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A picture is worth a thousandwords.

Especially whenyour monitor showsall of them The ADI MicroScan™ 17X monitor is a concise answer to the problem of viewing oversized documents. It easily pivots from landscape to portrait mode — just click on the portrait driver

icon, rotate the monitor and press the degauss button. You can view an entire legal or A4 page without scrolling or printing — ideal when you need to edit a lot of text. It also accommodates oversized spreadsheets, databases, and dozens of other applications.

Super-Large Display... Any way you look at it. ' EE

H H The MicroScan 17X is like getting a 21 display for the price of a 17 monitor. Its vertical viewing H H area in portrait mode is larger than any 17 or even 21 monitor on the market. And to make a long

story short, it saves you countless hours of scrolling through oversized documents.

High-Quality Feature Set... Any way you look at it.

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The MicroScan 17X has lots of other things to write home about. Like a 17 CRT display with a 16

diagonal viewing area, 1024 x 768 resolution, flicker-free 76Hz performance, .28mm dot pitch, digital and microprocessor controls, even Plug-n-Play compatibility. And it's all backed by a three-year warranty.

This is a feature set you won't find in competitively priced products. And since ADI builds monitors for leading PC companies worldwide, you know you' re making a quality investment for the long haul.

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Buying parts the usual way> No-name brands of no known origin. No assurances ot reliability or compatibility. No support. That's no way to build a computer. Much less a business, Switch to Acer components. Every Acer product meets the toughest quality standards in the industry. And that includes just about every kind of component your system needs. From monitors and keyboards to motherboards, sound cards, chassis, and CD-ROMS, AcerOpen has it all! And you' ll rest easy knowing every Acer component works together, It's proven everyday. As a matter of fact. Acer built the world's fifth largest PC company around these parts, At Comtronic, we' re your one-stop Acer source. Our warehouses are packed to the ceiling with Acer quality products. And all at prices that figure to leave you plenty of margin.

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E DIT O R ' S D E S K

Thought: The Ultimate Input Device?

I had my first virtual skiing adventure recently.

It was in a r etail computer store, and a big sign over the PC read: "The first computer product operated by human thought."

"Yeah, right," I said, and promptly stuck my finger in the little device that purportedly would read my thoughts. (Of course, perhaps it read my skepticism.) In any event,the software on the screen showed me at the top of a ski hill. The instructions said to think intensely to go right, and to relax to go left. (Or, was it the other way around?) In any event, my thoughts must have been quite a jumble, because I seemed to hurtle down in rather uncontrolled fashion.

In fact, it was quite like my real-life skiing experiences, except I didn't fall down, and suffered no bruises.

"Well," the salesperson said, "it takes some practice."

T he f i n ger d e v ic e i s cal l e d MindDrive, and the company is The Other 90% Technologies Inc. The company's MindDrive-supporting software includes: M indSkier, F IB , M i n dMusic, M i n d Bowling, MindArt, and not surprisingly, MindGames. While the products score big on the "cool gimmick" factor; the company insists the technology is valid. The finger device reportedly measures bio-electric signals through the skin — signals which are altered by differing mental activities, such as remembering, relaxing, analyzing, positive and negative thoughts, plus left and right brain functions.

Canada's own Microforum Inc. offers a voice-controlled game called Virtual Corporation,where brave souls can fight their way up the corporate ladder — all via voice commands.

Games Are Increasingly Complex Looking ahead, as the much-anticipated scenario of convergence between television, computing and the Internet comes into greater prominence, we will no doubt see much-more intriguing game possibilities emerging. A l ready, the Internet is playing a big role in entertaining a segment of the population — for example, by easing communication with friends and family (E-mail, voice, and video-conferencing), by providing access to interesting and often amusing data, via on-line chat areas — and indeed as a means for long-distance com6

petition, as games such as Doom and Quake are regularly played against unseen foes across the Internet.

PC Gains Gaming Prominence W e' ve already come a very long way from Pong. And the consumer demand is everincreasing for functionality and sophistication in today's games. Yet, with such technologies as Windows 95 and Intel's MMX processors — hardware vendors are working towards providing powerful platforms for anew generation of PC gaming.

This issue, journalist Dan McLean examines the latest in gaming in "Shoot 'Em Up G ames Still Gu nning For Success," (page 22).

The official launch of MMX promises greater support for multimedia processing.

See Alan Zisman's "MMX — The New Standard," (page 46): a nd G r aeme Bennett's "PC Prognosticntionsfor '97," (page 54).

On the technology front, Toronto Editor Jeff Evans examines the optical storage market in: "The Optical Storage Market: Waiting For the Millennium," (page 26); and Geof Wheelwright updates us on the graphics/desktop publishing market, in "Web Provides New Market For Graphics/DTP," (page 44). M o r eover, columnist Douglas Gray gives solid advice on how to negotiate a lease for your business premises, in "What You Need to Know About Leases," (page 48).

Whether yourcustomers are: using a keyboard to surf the 'Net; a joystick to fire at strange and awful aliens; uttering voice commands as wetake over a corporation; or gliding down the ski slopes merely through the power of our minds; resellers, you' re dealing with an increasingly sophisticated buying public.

Take the time to experiment with these new g ames and t echnologies.

Consider signage to recommend hot new games, such as "OUR CHOICE," and be ready to talk about why certain games may appeal to you.

If today's amusement-hungry consumers start to look to you as a source of entertainment advice — that can only result in increased business opportunities, and profits, for you.

However, be careful on those virtual slopes... ~ltgl

WH O L E SALER F ebruary 1997 ht tp//wwwccwmao.oom

Grace Casselman Editor

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Bee~ cce Computer

Wholesaler Publisher Douglas Alder Associate Publishers Judy Prange Hari Singh Khalsa Editor Grace Casselman (gracec@netcom.ca) Toronto Editor Jeff Evans (jeff@tcpon.corn) Contributing Writers Graeme Bennett Tim Bingham-Wallis Brad Brown

Cathy Cowan Douglas Gray Tom Kiein Steve Halinda Dan McLean David Tanaka Goof Wheelwright Alan Zisman Production Staff SherlyHo .

Ernie Steizer Megan Johnston Key Account Manager(East) Tino Wong (tino@tcpon.corn) Key Account Manager(West) Jamie Leighton (jamie Step.ca) Account Managers Marsha Miller (marsha@tcpon.corn) Frank Houston (frank@tcpon.corn) Controller Christine McPhie Accowiting Farida Aini Circulation Farida Aini Esther Palivoda Founders Kent Liqin Chen Li Ding

Canadian Computer Wholesaler is' yublished I2 times a year by Canada C orn~terPaper Inc. Toronto Office 408 - 99Atlantic Ave

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Free subscription to qualified individuals, $110 per yearor 1' nonqualified subscribers.

Contents of CansdianComputer IVholesaler subject. m copyright.

Material snd sdvatising d esired byCandianComputerWholesaler

iu this publi~uoou msy not be reproduced in any form without permission. An tights reserved. The opinions expressed in articles are noi necessarily those of the publisher.

Printed iu Canada '-':.-:. * Postage paid iu Vancouver B.C. 197322399 "

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W ith such features sasaalarge ar 11.3" . SVGAor 12.1"" XGH H Active Matrix LCDscreen, Inf rared p f wire ess ss ort for munications, PentiumCPU 6x CD-ROMdrive, Glide Pa and brilliant multimedia stereo soun sy1 tern, Sharp Electronics is writing the nex cli t

book computing. ci

e Sha PC-9050and thePC-9080 state-ofthe-art, high-performance, i notebook s— — mu l t l' dl 01 -

tions your customers can take e on onthe e roadl

Designedand manufactured by Shar p- that means 1' bility provenreia ii backed by national service support networks, 'incentives and our experiencethat a onlythe leader i n mobile technologies can provide. We no y g ' our customers high performance notebooks, but give k fit a ble sales and post sales support like the Sharp Rapid Exchange Program.

We' re lookin ingfor or resellers to be part of the Sharp Team.

Commited to p roviding value,h'igh performance, power and technologies virtually unmatched e yb the competition.

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S HA R P FROM SHARP MINDS COME SHARP PRODUCTS™

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MULTISCAN 200SX AT S999 * IT'S A SIGHT FOR YOUR

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* Estimated selling price Oealers may sell for less.

0 iggy Sony of Canada Ltd. Sony, the Sony logo and Tnnftron are regfstered trademarks and Super Fine Pitrh is a trademark of Sony Corporation, Tokyo, japan. Multiscan is a reystered trademark of Sony Eleciromcs Ltd All other brands or product names are Irademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. naif f'

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What about the Panasonic?

- W h ich ONario nunister was thill(?,

I have just read in your December 1996 issue, the artiefe on T h e article".dealing with theopening of Supercomss,' @"Notebooks — no holds barred." new facility in Markham,.indicates that David,'~ In the sidebar on "No CD-ROM?" the most obyious Tsubouchi, Ontario's minister,nf education watk m "' "'' has been omitted — the addition oi' a pCMCIA SCSI CD-R'CtM. 'attendance.Mr. Tsubouchf 4s' ed to be Ontario's ".

Panasonic has been selling these for some time now, and the prod- m i nister of social services until he was replaced, uct has proven itself to be an exceIIent solution. earned, or'kicked out„whatever way you wish to Also, since the article itself %alt with "feature-packed" note- see it. Iohn8nobelg happens 'Q be the minister of book computers, I was rather surprised to see that there was no men- education in Ontario. tion of the Panasonic CF-62, the world's only notebook with a builtI don*t know what Mr. Tsubpuchi is up to latein PD (both a CD-ROM;-,and a reswriteabie optical disk drive in l y b tit, from yourr'ho s yle,he'seems to be keeping up one). This feature gives unlimited, non-magnetic, cost-effective w i t h the right company.

A storage to a notebook.

Cause Carey Cares. „As well, Panasonic also manufactures end markets a.:truly 1, i4 ' ' Carey Hogan 'ruggedized" notebook, the CF-25. In a solid magnesium case, this ' Computer Service Network ~h o ck-resistant, dust-resistant, water-resistant notebook, can travel Stere few can go.

Gl~cester, Ont. I do enjoy your publication, and look'forward to each issue"

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Editor's Vote: David Tsubouchi was appointed minC aryKitner ig t e r of consumer and commercial relations in " Eastern tegion sales manager: ' Otttttrt'o'k@tAugust previously, hewas minis ters-~ Computer Systems Group c o mmunity and social services.

CCW regrets 'the.~, Matsushita Electrf'p of Canada e r ror. t

NC ready for business, not home

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I think the concept of a NC is an idea that will see fruition as nevr busines s ttsers begin the concept of computers ~ 'in the workplace. , However, I think the existitlg user ~ u t i i f y~ iit thp.i tious of equipment they'represent will be the main platform for VARs et al., for perhaps five to seven years (kiwn the road.

Will the NC be a home appliance? Not yet. see the home NC begin its Once the suppo rting infrastrucpe is in;gee an~+vert:.'~orik, ~ w eweal astronomical rise. 8'ut not before theifi Costs oPnew equipment,'n(urow eXisting bandwidth, and financial accountability in our economy will hinder the introduction of a network home device.

