RAndY's RumOR RaG December 1992 DIGITAL IMAGING As a professional photographer, I have a great interest in digital imaging. Many people think it strange that I have two businesses - professional photography and computer sales. I tell them that this is where silver meets silicon. Anyway, for over 20 years I've used Hasselblad cameras. They're made in Sweden (lenses in Germany) and they are the Rolls Royce of photo equipment. When I started seeing digital cameras like the Canon Xapshot and the PhotoMan, I wondered why this technology could not be applied to conventional photo equipment. The Hasselblad uses a system of removable film magazines which allow the photographer to switch between color and black-and-white, for example. Well, I just read in a photographic journal that Hasselblad will soon be releasing a digital camera magazine which will attach just like any other film magazine. It will have a CCD (charge coupled device) area array with a resolution of 2000,2000 pixels. Unfortunately, it connects to a Macintosh via a SCSI cable. The array can be used with flash and it takes 10-15 seconds to transfer the image to the Mac after exposure. Yeah, I know that Nikon has had an attachment for photographing directly to disk, but the equipment is cumbersome (to say the least) and you're still stuck with 35mm level hardware. If it works via SCSI, I would assume that it can also work with a PC. I sure hope so, although the price will likely be astronomical. What does this mean? Until now, digital imaging has either required a photographic print , negative, or transparency (slide) run through a scanner. Another alternative is to use one of the digital cameras available, but they are all oriented toward the amateur market with fixed-focus lenses and built-in flash. Now, professional photographic equipment will have the capability of producing first generation images with exposure and focus controls. --------------- NEWS IN YER FACE If you follow the RaG, you know that I've had Sierra's Pinball for Windows on order ever since it was announced last spring in their self-serving magazine. I've gotten delay after delay and the ship date keeps getting extended. They're now saying February of 1993 for shipment. Dammit, these companies make me mad that advertise vaporware. --------------- Aldus has announced that they will support the Photo CD format in PageMaker, FreeHand, Persuasion, and other products. On the Macintosh side of things, Aldus Fetch will be the first PhotoCD compatible product. --------------- Microsoft attempted to demonstrate how Windows NT can be trusted for use with your important applications during their Windows on Wall Street show. The demo didn't work. At the Comdex announcement of their database Access, the demo crashed. Borland's Philippe Kahn made a point of mentioning this during his speech. --------------- Due out by the end of November is WordPerfect for Windows Version 5.2. I reported on this last month, but details are now more plentiful. Button bars similar to Word for Windows will be included (does that mean tiny, little, unintelligible things?) as well as Grammatik 5 (ugh), ATM, and new macros for replacing specific formatting codes and adding bar codes to documents. Upgrades to existing users will be $39. Look for a review next month. --------------- It is predicted that next year will see 1.2 million CD-ROM drives shipped. IBM is even suggesting bundling OS/2 with a SCSI CD-ROM drive for $300 (available to developers only). --------------- Datastorm has in interim release for Procomm Plus for Windows available to registered users. Among the 41 fixes and enhancements are fixes to Zmodem, Kermit, and CIS-B, improvements to the dialing directory and terminal emulation modes, and enhancements to the ASPECT script language. --------------- MediaVision has plans to release a line of multimedia products for the Macintosh. Look for a Mac version of their CDPC and the excellent Pro Audio Spectrum 16 card which will upgrade the Mac to 16-bit audio. --------------- What's this I hear about someone going to release a new program called the Dan Quayle Spalling Tutor? I think it will be bundled with Neil Bush's "Teaching Your Child To Save". --------------- Practical Peripherals has come up with a unique product. FAXME is a cartridge that plugs into an HP LaserJet. Just plug in your phone line and you've got a receive-only fax machine. This cartridge requires 1M of printer memory and supports fax machine features like time/calendar notations, Station ID, etc.. Look for a street price in the area of $200. --------------- I talked last month about rising DRAM prices due to a preliminary ruling by the Commerce Department that South Korea was dumping DRAM. Estimates are that prices will rise by as much as 30%. Among those manufacturers accused of DRAM dumping by the government are Samsung, Hyundai, and GoldStar. --------------- Intel has stopped development of the V3 digital video interactive processing chip which was supposed to replace the existing i750 processor, working instead on a less expensive DVI- compatible chip. --------------- Look for Cyrix to unveil a Pentium-clone processor in 1993. Planned for unveiling at Comdex is a 16/33 486SX (upgrade for 16MHz 386DX priced at $399), and a 20/40 486SX upgrade for 20MHz 386DX. Both will work with an 80387 coprocessor. --------------- Mustang Software, the BBS guys, will be releasing Qmodem-Pro in the first quarter of 1993. This differs from most communications programs in that it enables users to receive and send E-mail messages regardless of the originating E-mail source. Other features will include fax and documentation creation capabilities which will save users' long distance costs. An upgrade from Qmodem version 5 will