This Article originally appeared in
Svoboda's Home and Small Business Review
Common Sense Computing
Janurary, 1996

Retro Computing - Looking Back

Tracking the Trends - 1995 & 1996

by William R. Stocking

Internet, Internet, Internet - from the pages of Byte Magazine, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal to talk shows, to TV specials the Internet keeps floating to the top of the news. Why the hype, why the rush, what's the fuss? The big computer story of 1995 was definitely the Internet if somewhat overshadowed at times by the millions spent on Windows '95 hype. More about the Internet and it's significance to you in the next two or three issues of Home and Small Business Review.

For a complete rundown on the hot hardware and software products of 1995 I'd suggest looking at the December and January issues of Byte, PC Magazine and PC World. Each has its own version of the "Top 1001 products for 1995." Remember, a magazine can give a rave review to a product that has absolutely no place in your current business environment - Magazines are in the business of selling magazines and pleasing advertisers. That being said, if a product shows up near the top of each magazine's list and you are in need of such a product, then take the recommendations seriously.

STATES OF THE ART

The leading edge, (translate: "Bleeding Edge"), of home and office computing systems is typified by the IBM "Ultimate Gamer" Aptiva which uses a Pentium 133 MHZ processor, has 16 MB RAM, 3.4 Gigabytes of Hard disk, a six-speed CD-ROM, 16-Bit Wavetable sound board, two 30 watt stereo speakers with sub-woofer, 3-D graphics card, 28.8 modem, full MPEG video and a 17" monitor. This ultimate multimedia monster retails for around $5000.

Do you need all of the above to run a good office? Probably not. The truth is that most office applications require far less computing power than typical multimedia entertainment software. (Would I like to own the "Ultimate Gamer"? That's a different matter!)

At the bottom end of today's hardware/software systems we find machines equipped with AMD and Cyrix DX4's running at 80 to 120 MHZ selling for less than $1000 with monitor and Windows 3.11. This would have been a "dream machine" two years ago, and now represents a great value if RAM is bumped up to 16 Megabytes.

STATE OF THE SOFTWARE ART

The big names in this arena were Netscape and Windows 95. For those of you asleep in 95, Netscape is an Internet "World Wide Web" browser that runs on both Windows and MacIntosh platforms. If you don't know something about Win 95, then you're probably six feet under!

Another big software story of 95 was IBM's purchase of Lotus and shortly thereafter a new version of AmiPro called WordPro. This new word processor allows users to do group editing of documents. IBM wanted Lotus primarily for Lotus Notes, a "groupware" product that fits well in their corporate strategy. Needless to say, the Lotus Suite of products soon started showing up bundled with IBM retail computers - quite a great deal.

In a surprise move, Novell put the WordPerfect Office portion of the company they bought just a year ago on the selling block. The part of WordPerfect being sold includes all the word processing products, QuatroPro spreadsheet, WordPerfect Presentations. I hope WordPerfect finds a home with a creative company willing to concentrate on WordPerfect's traditional strengths: the worlds best line of word-smithing products along with the world's best customer support - It would be a real shame if WordPerfect ends up being another Beta-max!

Info-Central personal information manager, WordPerfect Works and the other WordPerfect Mainstreet home products will remain with Novell. GroupWise, the WordPerfect E-Mail, Scheduling, etc. "GroupWare" product along with Informs, Envoy and Soft Solutions will also remain with Novell as cornerstones of Novell's networking solutions.

CD ROMs are everywhere. $19.95 will buy you a package of 10 loaded with games and various types of shareware. For business use, CD ROMs with millions of names, addresses and phone numbers are available for as little as $50.

TAPE BACKUP AND HARD DRIVES

Tape backup units dropped to less than half of last year's prices. A month ago, I bought an Iomega 800 megabyte backup unit for less than $160, retail. A similar capacity unit two years ago would have cost $600 or more. No more excuses for not having complete backup procedures! Low capacity 250 and 350 megabyte units can't even be found anymore. 3-M Company introduced the Travan series of high capacity tapes to cover 800 to 3200 megabyte storage needs. This new product does the job fast and quietly when coupled with the Colorado and Iomega tape decks.

The same thing happened to hard drives that happened to tape drives: plummeting prices, higher capacity. The year started with 550 megabyte units selling at $275 and ended with 850 megabyte units at $175 retail. That's a drop from $.50 a megabyte to $.20 a megabyte!