Don Bews: President Jem Tab Systems Inc. Carleton Place, Oni. dbews®sympatico.ca I•

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m ea rn This feature is intended as a forum for finding and sharing information. If you are looking for something particular, why not let us publish your request? Or, if you have an answer, please contact the person listed below directly, or send us yourcomments, atccw©tcp.ca.

Seeking PCS advice I am a computer reseller in Whistler, B.C., snd I am about to move into retail space. I am hunting for a Point of Sale program: a ) t o install in my own store, and b) to distribute and sell.

Preferably, I want a program that is Windows (MS-Access) based, and that is a Canadian version that can handle GST I am finding it to be quite a challenge to find a source to shop.

Tim Allix Zoomy Computers zoomy®whistler net

Seeking a distributor I'm in the process of opening a computer shop which will sell whole systems and repair. I have my shop and am now looking for places for the best prices for my low amount of sales.

Thanks for your time.

Dail Lewis JerDaips Computer Center

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Customer looking for notebook I represent a little league baseball club and we are seeking help in buying a reasonably priced notebook computer. It must be fairly well-built as it will be used for player registration in mails and at the ball field and will be carried from one place to another.

If you could point me in the right direction it would sure help us out. We havehad quotes of up to $2,900 for used equipment, and before we pursue that option I would like to know what's available in other cities. It must be Windows-driven and be able to run MS-Works.

I am interested in purchasing a computer that would be able to run the Internet, Microsoft Office and a few others programs. It is difficult to tell which programs right now, but the computer would be a fairly dedicated one, so the need to diversify to a wide range of programs would not be there. Please me know if there is anything available to purchase (new or used) and I wiII take this info back to our executive for approval.

Brian Gaudet Player agent Freeman Park Little League brian~a udet@bc.sympatico.ca

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Apple turns to NeXT for next-generation operating system system development.

Minutes before Gilbert Amelio, chief executive officer at Apple Computer, was to deliver his keynote address at Macworld Expo, Ellen Hancock, Apple's chief technology officer, briefed the press regarding the Apple's woes continue: three-year recovery plan 'on track' company's new operating system strategy. In On Jan. 15, Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple q uarter." As well, Apple reported revenues answers to questions about compatibility, Computer Inc.announced its first-quarter were further constrained because there was a Apple's solution is to run a dual 1997 fiscal results. The company's revenues greater demand for Apple PowerBook com- operating system for the next five to 10 years. for the quarter ending on Dec. 27, were p u ters than could be accommodated.

"While we were very disappointed by Under Hancock's explaUS$2.1 billion, compared to revenues for Ql 1996 of US$3.1 billion, a loss of about one- the Performa sales results and the associated nation, System 7 will be supthird of quarterly revenues in the course of a l oss, our financial position remains sound," ported with the following single year. A quarterly net loss for US$120 said Apple executive vice-president and chief code-names for 1998: a "We exited Harmony release, due million was reported, compared to a profit of f i n ancial officer Fred Anderson.

US$25 million a year ago. Unit sales of corn- the quarter with $1.8 billion in cash and con- last month, a Tempo puters declined about one per cent from the t i n ued to show improvements in our invento- release due in July, an previous quarter. ry management during the quarter." Sales in Allegro release due in Apple claimed: "The company experi- E u rope, and sales of high-end Macs both e arly 1998, an d a Sonata release due at enced shortfalls in its planned sales of con- s h owed improvements. sumer-oriented Performa-branded products in Appl e c h airman and CEO, Dr. Gilbert the end of 1998. the United States (which)... necessitated A m elio tried to sound upbeat: "Despite the This continuaaggressive pricing and rebate activities that r e cent quarter's loss, we are confident that tion of System 7 guarI adversely affected gross margins. Those our three-year transformation plan is sound antees Mac users of actions, coupled with the overall unit short- a n d we remain focused on executing that c ompatibility w i t h s existing applications. fall, resulted in the significant loss for the p l a n ."

AppleComputerInc.and Steve Jobs areback together. Apple's co-founder will return to the company as part of an acquisition of NeXT Software Inc. It appears that technology will be pivotal i n A p ple's f uture operating

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I NDU S T R Y F L A S H

Corel announces 70 per cent growth in '9 6

M icr o s oft launches the Office 97 suite

On Jan. 15, Ottawa-based Corel Corp. announced its financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year, which ended on Nov. 30. The company's annual revenues grew from $196.4 million in 1995 to $334.2 million in 1996, a 70 per cent increase, yearover-year. Sales in the fourth quarter '96 were $125.4 million, an increase of 102 per cent over sales in the fourth quarter of 1995.

On Jan. 16, Microsoft Canada announced the immediate availability of Office 97, the latest version of its productivity software suite. Microsoft founder Bill G ates madea keynote address in New York, and a 30-city promotional tour to introduce the new product began in Toronto and New York.

Microsoft claims to have some 55 million current Office users, and has received 500,000 advance orders for shrinkwrapped copies from retailers, and orders for three million pre-sold corporate licences (mainly for use n business and government networks).

Office 97 includes new versions of Microsoft Word,

Net income for this last quarter was $6.5 million. Overall, Corel lost $2.9 million in the course of1996. A large part of Corel's growth can be attributed to the WordPerfect line of products. Corel is also looking to new ventures to bear fruit in 1997, with initiatives such as the Corel Officefor Java, the CorelVideo Network Computer, and additional titles for its multimedia and PhotoCD lines.

Eudora has 'ls million users San Diego-basedQualicomm Inc. has announced research results indicating it currently has more than 18 million users of its Eudora Light and Eudora Pro / Internet E-mail software, making the product by far the most commonly used Internet E-mail package.

The product is currently available on the Windows, Mac and Apple Newton platforms. The latest version, Eudora Pro 3.0, has introduced new features including more powerful filtering, expanded directory services, and an Extended Messaging Services API which enables third-party developers to provide plug-in applications.

uIjerNoeIjooko2 M H z!

MS E x c el , MS A cce s s, Powerpoint, a n d Mi c r o soft Outlook, a new desktop information manager.

Outlook "provides a powerful new means for users to manage information, track documents and communicate with others.

Integrating E-mail, scheduling, contactmanagement and a journal module for tracking documents and events Outlook operates as the central 'hub' of activity forOffice 97 users."

The list price for new users of Office 97 is $689, and the upgradepricefor registered users is $294. The competitive upgrade price for users of other vendors' suites is $349. A D eveloper Edition and a Small Business Edition of Office 97 are also available.

MMX flood unleashed on market-place

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"Our new Pentium processors with MMX technology tested more than 60 per cent faster (overall) than our previous Pentium processors when compared on the Intel Media benchmark that measures multimedia performance," according to Pam Olivier, marketing manager for Intel of Canada Ltd. Intel began replacing its old Pentium manufacturing processes with MMX production in 1996, but held the new chips back from shipment until a reasonable stock had been accumulated, in order to avoid discouraging sales of PCs due to a MMX back-order situation.

On Jan. 8, the floodgates were opened, and shortly afterwards many major PC manufacturers such as Dell, Digital, Compaq and Texas Instruments announced desktop and notebook PCs with MMX Pentium chips.

For example, Toshiba of Canada Information Systems Group (ISG) announced the new Toshiba Tecra 740CDT, a full featured multimedia notebook powered by the new 166MHz Intel Pentium MMX processor.

The base model of this system . "' Cil%lirtITt c omes with a 2.1GB hard 6 lNSNNI, drive, a 10 X CD-ROM, and a 1 3.3-inch T F T a ctive ma t r i x :w,' .he w"ih'yt e s,e'o screen. LCCW I „

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Multimedia Education Systems

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Remote Observe —teachers cancheck students' progress by remotely observing student's monitor screen, either automati'-'-Gs6y scrolling from one student screen to another, tlr by manually selecting a student to observe. Moreover, teacher can adjust the observe time (1-99 seconds),and can even pause on = -6 student Cation and jump to control mode to provide direct assistance. Teacher can select to receive student's audio, video or both. oatrol — teacher can control student station's keyboard,

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Group — automatically or manually divide student stations into

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C ANA D A W A T C H

Sceptre signs Skyway for notebook distribution Sceptre Technologies Inc. has signed The So u ndx 4000 is a 1 33MHz Skyway Computer Centre Inc. as a Pe n tium-based notebook that uses a C anadian distributor of i t s NeoMagic single-chip 128-bit Soundx notebook line. graphics accelerator, and a 2.9':...

Skyway joins Tech Data volt, TCP flat-pin CPU incorpoCanada Inc., which already -Ir t rating Intel's Voltage Reduction b carries the Soundx 4000 noteTechnology and the Intel Mobile book. Skyway has been disTriton S y s te m Co n t roller tributing Sceptre's line of chipset. m onitors and L C D fl a t The system features a 6X CD-ROM, a 2GB hard panel displays since last spring.Sceptre says Canadian sales have drive, and an infrared interface forwireless tripled in that time period. transmission. "

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Empac is now distributing ITS Corp. hard drives

Oasis modernizes Chinese banking

Markham, Ont.-basedEmpac has announced a distribution agreement with JTS Corp., of San Jose, Calif., to distribute that company's hard ' e' drives.

I'ore 'le<' JTS's hard drives include: the 3.0-inch Nordic products and the 3.5-inch Palladium and Champ products. According to Empaq, JTS is aggressively pursuing the development of a three-inch drive for the mobile computer market designed to offer 80 Per cent greater caPacity on John pang,president of Empac, iswith David Liscom,

Oasis Technology, of Toronto, has installed a regional banking computer switch in China.

The Xiamen Golden Card project is a regional switch linking five banks in the city of Xiamen, China.

The government-sponsored installation is one of 12 Golden Card projects designed to modernize China's banking technology to let debit cardholders access funds from any participating bank. Oasis offers its Information Switching Technology (IST) software — a Unix-based product providing routing, settlement, switching and device control between the five member banks.

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Globelle's TechKnow T rain roadshow took jaunt through W estern Canada More than 2,000 resellers were expected to check out Globelle's TechKnow Train roadshow as it t o u red t h r ough W e stern Canada last month — making stops in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and finally Vancouver.

S uz a n n e Tamburro, marketing events manager for G lobelle, said t h e winter is a good time for the Western leg of the distributor's roadshow. "It's a busy season and I think resellers like to see information. It's a good time to get ramped up for a busy season.

In the summer, everyone's in a more relaxed mood."

About 30 vendors were participating in TechKnow Train, which included a mini trade show, seminars (called Techno Talks), receptions and casino nights.

President and COO Ron Austin said his company has been hosting roadshows since

1988, but since the company "branded" the show under the TechKnow Train logo a couple years ago, people now are paying even more attention and look forward to the show. "We' ve been at it a long time; it's a major event of the computer indusny."

"It gives us an opportunity to get in front of a log of resellers,"according to Mark Macaulay, account manager, channels, for Compaq Canada Inc., commenting on the event, d uring t h e Ca l gary s t o p.

