5202
Phone: 562-431-5011
Internet:
http://www.eizo.com/
FreeSpace.................................................$49.95
Zip Magic.................................................$39.95
Mijenix
Boulder, CO
Phone: 800-645-3649
Phone: 303-245-8000
Internet:
http://www.mijenix.com
HP LaserJet 4000 TN...
.....................................$2025
Hewlett-Packard
Palo Alto, CA
Phone: 800-527-3753
Internet:
http://www.hp.com/
Libretto 50CT..............................................$1299
Toshiba America Information Systems
Irvine, CA
Phone: 800-334-3445
Internet:
http://www.toshiba.com/
Magnum 600ES Personal Hub Plus..............................$995
Garrett Communications
Fremont, CA
Phone: 510-438-9071
Internet:
http://www.garrettcom.com
MCK-142 Pro...........................................about $150
KBtek America
Baldwin Park, CA
Phone: 626-855-5050
kbtek@kincyb.com
PalmPilot Professional..............
........................$369
PalmPilot Personal..........................................$249
Palm Computing, Inc.
Mountain View, CA
Phone: 800-881-7256
Phone: 408-848-5604
Internet:
http://palmpilot.3com.com/
PT813................................................about $1449
ViewSonic Corp.
Walnut, CA
Phone: 800-888-8583
Phone: 909-869-7976
Internet:
http://www.viewsonic.com/
Revolution 3D (8 MB)........................................$299
Number Nine Visual Technology
Lexington, MA
Phone: 800-438-6463
Phone: 781-674-0009
Internet:
http://www.nine.com
TDZ 2000 with RealiZm II..............................from $7300
I
ntergraph
Huntsville, AL
Phone: 205-730-2000
Internet:
http://www.intergraph.com/ics/
Vopt.........................................................$40
Golden Bow Systems
San Diego, CA
Phone: 800-284-3269
Phone: 619-298-9349
Internet:
http://www.goldenbow.com/
Jerry Pournelle is a science fiction writer and BYTE's senior contributing editor. You can contact him on the Internet or BIX at
jerryp@bix.com.Visit
Chaos Manor at
http://home.earthlink.net/~jerryp/
.
Good Enough Is Good Enough