be $35. --------------- My favorite candidate for a disk frisbee, Stacker, has released version 3 of their popular software. New features include a set of real-time gauges showing disk capacity, compression ratio, and fragmentation levels. The Tuner feature lets you fine-tune your system by achieving a balance between speed and space. De- installation of Stacker can be done quickly and you've also got two levels password protection. Stacker can now compress bigger drives and is compatible with standard disk drives, utilities, applications, and memory managers. My advice is to buy a bigger hard drive and avoid kludgy software like this. --------------- MicroHelp has released a program called The Uninstaller, a software program that guides the user through deinstalling a Windows application. --------------- Beta testing continues on PCTools for Windows. It's scheduled to be shipped in the first quarter of 93 and will be priced consistently with the DOS product. --------------- WORDPERFECT NEWS By the time you read this, WordPerfect Presentations should be on the shelves. Look for a review in the January issue. For the first 90 days, when you buy a full retail package, they're packaging a Sound Blaster with the software. Now 8-bit sound is pretty sad, but I suppose it's better than nothing. All of the specs for WordPerfect Presentations look pretty good for a DOS-based graphics program, but everyone is looking toward the Windows version (due out in early 1993). Also due out by the time you read this is WordPerfect for Windows Version 5.2. Unfortunately, the package will ship with Grammatik 5 and will be available from a pull-down menu. I hate grammar checkers - they're for people who didn't pay attention in the fourth grade. They're bundling ATM with the package and are including some fonts created by WPCorp. I wish they had used TrueType instead. There will be some new macros and new button bars with specific options for Generate, Font, Page, Layout, Tools, and Graphics. A new indexing feature called QuickFinder lets you build indexes for groups of files and speed up searching. You can define which files to index and then search any index by name or specific words, combinations of words, words by proximity, and even use Boolean operators. The software is also mail-enabled with support for WordPerfect Mail for Windows cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail, DaVinci e-mail, and any program that supports the VIM or MAPI standards. WordPerfect for Windows will finally become an OLE client. Gee, maybe drag-and-drop will finally work. Another feature is called QuickMenu. Just click the right menu anywhere on a Button Bar and you can choose editing options without wading through a menu tree or you can switch between button bars for quick access to a variety of features. There will also be a graphical installation, conversion for Word for Windows 2 and Ami Pro 2, an enhanced RTF conversion to improve DDE with Excel 4, improved Speller dialog and bitmap rotation in 90 degree increments. They've also included better support for Windows printer drivers, allowing multiple paper sizes and orientations in the same document. They say that this change "virtually eliminates" the "Updating Printer Information" message that has been so annoying. I sure hope so. Also included is an updated envelope macro that has been enhanced to work with Windows printer drivers and now has the option to select from multiple addresses and to position postal barcodes. --------------- HAVE IT BOTH WAYS OK, this is for all of you that think the Macintosh is really something - or that they have something we PC'ers don't. Infiniti Systems is marketing ANDOR EX, a Motorola 68HC000-16 based board which fits inside your PC. This board is compatible with all software which runs on SE, Plus, and Classic Macs. Just press both SHIFT keys to toggle between the two and you can also view portions of both PC and Mac screen simultaneously. It can even be set up to run under Windows or OS/2. It is possible to exchange files between the two formats with an included utility. You can even multitask PC and Mac applications with some limitations. The company claims that ANDOR EX will run twice as fast as a Mac Classic or SE. Reformatting of the hard drive is not necessary. You create a DOS file (1MB-30MB in size) to store your Mac files. When in the Mac environment, these files are seen and treated as normal Mac hard disks. Any format of hard drive will work. You use your existing PC mouse, monitor, and floppy drives. Printing is done through and AppleTalk compatible RS-422 port using the same printers you'd use on a Mac and additional software will let you use your PC printer. ANDOR EX has two SCSI ports for external drives, scanners, and CD drives. You can also connect to an AppleTalk, PhoneNet, or similar network. You're on your own for memory, but it will only take 4 megs which doesn't cost that much today. How much? I'd guess you'd see a street price of about $800. --------------- MAINTENANCE RELEASES Microsoft has made available maintenance releases for their two of their most popular products. Excel 4.0a adds support for Allways formatting and fixes some minor problems. Word for Windows 2.0b includes a much improved WordPerfect document converter, the ability to remove all on-screen elements so you can work in a character-based environment (YES), and a services directory and listing of top questions and answers. For more information or to get your update, call Microsoft at 1-800-426-9400 (say HI to Bill for me). --------------- QUICKTIME FOR WINDOWS About the time that Microsoft releases their own Windows video standard (Audio Visual Interleave - AVI), Apple will release QuickTime for Windows. The new compression