"Globelle does a good job of contacting a n d i nf o r ming resellers about this show."

Micheal McCarron, owner of Advanced Servers Corp. in Calgary, has been to a number of Globelle events over the years.

"They' re very good. I go mainly to get product information."

Globelle takes TechKnow Train to Southwestern Ontario this spring.

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C ANA D A W A T C H

Netcom Canada speeds Internet access

Corel announces suite deal with Netscape

At the recent Internet World '97 tion is being run by the local (NB) — Aiming to steal a little show in Toronto, Internet Service p h o ne company) and higher thunder from the formal unveiling Provider Netcom Canada report- ISDN phone service rates (usual- of Microsoft Corp.'s Office software suite, Corel Corp. has ed great excitement by show ly a r ound$65/month). attendees over the prospect that The US R obotics X2 tech- announced a deal t o b undle the company will shortly offer n o logy requires that the server Netscape Communications Inc.'s 56Kbps download speeds with t h a t i s d o wnloading data be Communicator client software in the i n t roduction o f US equip p ed to handle X2 speeds. two of its suites.

Robotics' X2 technology. ~ Curre n tly, X2 is in beta testing, S tarting th is spri n g , X2 technology is now ~ for po s sible Canadian intro- Communicator will be included being built into most duction by spring 1997. in Corel's WordPerfect Suite 8 current US RobotNetcom Canada and its Office Professional 8 , ics modems, and + i s the local branch of suite, officials said in a telecono the U.S.-based NET- ference with reporters and anacan be retrofitted to ~ many modems made over ~Q y COM ISP, which, with lysts.

Chris Biber, t echnology the last year or so. about 600,000 subscribers With X2, users can get world w ide, claims to be the evangelist at Corel, characterized download speeds close to single- l argest ISP in the very competi- the bundling deal as the beginline ISDN speed (56Kbps versus tive, new Internet market. ning of a "very broad strategic 64Kbps), without having to go to If the n e w h igh-download relationship" between his firm the expense of buying an ISDN c apability works as advertised and Mountain View, Calif.-based 'modem' (usually at least $300 and is introduced soon, it could at Netscape. And, asked about the more than a regular 28.8Kbps or l east temporarily stunt interest in timing of the announcement just 33.6Kbps analog modem), paying other high-speed Internet offer- three days before Microsoft' s for an ISDN hookup (up to $150, ings such as ISDN and cable official launch of Office 97, Biber unless a free installation promo- m odems. said it was "certainly not accidental."

Netscape's existing World Wide Web browser, Navigator, has been included in the Corel suites since early l ast year.

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WH O L ESALER February 1997 hrtp//wwwccwmag.corn

founder and chairman, said dur-

ing the conference that the move signals "the importance we place on open Internet standards...and also the importance we place on the Java platform." Cowpland made much of the cross-platform capabilities provided by the Java programming language, touting his company's suites as an alternative to becoming locked in to Microsoft Windows.

However, the suites that cont ain Communicator w il l b e l aunched initially o n l y f o r Windows 95. A version for the Apple Macintosh operating system is in the works as well, officials said.

The two companies said they will be working together to integrate the Communicator software more closely with Corel's desktop products, aiming to create a suite with an emphasis on networkcentric computing. This capability will be built into all new versions of WordPerfect Suite and Corel Office Professional, the companies said.

Corel also said a beta version of its Office for Java suite will be available for download from i t s W e b s i t e s t arting Tuesday, and there will be a link to this site from Netscape's site.

Telesat Canada announces price reductions On Jan. 8, at the Internet World '97 show in Toronto, Telesat Canada announced a 40 per cent price drop to the DirecPC system (which includes a satellite disk and inter face card),from $999 to $595.

As well, two competitive new pricing packages forthe Turbo Internet satellite service were announced. The MoonSurfer plan offers unlimited 400Kbps satellite d o wnload access from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Monday to Friday and all day weekends for $54.95 per month, while the SunSurfer plan allows unlimited daytime access for $179.95.

DirecPC is a satellite Inter-

net service which is designed for businesses and schools that need an affordable, high-speed Internet connection regardless of location, and it employs Anik satellite channels to transmit Internet data at speeds up to 400Kbps to a receiving dish connected to the subscriber's PC. Subscribers' uploaded information is conveyed via a traditional modem and land line at 22.8Kbps.

According to Telesat's general manager ofDirecPC, Brad Poulos, "Telesat's new pricing structure will bring the power of DirecPC to many more users, from corporateIS managers to small office/home office users." l<rW ',

,,Regional Piracy by percentagerate and lost revenue

Voice YourOpinion!

Reader Poll

Peteenlngenein te$2 Revenue(Umi 'Igm 2$$$ 1$$$ 1$$ 8

Recently we asked our Do you think the readers if the Network network computer will be a significant tech: -:— ,: 55 ' 8 5 , , sstsss Essssi,. .: 1,5 ,5 1 2 $7$, 8 5$ Computer (NC) 'would nology for business -', be a significant technol- customers?

'2 sls Aessns . . $2, — 8, 1,155 8, 2 87,878 ogy and market for your snsAessl) .,;: s: ",',, 78 " , S E,RR8 1, 141,515 c ustomers. When i t Pgcll ' ,; . +' ,144$78 8 , 881,888 e came to business cus5 dNg Eg ifd Iikgg .

5 488,888 SH, B BR ; tomers, a noteworthy 73 Do you think the NC .48' pld 4B 8,24 8 ,484 ' 1 8,181,888 per cent of you respond- will be a significant e d YES. But o n t h e technology for home home front, respondents customers: were split equally on whether there's much I' I' s (NB) — The first independent survey on l y zed market information from 77 countries opportunity for NC-type lossessuffered to global software piracy has across six world regions. The figures were appliances in the home. put the figure at US$13.1 billion for 1995. based on piracy estimates for 27 major The survey, the first such i ndependent business applications.

This issue: research carried out on a In North America, a conMuch has been said about the Internet and its global scale, said losses trast still remains between the impact on software distribution. Some watchUnited States and Canada. were nine per cent greater ers envision a scenario where the Internet will than the previous year.

While its neighbor to the south eventually be a major means to distribute softThe worst nation for reported the lowest rates of ware, onceelect ronic commerce and secure software pi r ac y was gg pirac yfor any nation, at 26 per transactions are firmly entrenched, easing the Vietnam, with rates running cent, Canada was still some process of doing business on the Web. That at 99 per cent. Following way behind at 44 per cent.

05 could see resellers playing a reduced role in the were El Salvador with 97 Because ofthe large software selling of software.

CO per cent,China and Oman, market, the U.S. also had the However, others say resellers may also both at 96 per cent, and distinction of suffering the find opportunity by selling via the Internet.

Russia at 9 4 p e r c e nt. highest losses by value for any Here at Canadian Computer Wholesaler, we' re nation, at US$2.9 billion. The Leading the world was the wondering what YOU think.

United States, with rates of ratewas a drop offive percent Our question to you: just 26 per cent, followed by Australia at 35 on the previous year, reported IPR. per cent, the UK at 38 per cent, New In gen e ral, worldwide piracy came in As a reseller, which most closely reflects your Zealandat40 per cent,and Ge rmany at 42 at 46 per cent in 1995, meaning just over view of the Internet's impact on software dishalf of all software packages installed were per cent. tribution?

C ommissioned by t h e Business legal. Trouble spots remain in Eastern While some software may be distributed Software Alliance and Software Publishers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and over the Internet, we believe it will have Association, the survey was carried out by A s ia, with 21 countries having piracy rates very little impact on our bottom line.

International Planning and Research. It ana- of more than 90 per cent.

We believe the Internet is having, or will P soon have, a negative impact on our software sales.

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{604} 608-2686 or log into our Web site

http: //www.ccwmag.corn ttttptrwwwpcwmag.corn February 1997 W H O LESALER 1 9

CO MD E X / P A C R I M ' 9 7

'.o

Vancouver Shines as Nateway To The Far East

by Jeff Evans

exhibitors included more than 80 showing Internet related products. The highlights of the show included the recent release of the Intel Pentium MMX chip, which went into widespread distribution only 12 days prior to the start of PacRim '97. The show was the first occasion for most attendees to see the new chips in action. NEC, in particular promoted multimedia notebooks and business Vancouverisoften regarded as another country, both by Vancouverites and by The Rest desktops equipped with the new MMX Of Canada (TROC). Nestled behind the processors.If crowds in booths were any Rocky Mountains, British Columbia's lower sign, Epson, iSTAR and US Robotics had mainland geographically has more in com- some of the most popular exhibits. In particmon with the American West Coast than the ular, U.S. Robotics had its widest ever lineup vast, cold, mostly empty country to the east. of leading edge products on display, includThe cultural and technological influences of ing its 56 Kbps X2 modems, a new videothe computer age have flowed north, from phone product, 33.6Kbps Megahertz 'credit card' modems, and the Pilot hand held comCalifornia and Washington State (home of Microsoft), rather than west, from Toronto puter. and Ottawa. In the last 20 years, however, Lexmark, which unveiled its new model British Columbia's horizons have widened 2030 printer, broke the $300 barrier for a high resolution, high quality plain paper ink-jet. further — out across the Pacific to the burThe Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were geoning economies of Asia. Vancouver is now a strategic part of the Pacific Rim econ- competing heavily for customers at the show, omy — one ofthe major gateways for trade with iSTAR winning the prize for most atmospheric Internet themed booth (complete between Asia and North America. Like the city-state of Singapore, Vancouver's harbor with a steam machine that seemed about to and its strategic location have allowed it to explode).

Microsoft Canada had an expanded take on an importance beyond that which its presence at Comdex PacRim this year, as it hosted its first Microsoft Partners' Pavilion at relatively small population would normally command. Consequently,a few years ago, the Vancouver show. Among the major new when the Interface Group, the owner of the Microsoft products on view were MS Office Comdex trade shows, was looking for a new 97, the new Web-centric business applicalocation for a Comdex show, it chose to buy tions suite, and MS Windows CE, the recentVancouver's existing PacRim ly launched operating system for computer show, and upgrade it handheld PCs. This PacRim show from a local, end user's retail also marked 1997 as the year in computer show to a higher end, which digital video finally seems regional and international busito have come of age.Forefront ness show.