PRINTERS

Score another one for the color inkjet. A year ago the quality was miserable and the speed was slow beyond belief, but people still bought. Products have gotten much better on both counts, and most stores carry the special inkjet paper needed for best quality. If you do a lot of charts, graphs and overheads for presentations, then it is time to consider one of the better inkjet units, ($500 to $1400), to supplement the laser printer you still need for top quality letters and everything else. If you can't afford a good inkjet, don't bother, it will only make your business look unprofessional. The market leaders are still Hewlett Packard and Canon.

Laser printers have just about stopped their decline in price, but you will still get more printer for your money this year. New 5L and 5P models from Hewlett Packard lead the pack. The top loading 5L follows the trend setting, if not hot selling, Brother units in allowing very easy paper changing through a "hopper" in the top of the unit. This type of printer is ideal for the single user workstation. The price leaders in the less than $400 area are OKI, Panasonic, Brother and Lexmark.

FUTURE CASTING - THE ROAD AHEAD

Apple may actually get a new lease on life because of Windows 95. Win 95 does much of what Apple's MacIntosh has been able to do for years but still doesn't quite do it as well. The irony is that the hardware costs for Win 95 are just as much as Mac- Intosh hardware or more. The "IBM PC Compatible" world is now split into FIVE different operating systems: DOS, Windows 3.11, OS-2, Windows 95 and Windows NT. The MacIntosh may start looking very good to many who are frustrated with all the upgrade ballyhoos in the PC world and simply want to do a day's work efficiently. Apple has been working very hard to make their product "fit" better into the rest of the business world, and it shows in newer products and pricing.

Speculation: Apple could and should buy WordPerfect from Novell. Several WordPerfect products already run on MacIntosh computers and Apple really needs strong office products to gain a bigger foothold in the office market. However, I don't think this will happen.

Another logical suitor for WordPerfect office products would be Hewlett Packard - they are already packaging some WordPerfect's products with their new retail computers and the current President of Novell was recently a top executive at Hewlett Packard, so there are some strong ties and partnering agreements between the two companies.

Apple's Power PC has several things going for it. In addition to running MacIntosh programs at blazing speeds, It can run DOS and Window's programs, though a little slowly. The biggest surprise is that it runs Microsoft's advanced Windows NT software better that any of the Intel Pentium processors!

Intel: These people should be worried. Microsoft's next generation Windows NT runs not just on the Power PC but on several other processor families as well!

Accounting systems: The big news in heavy-duty accounting systems is not Windows, but Client-Server technology. Large accounting applications using traditional LAN technology really start bogging down with more than 10 to 20 users. That's why large companies are still running accounting and transaction processing on mainframes. Client-Server technology splits processing between the LAN server and workstations. Thus, mainframe accounting applications supporting hundreds of users can be scaled down to run on this type of PC-based LAN. (This is a very simplistic explanation of a subject that has volumes written about it.)

Novell: They should worry also. While Client-Server technology runs with some degree of success on Novell's Netware, it requires a degree of technical expertise that most small and medium sized business can't afford. In the last few years, Novell has concentrated on designing products best suited for the large and very large enterprise.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's NT Server software was designed from the ground up to serve businesses lacking technical know-how. Though you may have to buy more hardware to run an equivalent NT Server, it is much easier to set up and administer than Novell's Netware. What's a couple thousand up front for additional hardware compared to costs of frequent services from a Certified Netware Engineer at $110 to $150 per hour? If I earned my living as a CNE, I would seriously think about my career options and get trained on NT Server.

Is 1996 going to be The Microsoft year? At this point with the future success of Windows 95 and NT Server pretty much assured and with Microsoft Word and Excel dominating the office applications arena, it certainly looks that way. But, 1996 has just begun and the speed of technological evolution can change many things quickly.

Will Captain Billy Micro succeed in his plan for world domination or will his plans be foiled by the un-ruly "Freeware Raiders" of the Internet? Stay tuned for "Captain Billy vs the Internet" starting next month.

(William Stocking is President of First Business Systems, Ltd. an Information Management Consultant to businesses of all sizes. He has written over 60 articles on business computing. He also publishes a monthly electronically delivered newsletter: PC ADVISOR. He can be reached at http://willsoxs@tezcat.com or on CompuServe @ 72712,2247, or by old fashioned means at 312-486-1171. He can be faxed at 312-486-4910.)

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