feature of QuickTime will follow the initial release by about 90 days. The initial version will also lack an editor. However, the file format, user interface, programming interface, and function and procedure calls are all identical to QuickTime for the Mac. QuickTime for Windows will offer an internal clock that provides scalable timing as with QuickTime 1.08, where frames are dropped to keep up with the audio. Explained an Apple executive, "When you make a movie on a very fast PC and then play it back on a slow one, it will not lose its synch". --------------- PHOTO CD EXPERIENCE A friend of mine who works in the local camera store was recently given a coupon to shoot a roll of film and get a free PhotoCD made. Since he doesn't have a CD-ROM drive in his computer, he brought it to me and we played with it one evening. The disk looks different from a conventional CD because it's gold. Kodak says this is so that it can be written to more than once. You can do a directory on the disk just like any other CD, but the files have strange extensions. To use the images in any application, you'll need Kodak's PhotoCD Access ($39.95) or something that will read a PhotoCD. The point I'm trying to make is that just by itself, you cannot read the images with a computer. The jewel case has thumbnails of each of the photographs and the reproduction on these was quite good. I'd judge them to be about 3/4 inch square. They're big enough to see what's on the disk and each frame is numbered. I used Corel's Mosaic to get an onscreen thumbnail view of the images. You'd better have a fast computer and CD drive, because it's not real fast at displaying the images. The onscreen thumbnails were very good, though. The next step is to select the image you want and then convert it to a bitmap format. You then have a choice of three resolutions. I picked the lowest resolution (the highest was something like 1200x1200) and imported the image into Corel PhotoPaint. Keeping in mind that these images were created using a point-and-shoot dummy camera, the quality was impressive. Once in PhotoPaint, it was easy to use the tools to manipulate the image. Since I don't have a 24-bit VGA card, the image was dithered. My friend took the ZIPped image home on disk (1.8 Meg unZIPped)sand printed it on his HP III LaserJet. The quality was outstanding. I hope Kodak can promote this thing and get the public to understand what's going on. They'll have to get the price of the TV viewers down to a reasonable level, but there's enormous potential here. Price for processing, printing, and putting a 24-exposure roll on CD is about $22, so the price is very reasonable. Next Spring, Kodak has plans to put images from larger formats (up to 8x10 negatives and transparencies) on CD. I should also note that Kodak has image editing software available called PhotoEdge for a suggested list price of $139. Both Access and PhotoEdge run out of Windows and a DOS version of Access is available as are Mac versions. --------------- VENTURA PUBLISHER 4.1 I've been a fan of Ventura Publisher since the GEM days, but the Windows versions just caused too many problems with crashes and general instability. I had abandoned Ventura for PageMaker. This newest version of an old favorite is enough to get me back. You'll still have to customize your width table and make it a part of whatever style sheet you power up with - otherwise Ventura spends too much time determining your system fonts. Once done, the speed of loading is excellent. The speed of loading without the previously mentioned trick is still good. During program startup, you're greeted with a very colorful and lively logo screen (lively for traditionally stodgy Ventura). You're then greeted with a clear screen with two rows of buttons running across the top. Using these buttons, you can access virtually any feature of Ventura. Buttons at the bottom and right side let you turn pages and switch quickly between enlarged, normal, and reduced views. Overall, the program seems very fast compared to previous versions. Remembering what the buttons do will take a little time, but once you become adjusted, you can work much more efficiently. When you select between Frame, Text, and Tag modes, some of the buttons change depending upon which mode you're in. In previous Windows versions, those damned boxes for tags and modes and stuff were either gone when you needed them or in the way when you didn't want them there. This double button bar idea is an excellent solution to this problem. If you like the old style, you can have that too. The previously separate scan and separator modules are now included. I am unable to test them as I don't have a scanner. The addition of frame tags is welcome. Also a great plus is the ability to set tabs, margins, indents, and outdents with a mouse. They've done an excellent job on this one and there are plenty of example files to help you get going. This is one upgrade that's worth the price. --------------- PANTHER I've taken it in the chops repeatedly for not talking much about DR-DOS. Users tell me it's a great operating system and devoted followers swear by it. I prefer to swear at it. Anyway, you may be interested to know that Novell is working on DR-DOS 7, code named "Panther". It is scheduled for release in the first half of 1993. Of course it will have networking capabilities, but will also feature a "Windows-like" graphical interface called ViewMax. Other features in the current beta version include a memory manager called MemoryMax; a task manager called TaskMax; an editor; a security log-in; and recover undelete features. They're also working on enabling DR-DOS to talk directly to peer-to-peer NetWare Lite servers as well as NetWare "heavy" servers through a common