Graphics a n d Com m ercial The first Comdex PacRim Electronics, longtime distributors in 1995 saw significant numof PC video products such as the Miro and Fast digital video sysbers of national companies exhibiting, along with local tems respectively, showed prodcomputer retailers, and the ucts that in their power and ease of Jeff Dossett of Mierosoft Csnsds number Of attendeeS inCreaSed «pts»sMte»soa'»lslon of computing use show that 'convergence' of TV mode coster sn s ignificantly, t o m o r e t h an and PC is now a reality. Apple had a 20,000. In 1996, the trend continued: more strong presence, with the Apple Internet exhibitors, including more major brand name Commerce Bundle making its debut at the companies, and more than 25,000 attendees, show: Apple provided the latest updates to including a higher proportion of computer the unfolding MacOS story, with MacOS 7.6, industry professionals. and fact sheets on the newly announced This year's PacRim '97 show drew "Rhapsody" next-generation OS, which will around 35,000 visitors, an increase of over 15 merge Apple and NeXT technology. per cent from last year, making it one of the The keynote address for the first day of largest computer shows in Canada. The 250 the show was delivered by Ilene Lang, vice20

WHO L E S ALER F e b r uaty 1997 it t tpllwwwccwmag.corn

president of the Internet Software Business Unit of Digital Equipment. Lang's unit is based on the AltaVista Web search engine, which Digital originally developed as a technology demonstration, but which has grown to become one of the basic technologies for

making the World Wide Web usable. Lang made the point that in 1996, large numbers of businesses began to develop plans to use the Internet for serious business applications.

Initially, companies benefited from creating corporate intranets as their new form of network. As 1997 unfolds, increasing numbers of firms will reach beyond their own corporate borders, to link with existing clients via so-called 'extranets.' The move to general purpose electroniccommerce is coming, Lang claims,as business and society become more comfortable with the environment of the Web, an d a s I n t ernet t echnology improves. Lang hopes that the AltaVista unit will become a practical example of how to make money on the Internet, by becoming profitable by the end of 1997.

On the second day of the show, general manager of Microsoft Canada, Ieff Dossett, gave a vision of the Network PC of the future — a far more simple and robust version of today's Windows PC, with lower cost of ownership, but still offering a full personal computer feature set.

The success of this year's show leaves a big question — if PacRim continues to grow at the rate of the past few years, where will they put all the exhibitors and attendees?

With careful planning, show organizers just might be able to shoehorn the 1998 show into the present trade and convention centre on the waterfront, but after that, they' re going to need a bigger place to hold what has rapidly become a truly "world class" show..Ctt Jeff Evans is the Toronto Editor of Canadian Computer 8%olesaler.

'97

CO MD EX / P A C R IM

Show yields whole crop of new products

by Grace Casselman Vancouver's Comdex/PacRim '97 show was the launch pad for a sizable fleet of new product an n ouncements. That may bespeak the significance of the event o n the Canadian h i ght ech scene. O r perhaps it's just another sign that high-tech markets are picking up, and manufacturers are scurrying to meet those needs.

Wyse Wyse Technology (Canada) Ltd. announced a series "enhanced network c o mputers" (ENCs) and Windows-based thin clients. For example, the Winterm 4000 Series (formerly code-named "Boogie-Board" ), runs off a Digital Equipment Corp. StrongARM processor, and promises to execute Java applets and also access Windows applications.

The Winterm 4000 starts at US$750.

Douglas Chance, president and CEO of Wyse Technology, based in San Jose, Calif., said he's expecting the product to find a home in corporations and vertical markets when it starts shipping in March. The big target is the current terminal market. He said: "The idea that corporations are going to replace their PCS is foolish. There's a lot more opportunity to develop the thin client market with users of character-based terminals who are demanding GUIs and computer-based training, graphic displays and Web browsers."

However, the company is also looking to sells ENCs into the home — further down the road. Chance said: "With thin clients we do think the home market is going to happen, if you look beyond the next two years."

Samsung Samsung Electronics Canada Inc. launched a new line of SyncMaster monitors, which comply to the TCO 95 standards for radiation emission and power management. The standard also places restrictions on: the presence and useof heavy metals and chemicals in the products and manufacturing process. The monitor runs at 85Hz and offers a resolution

of 1024 by 768 dpi.

Bill Deneweth, vice-president of marketing for Samsung, said the TCO 95 standard (which follows TCO 92), was developed by trade unions in Sweden looking to better work environments. He said certain govern-

ment departments are already starting to require TCO-compliance in their purchases.

Acer Acer American Corp. launched the Acer Nuovo 133MHz notebook, which supports MMX, and promises an average seven hours of battery life. The $6,952 system includes a 2.0GB hard drive, a 10X CD-ROM drive, and a 12.1-inch TFT screen.

Agfa Agfa p r esented,:-, the $799 ePhoto, 307 digital camera. It i n cludes: s torage o f 36 ' high-resolution or72 standard resolution images; a 43mm glass lens; and the A gfa PhotoWise and Adobe PhotoDeluxe software. Marketing manager, digital imaging products, Mary P ercat expects t h e camera to be of interest to hobbyists and professionals such as real estate agents or anyone who "has to describe, in a v i sual I ' I'I ' I *'

the PowerMate P2166M and PowerMate P2200M PCs based on 166MHz or 200MHz Pentium MMX processors. The systems are available in seven different configurations, with estimated street pricing ranging from $2,719 to $4,009.

NEC announced it would concentrate its attention on sales of corporate products, while sales of the Ready line of computers will now be handled by Packard Bell. Greg Milkovich, national marketing manager for the company, said of Packard Bell: "They have all the mechanisms to sell the con„sumer lines," Packard Bell will now work ,,; with current Ready distributors and resellers in Canada, and the company hopes to expand channels and sales for the line. IIIN ',

: Grace Casselman is E d i to r of Canadian Computer II7iolesaler.

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Sony S ony o f Can a da launched the DSC-Fl digital still c amera, which includes: a 1.8inch L C D s c r een, b uilt-in 4M B fl a s h memory, and wireless infraredimage transfer.

So n y al so launched the GDM-W900 24-inch disp lay, w i t h resolutions of up to 1920 by 1200 dpi at 7 6 Hz. B o th products are scheduled for spring availability.

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T HE

E NT E RT A I N M E N T

MA RKET F ea t u r e

Indications are, the game-buying public will keep on killing time by zapping away space aliensand otherassorted cyberspace outlaws.

And while the vocation of most g arners remains the same, the venue for activity appears to be shifting as the PC looms as the dominant platform for play.

Consumers, it seems, can't get enough blood and gore when it comes to gaming, according to resellers who say interactive fighting games are expected to remain among this year's hottest selling titles.

"What we' ve found, in terms of the software and types of titles that seem to be moving, is that a lot of the shoot 'em up games are still big, games like Doom and a zillion other spin-offs — frankly, the really gory stuff," said Bev Buckton, spokesperson for Ingram Micro Inc. (Canada). "These have occupieda popular area in the market for a while and it seems to be increasing."

PC Gains Prominence

by Dan McLean

The PC appears poised to become the choice platform for a majority of game players and entertainment software m anufacturers.

According to Buckton, CD-ROM titles are gaining a huge share in the entertainment market and may dominant some day soon. "I think it's safe to say the consumer is very strongly moving towards CD-ROM technology for games. Playstation, Sega and those [systems] are still popular, but more and more manufacturersare developing products on CD-ROM platforms," he said.

"Many are doing that exclusively, and as a result, in general, sales of CD-ROM games and entertainment titles are increasing dramatically."

tures," he said. "I think the industry has high expectations for it... and most major manufacturers will have new products for that platform."

But, in order for the PC to dominate the game market, most agree it must become a cheaperdevice.Thatwill happen, according to Wasser, as PC vendors look to penetrate even deeper into the consumer realm. "I think the major manufacturers — Compaq, IBM, Apple, Packard Bell and others — are going to introduce lower priced boxes as we get through the spring and fall this year," Wasser predicted, suggesting a lower priced PC is a fully configured system costing less than $2,000.

"We' ve hit a bit of a bump in the road.

The consumers who wanted a computer has (already)bought one.We now have to convince that other 55 per cent of households that there's a reason to buy one. One of the sticking points in the way is price."

Windows 95 Game s Certainly Microsoft Canada Inc. is among those who see great gaming potential for PCs. According to m arketing manager Shannon Smith, Windows 95 will experience a breakthrough this year as a gaming platform. Last year saw limited support for Windows 95 from both entertainment software manufacturersand game-playing consumers who weren't sure how games were going to perform on their Windows 95-based PCs, she explained.

MMX Plays Role Larry Wasser, president and CEO of distributor Beamscope Electronics in Toronto agreed, saying the release this year ofIntel's Pentium-based MMX chip will provide an even better gaming platform for PCs, offering enhanced quality graphics capabilities. Expect to see a horde of new products based on the MMX platform, he predicted. "[MMX] will provide the end-user with a higherperformance box with betterfea22

WH O L ESALER February 1997 ht tpllwwwccwmag.corn

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"Around July or August last year you actually saw Windows 95 sales overtake DOS sales for games," Smith said. "We saw that strongly at Christmas. Most games now come out with a Windows 95 version and [there were not] as many DOS versions."

T HE

E NT E RT A I N M E N T

manufacturers. A s a result, the manufacturers This year, expect: more have learned that there Internet-enabled games, has to be quality." with multiple player forThe PC games marmats for the most popuket will also see greater lar 3D-type games. PCs consolidation as the big are a critical platform for guns of e ntertainment such play.

Myst enthusiasts wait for the software — M i crosoft, Entertainment/edusequel, Riven— due inQ2.

Disney, Electronic Arts, cation or "edutainment" Sierra, V i r gi n and games, like cookbooks, Davidson — will domifix-it ti tles and other nate, he said. According similar teaching and selfto Wasser,smaller comhelp products could realpanies might release one ly take off i n 1 9 97, or two titles rather that according to Buckton. the typical five or six and These are products that many of these simply offer learning through won t succeed. more interactive types of Those that do will interfaces — combining Doom — was a pioneer in modern likely become the acquigame play with teaching. sition targets for larger "We' re finding the manufacturers who will look to integrate edutainment-type products are increasing in sales and I think it's a result of the fact that the these into their own product offerings, he said. productsthemselves are much more interesting and enticing.

Input Devices "The products that are coming out are On the hardware side of things, because conjust amazing and kids especially really get sumers are increasingly using their PCs for ontothem," Buckton added. "They' re amaz- game play, gamepads and joysticks are selling entertainment vehicles and at the same ing like hotcakes. time kids are learning how to count or write "You would be surprised at the thouor read." sands of joysticks and game pads we sell Beamscope's Wasser predicts more will every month," Buckton said. "We' re starting be less in 1997 as entertainment software to get into more of those types of game prodmanufacturers look for quality over quantity. uctsjustbecause of the demand forthem."

"I think the experience of 1996, in terms In fact,a game pad and new type of of (entertainment software) manufacturers has mouse from Microsoft are penciled to being been one of quantity over quality as they tried among that company's best sellers for 1997. to flood the market with a multitude of inultiAccording to Smith, the Sidewinder media CD-ROM titles in an attempt to gain game pad, released during the Christmas holm arket share and shelfspace," Wasser said. iday has been extremely popular. The unit, "What's happening is a t remendous designed especially for those who play sports amount of unsold product went back to the and fighting games, plugs directly into a PC's

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T HE

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game port and allows a joystick to be plugged into it or the device can be daisy chained with three other Sidewinder game pads to allow up to four people to play on the same PC. "The Sidewinder game pad also allows you to write your own macro so you can program in six different (joystick) button functions and combine these in one button move," Smith said. Beginning in January, the Sidewinder was also being bundled with Sega's Virtua Fighter for PCs. Microsoft's I n telliMouse, r eleased last November, features a trackball-type wheel that sits between two standard buttons. The IntelliMouse provides a range of functionality. "For example,if I'm in Word 97 and I want to move through a document, I can scroll by just rolling my mouse (trackball) wheel rather than using scroll bars," Smith said. "Or I can set it into teleprompter mode so that if I want to have it just inch up my screen as I'm reading through a document I can have it do that as well.

"It works great with Internet Explorer 3.0," she continued. "If you' re searching the Internet and want to scroll through a document or move forward and backward between pages, you can use the wheel for that as well."

IntelliMouse will be available as a single product and will be bundled with Microsoft Office Professional at a special promotion price for the first three months of 1997.

Much anticipated gaming software releases in 1997 include the next version of Myst. Davidson's latest version of Diablo, which began shipping this month is also expected to be a popular seller.

Girl Games?

The year may also see an entirely new category of games, specifically designed for female players. In a market dominated by products specifically aimed at male garners,the unexpected success of Mattel's Barbie game may spawn offerings for an as yet untapped market.

"I saw that product last February in New York at a toy fair and said, 'this product will never fly because it just didn't make any sense,'" Wasser said. "There's no girls' market for (gaming) software and up until then the only things that had sold were sports titles or fighting games. It was a boys' market."

Barbie finished among the top-selling game titles last year and proved that there are many new frontiers in gaming software yet to be explored.

"At the end of the day it comes down to the manufacturer bringing something different, with some ingenuity to it and [building a product] that' s a greatgaming experience," Wasser observed.

"That kind of product will sell and will sell in large quantities." ICCW I Dan McLeanis a Toronto-basedjournalist who specializes in high-technology reporting.

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O PT I C A L S T O R A G E H af d W B r e

waitingforthemillennium

by Jeff Evatzs

Out With The Old Media, I n With The New M e d i a

The basic storage device formost PC users is still the good old hard drive — currently either SCSI or Enhanced IDE varieties with c apacities of b etween 1GB an d 3 G B .

Offering fast seek time (around 10 ms), a cost per megabyte of data storage space of between 15and 30 cents per megabyte and delivering reasonably simple and standard installation, hard drives are a commodity item that any computer reseller learns quickly how to deal with.

As the data storage requirements of both businessand home PC usersincrease,and the critical importance of preserving archived copiesof databecomes more obvious,there is a correspondingly increasing market for alternatives to a single, internally mounted hard drive. One solution to the need for extra storage, especially in a networked business computing environment, is to add clusters of hard drives on a server. Among the highest performance multiple hard drive solutions are RAID arrays. Yet, simply multiplying the number of hard drives available to a user is not a completely ideal solution. Mass storage, in cases where instant access is not necessary,can be achieved much more cheaply compared to hard drives by alternative means such as tapes, CD-ROMs, or cartridges.

Storage costs per megabyte for the most efficient alternatives are as little as one per centto 10 percentofhard drive costs.One of the categories of alternative data storage products that has seen great growth in the last five or six years is the optical storage market.

The personal computer field has seen storage media come and go. The so-called "floptical" drive (marketed by Iomega/Bernoulli, among others), is tolerably easy to install, offers compatibility with Mac and PC disk formats, and can accept either traditional floppy disks, or 21MB floptical diskettes. However, the floptical drive is much more expensive than a floppy drive, floptical diskettes can't be read on regular floppy drives, and the floptical format has never caught on to a wide degree.

And, 21MB is not all that impressive an amount of data these days, and some early models of floptical had a reputation for unreliability. Higher capacity flopticals have been created (over 100MB), but the day of the floptical may well have passed. Far highercapacity alternatives are coming down close to its price point, and easily beat its cost-permegabyte of data storage (a steep $1/MB).

Magnetic tape is a very cheap (around a penny per megabyte) storage medium, and it has been around for many years. However, tape is a 'linear' storage medium — the tape must be wound to the segment with the data the useris looking for,before itcan be read — and it is only popular for making backups where seek time is not an issue. It has found its user base mainly at the high-end of the computing field, as an archiving and backup

26

toolfor large mainframe computers,network servers and workstations. It hasn't been hugely popular with the average end-user, and seems destined to decline as an inferior tech-

nology.

The best of the new optical storage

WH O L E SALER F e bruary 1997 ht tpltwww ccwmag,corn

media, onthe other hand, offer a range of price/performance features that place them in the middle ground between hard drives and tape systems. "Optical storage" refers to technologies that utilize finely controlled beams of light to read and/or write data on a storage medium. Recordable compact disk systems (CD-R), flopticals, CD-PD drives, and magneto-optical systems (MO) fall into this category. There are a variety of CD-ROM formats in existence, but in North America, the market has pretty much standardized on one 4.75-inchformat, which isreadable on any standard PC, and frequently on the Mac as well. Current CD-R disks typically have the same storagecapacity as a regular read-only CD-ROM, about 650MB. Magneto optical media are not quite as standardized, nor as likely to be compatible.

There are a variety of MO formats, and two common media sizes — 3.5-inch and 5.25inch. MO storage capacities, unlike CD-R, have been increasing steadily, to a current maximum of about 4.6GB. Optical storage systems are useful for creating copies of very large amounts of data, such as digital video and audio, multimedia software, databases, and scanned images of printed documents. CD-R and MO both have characteristic advantages and limitations that give them a competitive edge under some circumstances and not in others.

Why Magneto Optical?

First developed by Sony in 1988 ("the result of 50 yearsof integrated-system research"), MO technology involves magnetically changing the surface characteristics of a layer of

O PTICA L S T O R A G E crystals so that the difference can be detected, and data read, by a laser light. Magneto Optical technology enjoys a couple of advantages over CD-ROM. For one thing, cartridges are erasable and re-usable, allowing the user to delete unneeded data and write new data onto the disk. MO drives are sold by a few manufacturersto a wide range of OEMs, who package them with driver software andinterface cards and cables.For the business network market, various OEM vendors sell jukebox MO systems that can hold and access dozens of cartridges.

For the home PC user, MO drives are competitively priced with CD-R drives, and are relatively easy to install. MO technology has rapidlygained wide acceptance, and new generations of higher capacity MO cartridges are beingreleased regularly. New MO cartridge formats are typically backwards-compatible with the two previous generations of cartridges, according to a Hewlett-Packard representative, and so upgrading from older to newer MO systems is easy. MO can expect to experience serious competition from Digital Video Disk CDs when recorders for DVD become available, in several years.

Generally, to re-use an MO cartridge, the user has to go through an erase cycle and then a c o p y c y c le. M a xtor r e cently announced a quick-rewrite disk format that speeds up rewriting considerably. An additional advantage of MO is durability: the recording surface is sealed into a well protected 'clean'casing. Sony guarantees the data storage capability of its cartridges for 50 years.

On the down side, MO cartridges can be relatively expensive: about $95 for a blank 4.6GB disk, considerably more than the cost of a backup tape or a blank CD-R disk ( a little over two cents/MB). Also, magneto optical drives, which are required to read the disks as well as write them, are still not all that common. If you want to give a file contained on an MO disk to some other PC user, the odds are that you' ll have to copy it off of the MO disk onto your computer hard drive, and find some other way (via network, Internet, compressed file on multiple floppies, or recordable CD) to transmit it to the other person's computer.

O f course, where th e e n d-user i s employing the MO drive only as a personal backup system for his or her PC, or if the MO disks are accessible from a disk library or 'jukebox' on a network, this lack of pervasive installed base of MO drives is not a problem.

If the Japanese market is any example, sales of MO drives could blossom quickly in 1997 and 1998. In 1993, the first year MO drives started to take off, sales were 110,000 units:

in 1994 — 304,000, in 1995 — 475,000, and in 1996, nearly 700,000. Fujitsu accounted for 51per cent ofMO drivesales.Th e other m ajor players internationally are I BM, Matsushita, and Sony, plus OEM systems makers like HP.

can beread on any PD reader,while the drive also has the capacity to read regular CDROM disks.

So, for under $1,000 you get a first rate opticalstorage recorder and a decent (4X or 6X) CD-ROM reader. Blank PD disks cost about $50 for a 650MB re-writeable disk Why CD-R? (about 8 cents/MB). The PD drive works by The main benefit o f C o mpact D i skfocusing a laser beam onto microscopic crysRecordable systems is that they produce an tals on a disk surface, and creating changes in end product (a CD) which is widely compatithe reflectivity that the laser can detect, and ble and easily distributable. Most mainstream interpret as data. As well, the software develmultimedia-capable PCs have a CD-ROM oped for the CD-PD drives is first rate and reader that will read a CD-R disk. The blank easy to use.

CD-R disks are cheap — as little as $12, for The downside, of course, is that this is 650MB. Here wesee the synergistic effectof yet another "standard" which may or may not several trends coming together: pervasivebe around for awhile. ness of CD-ROM drives on PCs; economies of scale as CD-R caught on, resulting in Markets For Optical Storage lower drive costs; and standardization on one The market for optical storage solutions can format. Those trends have combined to make be divided into two practical segments. First, CD-R very popular, especially for individual there is the corporate market, which makes PC users. With CD-R, you can 'publish' your large-scaleuse of MO for archiving (espeown personal CD-ROMs and distribute them cially of scanned documents), and which to almost any other computer user. None of most frequently relies on the network to give the other optical media offer the same capa- usersaccess to CD or MO archives, rather bility to the same degree. than giving each end user an MO drive on his or her PC. The other MO market is the SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) market, where the CD-R or MO drive is attached to an enduser's machine. The corporate market is generally served by VARs. Hewlett-Packard has 'hundreds' of MO library VARs in North America and 'dozens' in Canada, according to HP representatives, while the SOHO optical market is handled by retail operations that have chosen to carry CD-R or MO drives and materials as part of the product line.

CD-R prices are dropping constantly and rapidly. The street price for an internal Pricing %'ends CD-R kit has fallen as low as $725 recently. For both resellers and end-users, one of the If prices continue to drop to the $500 range, reasons that sales of optical storage devices CD-R might well push other technologies out for the individual PC user have been able to jump so quicldy has been a rapid downward of the space, at least until recordable DVD trend inprice. End-users can rent CD-R sysbecomes available. tems for less than $60 per day, or have CDDownsides to CD-R include often tricky duplication done for under $20 per disk. installation procedures, the fragility of the CD-R disks, and the inability to erase files Street prices on CD-R kits in Toronto at the end of 1996 ranged from: $725 for a and re-use the CD-R disk. Also, there is a strong suspicion by many industry experts Sony 924s (int.); to $785 for a Smart k Friendly two-speed writer kit; through $779 that, while regular CD-ROM disks will be for a JVC XR-W2010; $852 for a Pinnacle readable on the next generation of DVD CD readers, existing CD-R disks will not be read- Micro RCD-50401; $885 for a HP 60201; able, barring some major work-arounds. $1,069 for a HP 40201; and $1,050 for a Yamaha 4X CD-R kit. Blank CD-R Disks Why CD/PD? from KAO, Ricoh and TDK are in the $9 to The newest kid on the optical storage block is $10 range. the CD Player/Phase Change Dual Recorder drive. This is an intriguing system composed The Major Players of a recording device that employs phase There areseveral major suppliers of CD-R change technology to make 650MB disks that and MO systems active in the Canadian hrtp//www.ccwmag.corn February 1997 W H O LESALER 2 7

O PTICA L

ST O R A G E

market, including Hewlett-Packard, Mitsumi, and Pinnacle Micro. Hewlett-Packard is notable for being a supplier of both CD-R and MO systems (it manufactures CD-R systems through a subsidiary it acquired a couple of years ago, and is an OEM customer of a manufacturer of MO drives).