client. --------------- SOUND STATS When people are interested in buying a sound card, one of the frequent questions revolves around how much hard drive space is taken up when you sample something. Here's a chart showing different sampling rates for both mono and stereo as well as 8-bit and 16-bit. I hope this helps. The figures represent the amount of hard drive space needed for one minute of digital audio sampling. MONO STEREO 16-bit 8-bit 16-bit 8-bit ================================================================ 44.1KHz 5.28MB 2.64MB 10.56MB 5.28MB 22.05KHz 2.54MB 1.27MB 5.28MB 2.54MB 11.025KHz 1.27MB .0635MB 2.54MB 1.27MB Under the heading of interesting information, remember that VOC files are limited to 8-bit and cannot exceed 16MB in size. --------------- PENTIUM DELAY Intel is still having problems getting the 586 chip (oops) working correctly. Seems the chip still runs too hot at 66MHz and Intel is trying to sell vendors on mounting a fan on a small board to blow air over the chip. Meanwhile, Intel general manager and vice president Dave House said the company plans to bring out the Pentium at 60MHz and 66MHz speeds next year. (Why two speeds so close together?) Software must be recompiled to take full advantage of the chip's features and performance. Microsoft is working with Intel using Intel's compiler. Use of the new compiler is necessary because the Pentium can execute two instructions in a single clock cycle. --------------- TELL ME WHY Can anybody tell me why every Windows program has to copy the Common Dialog Dynamic Link Library? How tough is it to check to see if it already exists or needs to be replaced by a newer one? And while I'm on the soapbox, what ever happened to keyboard templates? We used to get them with software, but now everyone is using quick reference cards or some other cheap method. --------------- ACCESS Have you ever tried figuring out a relational database management system? I started with dBase III+ and quickly gave up. Paradox was much easier to work with, but there was still too much work involved as well as some programming experience. I've been anxious to see Paradox for Windows, but Borland is having great difficulty getting it to market. Microsoft has finally fleshed out their Windows lineup with a superb relational database management system. We're all skeptical with Versions #1 of any Microsoft software, but they've been working on this since Ansa released the original Paradox back in 1985. They've done an outstanding job. Look for a basic installation to take about 9 megs of hard drive space and closer to 12MB for the full dose. Existing databases in dBase, Paradox, and Btrieve formats can be directly imported into Access. You can also import fixed length and delimited ASCII files. It's quite easy to either import an existing file or create a new database. Creating forms is very easy and mostly intuitive, and the speed of queries is excellent. Relational database management systems are very complex products and I don't have the full understanding of how it all works. The bundled applications are excellent, especially the order entry application. Most relational database management systems store data in separate files. Data is stored in one file, forms in another, etc. Access saves your database in one relatively compact file. The advantage of saving everything in one file is that all your forms, queries, joins, etc. are in one file and transporting your database is much easier. Microsoft has a new help feature besides their now common Wizards (which are also included in Access). Cue Cards guide you through a multitude of procedures. Cue Cards stay on the screen and let you either read the procedure or have Access walk you through it. Cue Cards are a nice innovation. Aggressive pricing on the introduction of Access are sure to anger the folks at Borland. If you've been looking for a Windows- based relational database management system, Access is very worthy of your consideration. --------------- V.FAST SPECIFICATION Be careful about buying a modem advertising V.Fast compatibility. The CCITT is not expected to complete the specification until late 1993 or early 1994. Some modem manufacturers have jumped the gun by announcing proprietary products based upon their understanding of the specification. As happened with early V.32 modems, none of these modems are compatible with each other at higher speeds (but manufacturers plan to provide an upgrade path once the specification is written in stone). V.Fast will provide the highest data transmission rate possible over analog circuits (dial-up or leased lines). Once the spec is complete, synchronous data can be transferred at rates from 19.2Kbps to 28.8Kbps, and up to an additional 4 to 1 asynchronous data compression rate. ================================= DISCLAIMER RAndY's RumOR RaG is published on a monthly basis by AINSWORTH COMPUTER SERVICES and is available on various local BBS's, GEnie, and America Online as well as in Modem News. In case anyone cares, RAndY's RumOR RaG is produced on a DTK 386-33 with 16 megs of memory, Cyrix Fasmath co-processor, ATI VGA Wonder+ card (1 MB), 105 MB Toshiba IDE hard drive, Teac 1.2 MB and 1.44 MB floppies, Hitachi 3750 CD ROM drive hooked to a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 card, Sceptre SVGA display, Microsoft mouse, WordPerfect for Windows and transmitted through a US Robotics HST Dual Standard modem. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Comments should be addressed to Ainsworth Computer Services on GEnie, America Online, phone, analog mail, or whatever method makes you feel good. AINSWORTH COMPUTER SERVICES 605 W. Wishkah Aberdeen, WA 98520-6031 (206) 533-6647 GEnie Address: RAG America Online: RumOR RaG