DynaTek, a Canadian company, has recently introduced the DynaTek PCD650, a dual-function rewriteable PC/CD-ROM system with a suggested list price of $995 US. The company also has a high speed 4X CD-R system aimed at the corporate market, the CDM400, which has a suggested retail price of US$3,695.

JVC produces a line of CD-ROM library systems, including the MC-1200 (200 disks), and the MC-1600 (600 disks). The company also makes a Personal Archiver Plus CD-R system, and recently announced some ingenious utility software — the JVC Extensions Software, which utilizes "Variable Packet Writing," to enable direct recording to a CDR disk, as though the CD-R drive was just like any other removable storage device.

Fujltsu has been one of the most aggressive evangelists for MO in the Canadian market, with a series of well-engineered, easy-touse, well-supported MO products. In mid1996, Fujitsu Canada announced the world' s first 3.5-inch 640MB MO drive, nearly tripling the capacity of earlier MO drives.

notebook computer users who need a transportable CD-R option.

HP also has a hand in virtually every other mass storage technology, optical or otherwise. Its CD-ROM and MO jukeboxes are the dominant choice in the corporate data archiving and library markets. According to a Hewlett-Packard rep, the company will be watching the progress of DVD technology closely, and can be expected to offer DVD solutions when the technology and the market are ready.

Matsushita (under its Panasonic subsidiary and name) makes the CD-ROM and Optical 2 in 1 PD drive, which combines in the same mechanism the ability to read and write 650MB PD disks, and to read Audio CD, CD-R (read only), Kodak Photo-CD and CD-ROM disk formats. The drive is available in both internal half height and external models, with simple plug and play installation.

Blank PD disks are sold by a variety of vendors, including Plasmon.

Mltsumi Electronics, the w o rld' s largestproducer of PC peripherals,is one of the principal manufacturers of CD-ROM readers, having manufactured seven million of them in 1995. The company has recently unveiled its first CD-R drive, a leading-edge product called the C-2600TE 2X/6X CD-R. This is the first CD-R drive to feature the new Enhanced IDE (ATAPI) CD-R Interface.

Originally released at the Fall 1996 Comdex 8 Fujitsiu MO drives show, the product is designed to be extremeaud media ly user-friendly and simple to install on a Windows 95 PC. The drive can write at 2X speed, or 300 KB/sec, with a very low error rate.The drive can also be used to read data from CD-R or regular CD-ROM disks at a 6X rate, or 900 KB/sec. "As the leading manufacturer of CD-ROM drives, Mitsumi has taken all its expertise in developing highquality, easy-to-use, affordable products and Hewlett-Packard wa s inte r ested applied that knowledge to the CD-R drive enough in the potential of CD-R to acquire market," according to a M i t sumi r ep. another company that had developed some "Customers told us that CD-R drives were promising, low-cost CD-R technology, and too hard to set up, so Mitsumi designed a CDR drive with an ATAPI interface. Customers actively develop and market a line of CD-R systems. The HP SureStore CD-Writer is also told us that many CD-R drives are too slow, so we made the CR-2600TE fast pretty much the standard in price/performance by which all the other CD-R systems enough to double satisfactorily for a CDROM drive." The suggested list price of the on the Canadian marketare judged. They CR-2600TE is US$599. come with a complete software suite, comMaxoptlcs makes a 5.25-inch halfpatible with Window 3.1, Windows 95 and Window For Workgroups. HP announced height MO drive that can accommodate 2.6GB, 1.3GB and 650MB media. three new CD-R solutions in D ecember, PinnacleMicro offers a wide range of 1996, the 6X family including the SureStore CD-Writer 6020, an external unit, the CDMO products, including the Tahoe 230.

NEC has announced its own PD/CD W riter 6020es, an external SCSI version,and drive — the ODX651-001(product code, OPthe CD-Writer 6020ep, an external parallel 220-PD-SCSI), SCSI-2/ EIDE (ATAPI) port version, with particular application to 28

WH O L E SALER February 1997 hitp/twww ccwmag.corn

based dual recorder/reader. NEC, which was a majorplayer in the high performance CDROM reader market,has recently found itself being pushed out of the CD-ROM market as a product glut put prices through the floor.

Plasmon debuted nine new optical storage products at Comdex/Fall in Las Vegas, including three new CD-ROM libraries (120, 240, and 480 disks). The new CD-ROM library models supplement Plasmon's existing M-Series MO jukebox line. The company also released three new CD-R libraries, which offer CD recording capabilities over a network, and three PD/CD Libraries, which offer combined PD rewriteable disks with 6X

CD-ROM reader capabilities. Prices for the new robotic library models range from about US$10,000 to US$18,000, and up. A library system is essentially a large casing that holds up to 480 disks, with robotic manipulator parts that select a disk according to a user's request, and send the disk's information over a network to one or more users.

s

g

Plasmon also has a PD/CD drive, plus what it claims is the fastest MO drive on the market — the 2.6GB DW260. The DW260 is a half-height 5.25-inch drive, which employs Light Intensity Modulation Direct Overwrite (LIMDOW) technology to write data in a single pass of the disk, rather than two passes.

The DW260 is fully compatible with existing MO disks, including 2.6GB WORM and LIMDOW disks, and earlier 1.3GB, 1.2GB, 650 MB and 600MB formats. Suggested list price for the DW260 is US$1,995 (internal) and US$2095 (external). P l asmon also recently introduced faster direct overwrite

O PT I C A L 2.6GB MO Libraries.

Ricoh manufactures an external 1.3GB RS-5060E optical drive, with 'Mobility' formatting software from Apunix, for greater compatibility.

2000 AD: The Coming Of Recordable DVD The biggest revolution in software publishing and distribution over the next couple of years is likely to be the advent of Digital Video Disk format on a large scale. This format, which can store between 4.5GB and 14GB on a 4.75-inch CD, is likely to build slowly at first. There will be a need for appealing software (such as movies) to appear in this format to spur sales, and one key bit of hardwareMPEG II decoding devices, will have to become cheap enough so as not to inhibit sales. For DVD to become a viable mass storage technology for backing up or archiving the contentsof a hard drive,low-cost recordable DVD (DVD-R) will have to become available. Depending on whom you talk to, if low-cost DVD-R is even practical, it is likely anywhere from three toseven years off.

However, almost every manufacturer and dealer CCW talked to, believes that if DVD-

R does come, it might stand the best chance to become the standard for optical storage after the year 2000.

Buyer and Seller Beware Like many other areas of computer technology, the pace of change in the optical storage market is so fast that both resellers and endusers are constantly at risk of getting stuck with an i ncompatible, non-upgradeable, unsupported technology. No optical storage product should ever be represented as anything but a temporary solution, just as the 5.25-inch floppy was.

Profit margins on individual PC optical storage drives are likely to decline as a few popular types become mass-produced and widely used, and "commodification" sets in.

There will always be larger margins in selling high-end optical jukeboxes to corporate network customers,but these customers are fewer innumber and require the reseller to acquire higher technical skills and endure longer sales cycles.

Jeff Evans is Toronto Editor for Canadian Computer Wholesaler.

He can be reached atjeff totcpon.corn.

S T O RA G E

For more information, contact: 3M Co.: (612) 736 5961 Apunix: 1-800-827-8649, http: //www.apunix.corn DynaTek: 1-800-461-8855, http: //www.dynatek.ca Fujitsu Canada Inc.. (905) 206-2722 HswlsN-Packard (Canada) Ltd.: 1-800-387-3867, www.dmo.external.hp.corn/cdwrlter/ Hitachi America Ltd.: http: //www.hitachi.corn IOMEGA(Gernoulli): 1-800-456-5522, 1-800-777-6654 JVC Information Products Co. of America: (714) 261-1292, http: //wwwjvclnfo.corn Maxell: http: //www.maxall.corn Matsushita Electric Industrial Company: (201) 348-7212 Mitsumi: (408) 970-0700, http://www.mltsuml.corn Panasonic CommunicationsandSystems Company: (201) 348-7212, www. panasonic.corn/PCSC/PCPC /multimedia/ Pinnacle Micro Inc.: 1-800-553-7070 Plasmon DataSystems Inc.: 1-800-451-6845, (61 2)946-4100, http: //www.plasm on.corn Ricoh: http: //www.rlcoh.co.jp/cd-r/ Sony Electronics Inc.: 1-800-325-7669 SyQuest Technology Inc.:1-800-245-2278

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More and more power is being bestowed upon computer users, at a rapidlyincreasing pace. So much so,we are witnessing the emergence of anew breed of computing machine. That next new kid on the PC block is the high-performance PC. These all-in-one power boxes have the word 'speed' written all over them — and for good reason. They' re boasting ultra fast processors, turbo-charged video, complex multime dia capabilities, speedy CD-ROMs, really fast hard drives and they' re communications-savvy.

In mid-1996, Intel introduced the 200MHz Pentium processor.

Since then, its price has dropped down to the 'affordable by many level.

As the costofthe 200MHz processor decreases, more and more people are purchasing both systems including both that processor and its complementary high-performance components as well

Today's High Performance PC

The Dilemma Do you hear this question? "Should I buy a Pentium Pro or wait for a even faster processor?

This dilemma will always remain. Of course, the buyer must be willing to put out the extra amount and justify the expense. For the speed demons, there is yet an even faster processor — the DEC Alpha runs ata clock speed of 333MHz, but be prepared to wr ite your own code, at least for now For most buyers, the choice is made by the cooperation between softwaredevelopers and hardware manufacturers.This is a symbiotic relationship. If you customers haven't realized yet, Windows 95 is the next 'DOS' — in the sense that if they haven't made the switch to Windows 95 — they will. When customers do upgrade, the probabili ty that they will also purchase a Pentium-based system is very high simply because Windows 95 is optimally designed for a Pentium based system. Consequently, both Microsoft and Intel will add anoth er coin to their gold pots. Furthermore, many software packages and upgrades are only being offered for the Windows 95 platform

So whatreally makes up a high performance PC? It begins with the processor; a top-of-the-line 200MHz Pentium or Pentium Pro. Then add an envious amount of RAM, somewhere in the neighborhood of32MB to 64MB, and a quick hard drive — one What Is The Markets that minimizes the data transfer time between your drive and the CPU So what does all this power do, and who can benefit from it? No doubt (For example, an IDE drive with specifications something like the fol lowing: a spin rate of at least 3,600 RPM, a transfer rate of about 2,500 the performance PCs described above represent serious computing and an access time of less than 1 lms.) Throw in a VRAM or WRAM power and are probably geared more toward the power user, the mul timedia profession quality video card, and top that off with and for business No doubt these performance PCs represent serious computing power, al a 33.6Kbps speedy use. For the power user, such a system voice/faxmodem and and are geared towards the power user, a 12X CD-ROM. in m o s t ca s es the multimedia professional and for business use With all this talk becomes another of P200s, let's not toy to learn from For producers of multimedia content, such a system satisfies the need forget the P133 and P166 processors. The P200 is approximately 12 per cent faster that a P166 and costs about $150 to $200 more. A 12 for raw power and speed required by graphics design and audio/video per cent speed boost for Windows NT Server 4.0 is much welcomed editing. But perhaps the best-suited environment for this class of machines is a commercial application. Such systems are proving ideal by many network professionals — thus justifying a P200 based sys tern. Otherwise, a 12 per cent increase really isn't all that attractive as network file servers and now more than ever — Internet servers (versus a P166 based workstation) for the average home or office use 30

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3-D Micro IPC Suggested Retail Price:$2,599

Editors' Notes:

Reseller Authorization: 3D Micro sells only to authorized resellers.

IPC computers have been known to have neat little â&#x20AC;˘0 gadgets which tend to be gc:.~. an easy sell to most customers. An example is the Ni internal ISA radio receiver, complete with software. This month's system contains fairly common components, such as a video card from ATI and a 1.6GB hard drive from Fujitsu. Most customers will probably want to upgrade the amount of RAM on the video card to 2MB, especially considering the small price difference. Popular software titles like Microsoft Encarta 96, Golf, Dangerous Creatures, Works and Money are also included. For game buffs, Virtua Fighter from Sega will be an added bonus. The system's performance was lacking, due mostly to the combination of the IMB video and slower hard drive.

Marketing Support For Resellers: Co-op advertising and marketing funds.

Reseller referrals and 1-800 tie-in to resellers.

POP displays.

Maintenance And Technical Relationship With Resellers: Three-year warranty includes parts and labor.

Optional extended warranty.

Reseller training seminars.

Dedicated technical BBS. Dealer-specific space on Web site.

Web site includes technical information and drivers.

Channel E-mail:info@3dmicro.corn Market Positioning: "We configure our system as a high-end business multimedia workstation, said a 3D Micro spokesperson.

Advance Interface Ex ress Micro P166 Suggested Retail Price:$5,799 Reseller Authorization: Reseller candidates cannot be geographically located near existing authorized dealers. Authorization is at the discretion of the company.

Marketing Support: National end-user advertising.

Dealerreferralprogram.

Local product shows.

Marketing materials.

POP display.

Product training.

Maintenance And Technical Relationship: Optional on-site service is available.

1-800 toll-free technical support.

Product information on Web site.

A depot warranty is available for both resellers and end-users across Canada.

Volume Discounts: On a per-order basis.

View Of The Market: The c o mpany s a y s: "Multimedia is becoming the trend in PC market.

More than 80 per cent of our desktop systems are MPC equipped."

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Editors' Notes: This system from Express Micro was the fastest Pentium we' ve ever tested. Included in the machine are nothing but first-rate components, such as a Matrox Millennium video card with 4MB on board, plus the MPEG XL hardware add-on. The Quantum 4.5GB Atlas uses an Ultra Wide SCSI interface, and is connected through Adaptec's 2940UW controller. Multimedia accessories include the latest Sound Blaster AWE64 from Creative Labs and a five-disk 10X changer from Panasonic. A truly exceptional system, and a definite winner.

HP Vectra 500 Our test unit came equipped with a Matrox Millennium video card c o ntaining 2MB of WRAM, and a Market Positioning: 2.5GB Quantum h ard "The HP Vectra 500 with a 200MHz Intel Pentium is positioned drive, which definitely for the small business owner/operator that needs high-speed, reli- aids in the overall system able computing power as well as top-notch support. Although performance. Multimedia designed specifically for small businesses that have little or no components include a Sound MIS staff internally, the Vectra 500 provides all of the features that Blaster 16 sound card, and an 8X small companies need to function like large corporations," accord- CD-ROM drive. A feature very rare ing to HP sources. among many systems is the included MS Office Professional CDROM. This is great package, and backed by one of the industry's Editors' Notes: HP's evaluation system this month was from the Vectra 500 series. giants with a three-year warranty.

Suggested Retail Price:$4,435

Reseller Authorization: Resellers are authorized through HP's national distributors.

32

WH O L E SALER F e bruary 1997 h trpllwuvw.ccwmag.cpm

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Each month, we publish 10 Print Editions, 3 Internet Editions, and operate a Hardware Testing Facility.

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L AB

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• • •

• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• • •

• • • • 0 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Suggested Retail Price:$4,635 Street Price:$4,535 Reseller Authorization: Resellers can't be nearby to an existing authorized reseller.

Marketing Support For Resellers: Co-op advertising.

Reseller referrals.

Marketing materials, like brochures and awards copies.

Maintenance And Technical Relationship With Resellers: Three-year warranty includes parts and labor.

Resellers receive technical updates.

Volume Discounts:Available Demo Unit Availability And Restrictions: There is a 10 per cent discount on demo unit pricing.

Channel E-mai I: compucon bc®compucon.corn

• • • • • • • • • • •

Market Positioning: "This product is ideal for users looking for highperformance multimedia systems at home or at work," said Alan Ng, at Compucon. "It also targets markets in desktop publishing and CAD due to itsextremely good performance in 2-D graphic environment."

/

Editors' Notes: Making up the system are high-grade components like a 4MB Matrox Millennium video card, a 4.3GB Ultra Wide SCSI hard drive from Seagate, 32MB of EDO RAM and 512K of pipelined cache. The operating system which ships with the machine was Windows NT 4.0, but we had to run our tests under Windows 95, in order to remain consistent and fair to the other competitors.

This fine system managed to place second fastest in this survey. A high-performance system, definitely worth considering.

Daiwa Suggested Retail Price:$2,630 Street Price:$2,390 Reseller Price:$2,190 Marketing Support For Resellers: National advertising.

Maintenance And Technical Relationship With Resellers: One-yearwarranty includes parts and labor.

Web site includes technical information and drivers.

Demo Unit Availability And Restrictions: Demo units are available with three days notice. Any customer configuration is possible, and a deposit is required.

System Strengths: Daiwa said: "We emphasis fast delivery, quality control and fast RM turn around time. We aim to support small- to medium-sized

resellers who want prompt I• services and direct support.

Editors'Notes: D aiwa c omputers a r e well-known around our labs as the ones with all the right stuff, at a great price. The unit consists of components which customers will f in d v ery a ttractive. For example, video is produced by a Matrox Millennium accelerator with 2MB of dual-ported WRAM on-board. Storage comes in the form of a 2.5GB drive from Western Digital. Multimedia components include a Sound Blaster 32 sound card, a Panasonic 12X CD-ROM drive and a USR 28.8Kbps fax modem.

Empac Azura • • • •

• • •

• • 1 • • • • • • • • • \ • • • • • • 0 • • • •

Suggested Retail Price:$2,199 Street Price:$2,099 Reseller Price:$1,899 Marketing Support: Reseller referrals.

National advertising.

Maintenance And Technical Warranty: Two-year warranty includes parts and labor.

1-800 tech support for resellers.

Dedicated technical BBS. Web site includes technical information and drivers.

Volume Discounts:Yes.

Demo Unit Availability: Subject to restrictions, with one per dealer.

System Strengths: Said Empac's Susan Hu: "(It's a) customized system with good 34

WH O L E SALER February 1997 iv p yswww crwmag.rom

• • •

• • 0 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 0

tech support and excellent warranty service." ' i.",jY@ Editors' Notes: The Azura systems, while ;,i $ fairly new to our Lab Test, have managed to surprise ' us every now and then. The I configuration i n cludes a Pentium 200MHz processor, 512KB of pipeline burst cache, and 32MB of SDRAM. One unique feature was the Diamond Stealth video card with 2MB of EDO RAM. Systems equipped with these cards tend to score high marks in the area of our benchmarks — which deal with graphics-intensive applications. Also included were: a 2.5GB drive from Seagate, a 33.6Kbps fax modem and a 12X CD-ROM drive from Panasonic.

This machine managed to achieve an impressive score of 159 on our benchmark suite.

L AB

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Darius Discovery • • 0 • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Suggested Retail Price: $2,928 Street Price: $2,888 Reseller Price: $2,450 Warranty: Optional two- or three-year warranty.

Narketing Support For Resellers: Co-op advertising.

Resellerreferrals and system brochures.

Naintenance And Technical Relationship With Resellers: Sixty-day DOA is pre-paid both ways with shipping on defective systems. The company cross-ships components (for example, videocard,hard drive and floppy drive)occasionally for resellers so that they can also replace the defective components, saving down time for their customers.

Volume Discounts: Volume discounts are available for resellers who are dealing with purchase plan orders for educational institutions or corporate employees.

Demo Unit Availability And Restrictions: Demo units can be purchased at a slightly lower price than the usual reseller price on system. The company is implementing a program forresellers to purchase one demo system from selected system configurations, every three months.

E-mail:darius@i starca

IBM S18

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• 0 • • • • • •

Narket Positioning: "We feel strongly that multimedia-based computer systems will be a standard, as 90 per cent of the systems we are shipping now are equipped with C D-ROM, s o un d c a r d , speakers and modem. With the focus from Intel on MMX and DVD standardization, multimedia systems will become a 'MUST' for system distributors when they configure any computer system bundle," said Jennifer Chan, of Darius. "We will follow the demand from our resellers. For example, we currently offer 12X CD-ROM as an upgrade from 8X and DVD will be available as an option in March."

Editors ' Notes: This system from Darius features a Diamond Stealth 3-D 2240 video card with 4MB of EDO RAM onboard, a Sound Blaster 16 from Creative Labs, a 1.7GB hard drive from Fujitsu and a 33.6Kbpsvoice/fax modem from USR, which can be upgraded to X2 technology when available. Also included in the package is a pair of speakers from Yamaha and an 8X CD-ROM drive by Sony.

The popular Corel WordPerfect Suite is also bundled, with the option of choosing Lotus SmartSuite 96 at no additional charge.

Overall system performance was good, with a score of 151 on our BAPCo benchmarks.

• • • • • • • • oo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • oo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• oe • • • • •

Editors' Notes: Suggested Retail Price:$4,999 It's black, it's sleek, and it' s Narketing Support For Resellers: new from IBM. Part of the Co-op advertising. new "S" series, this model Reseller referrals.

S78 is agood example of 1-800 tie-in to resellers. "computer renovation." The POP displays. entire system is composed of three main pieces — the monNaintenance And Technical Relationship Witlt Resellers: Three-year warranty includes parts and labor for one year. itor, media console, and the Reseller training seminars. tower case. This design allows the 1-800 tech support for resellers. user to place the monitor and media Dedicated technical BBS. console on the desk, and to conveniently hide the tower case under the desk.

Web site includes technical information and drivers.

The media console houses the CD-ROM and floppy drives, Volume Discounts: No. w hich saves the user from having to crawl around under the desk Demo Unit Availability And Restrictions: to insert disks. The S78 uses ATI's new 3-D Rage chipset on a Usually 60 days.

2MB video card, and IBM *s own 3.2GB hard drive which is both fast and contains plenty of storage space. The combination of a System Strengths: According to an IBM spokesperson, the Aptiva is set apart 28.8Kbps fax modem and 16-bit sound is achieved using IBM's through: "High performance; split-system design; media console MWave card.

The package contains many popular software titles, includand distinctive monitor stand; Total Image Video offering full screen action; theatre sound with CD-quality 3-D Qsound; total ing Microsoft Encarta 96, Lotus SmartSuite 96, Quicken SE, communications, including Ring Central Software, a 33.6Kbps MechWarrior 2 designed for the 3-D Rage chipset, VR Soccer, modem; Wake Up On Ring; cordless mouse; joystick; Internet TripMaker 1996 SE, and others aimed at younger children, in the Connection Phone; and the 'Super Offer' (which allows users to edutainment category. To help defeat those Mechs is a high-quality joystick with buttons galore, and a cordless mouse. choose one of five value-add options.)." hrtpl/wwwccwmag.corn

February 1997 WHOLESALER 35

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ilet — LCF Advanced Tech System Strengths: The company says: "The strength of our iNet computer systems is t heir quality, reliability, compatibility and high performance."

Suggested Retail Price:$2,599 Street Price:$2,495 Reseller Price:$2,390 Reseller Authorization: Authorization depends on reseller size and location.

Marketing Support For Resellers: Reseller referrals and POP displays.

Maintenance Relationship With Resellers: Warranty includes three-year parts and six-year labor.

Web site includes technical information and drivers.

Volume Discounts: Volume discounts are negotiated with each order.

Demo Unit Availability: Demo units are available at special prices with restrictions.

Editors' Notes With a score of 155 on our BAPCo benchmark suite, this system was among the faster ones tested. The 200MHz Pentium processor is aided by 512Kbps of pipelined cache and 32MB of EDO RAM. The 4MB ATI 3-D video card is expandable to 8MB of SGRAM, and has the capability of redirecting output to a TV. To complete the system is a 2.1GB hard drive from Quantum, a 12X CD-ROM from Mitsumi, a Sound Blaster 16 sound card, and a 33.6Kbps voice/fax modem from iNet Robotics.

M nix M corn Enermax •• • •

• • •• • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • •

SuggestudRetailPrice:$3,400 Street Price$3,100 Reseller Price:$2,685 Reseller Authorizatio Retlulrementtc Resellers must have an office or storefront with in-house tech support for end-users.

Markehng Support Reseller referrals.

National advertising.

Maintenaace And Technical Relationship With Resellers: Three-year warranty includes parts and labor.

1-800 technical support for resellers.

Reseller training seminars.

Dedicated technical BBS. Web site includes technical information and drivers.

Volume Discounts:Yes.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 1 • • •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Mariret View: The company says: "This product market will be for high-end users and a good entry level for corporate users with Windows NT as the 0/S." Edrinrs'Notes: From Quebec's Mycomp comes a well-balanced, competitively priced system. Features in t his unit include the standard 200MHz Pentium processor, 256KB of Level-2 cache, 32MB of RAM, and a Matrox Millennium video card with 2MB of WRAM and a 3.2GB Quantum hard drive. An ESS1688 sound card provides 16-bit stereo sound. The 8X CDROM in this system is not as fast as the newer 12X variety, but still very reliable. To add the finishing touches, Mycomp has includeda 33.6Kbps fax modem from Supra.

ServiceWorks Distribution Inc. DataTrain P200 • • • • • • • • • • • • • 0 • • • • • • • • • •

Suggested Retail: $3,199 Street Price:$2,999 Reseller Price: $2,599 Reseller Authorization:Limited.

Marketing Support For Resellers: Co-op advertising and marketing funds.

Reseller referrals.

1-800 tie-in and POP displays too.

Maintenance And Technical Relationship: Two-yearwarranty includes parts and labor.

Reseller training seminars.

Dedicated tech BBS. Dealer-specific space on Web site.

Web site includes tech info. and drivers.

Volume Discounts:Yes. Demo Units:Yes. 40

WH O L ESALER February 1997 i rrpy/www.ccwmag.cpm

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Market Positioning: The company says: "The product is designed to proQSSÃlj gQ flexible systems incorporating the latest technology such as Intel MMX, and USB connecti vity."

Editors' Notes: This DataTrain system features a 200MHz Pentium CPU, 512KB of pipelined cache, and 32MB of RAM. Hard drive storage should be adequate for the next while with a 2.1GB drive from Quantum.

The Panasonic 12X CD-ROM should make working with CDROM based software a breeze. Video is accomplished through an ATI Mach64 with 2MB of DRAM onboard. To complete the system is: a 33.6Kbps fax modem, a Sound Blaster 16 sound card and four software titles. Performance of this machine was at acceptable levels based on given components.

vide ... the latest and most

L AB

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•• • • • • •• • • • • •• • • • • 0 • • • • • • • •• • • • • •• • • • • •• • • 4•

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and a complaint handling system to ensure total customer satisfaction," says the company.

Suggested Retail Price:$3,188 Authorization Requirements: The weighting is on dealers that can provide service and support, with a maximum of two to three dealers per city.

Editors' Notes: OA is known for providing us with fastsystems at competitive prices. This month's evaluation unit c o nsists of 32MB of EDO RAM, 512KB of pipelined cache, an ATI 3-D Pro Turbo video card with 4MB of SGRAM, a Quantum 2.0GB Wide SCSI drive with an Adaptec 2940UW controller. Multimedia components include a 12XCDROM drive from Toshiba, a Sound Blaster 32 from Creative Labs with a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard option and a 33.6Kbps USR fax modem. Overall, the system's performance was near average.

Market ing Support: Nation-wide advertising.

Ready-to-use marketing materials.

Maintenance And Technical Relationship With Resellers: Dedicated Internet technical support.

Web site includes updated documentation.

Web site includes new drivers.

Demo Unit Availability: Demo units are available with restrictions.

Systems Strengths: "We provide up-to-date configurations and toll-free technical support. We use only quality components, have strict quality control,

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Maintenance And Technical Relationship With Resellers: Two-yearwarranty includes parts and labor.

1-800 technical support for resellers.

Dealer-specific space on Web site.

Web site includes technical information.

Volume Discounts: Discounts are available after 10 and 20 units are purchased.

Demo Unit Availability: Demo units are available for potential large orders.

E-mai%sales @ultinet.ca

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Market Positioning: The company says t he P-200 is ideal for heavy u sers, b ecoming t h e benchmark for high performance.

Editors' Notes: Ultinet is known for packing a lot of power into a little box.

When it c omes to benchmark results, Ultinet computers are among the fastest in the lot. This month's system was no exception, scoring an overall 169 on our benchmark suite. The machine itself includes 64MB of EDO RAM, Intel's 430HX chipset, 512KB of pipelined cache, a Matrox Millennium with 4MB of WRAM, and the new Quantum 3.1GB Fireball. For a great combination of multimedia accessories, the system includes an Acer 12X CD-ROM, a Sound Blaster 32 and a pair of 100W surround sound speakers.

P erf o r m a n c e Our award for best performance is always given to the fastest system in our survey. This month, the award goes to Express Micro. Every time we test computers, there are always one or two systems which stand out. This machine managed to outperform all of its competitors, and is packed with nothing but the best of computer hardware. When it comes to high performance systems, this is the system to get.

P ric e / P e r f o r m a n c e This month's winner of our Price/Performance award goes to Daiwa. Here's a computer that is filled withgreatcomponents, and one thatmanaged toachieve a very respectable score on our benchmark suite. The ever-popular Matrox Millennium and Western Digital hard drives were key factors in aiding this machine to obtain this award.

All R o u n c t If your customers are looking for something with both power and good looks, this month's S78 system from IBM is a definite winner. The unit is equipped with the new ATI 3D Rage video card with 2MB onboard, andIBM's own very fast 3.2GB hard drive. The basic configuration includes a 15-inch monitor, with the option of a 17-inch version for a few hundred dollars more. [CCtr

SteveHalind, T' B' gh 42

8'll'and Jazz Bhooi are CC5"s Lab TestEditors.They can be reached at (416) 535-8404.

WH O L E SALER F ebruary 1997 ht tp//www.ccwmag.corn

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G R A P H IC S / D E S K T O P P U B L I S H I N G

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by Geof Wheelwright

• Corel Script Editor and Corel Script Dialog Internet-mad software sales environment to include such features — the fact that they are Editor — These are scripting utilities that Corel hopes will be used by corporate cus- in a key product such as Corel's does change tomers, in particular, to create add-on utilities the way it can be sold.

For example, CorelDraw 7 now allows for CorelDraw and Corel Photo-Paint through users to assign URLs to any object and pubOLE 2.0 automation. lish documents to HTML, GIF, JPEG or • CorelMemo — Corel calls this "an OLE Corel Barista (Barista being the technology compliant utility that allows users to attach Corel has developed to let users create docunotes to their drawings or documents" withments based e n t irely o n the Sun out altering the original graphics or text.

Microsystems' Java Language without any Corel Draws A Lucky Seven?

Aside from these applications, Corel —, = The most h igh-profile o f t h ese has revamped the package so that it should programming requirements).

Perhaps trying to appear neutral in the , =.: announcements was Corel Corp.'s work with PhotoShop-compatible plug-in fil' '~ j un v e iling of its CorelDraw 7 graph- ters — including Kai's Power Tools 3.0 SE, "browser wars," both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer color palettes are ics package forWindows 95 and Extensis Intellihance 2.0, Cytopia PhotoLab, included so that Web pages can be designed Windows NT 4.0 — including retooled ver- the heavily-hyped "digital watermarking" filsions of t h e t h ree m ain a pplications: ter by D i gimarc Corp., and AutoF/X's to be optimized for either. There is also a CorelDraw, C o re l Ph o t o-Paint and Photo/Graphic Edges — when using either d irect link w i t hin t h e H el p m enu i n CorelDraw 7 to Corel's home page. There' s CorelDream 3D. CorelDraw or Corel Photo-Paint.

Corel claims that its new flagship graphThe company has also included the also support for some new input technologies ics product is easier to u se, provides usual 'kitchen sink' full of o ther extras, in the Natural Pen tool which can be used improved memory handling, faster file open, including some 32,000 clipart images and with a pressure-sensitive tablet to create save, import and redraw functions — as well symbols, 1,000 Adobe Type 1 and TrueType curves of varying thicknesses as well as callias the now-obligatory Internet graphics sup- fonts, 1,000 high-resolution photos, more graphic effects (Corel says this tool is also port (including the ability to create image than 250 three-dimensional models and in great for artistic sketching). maps and publish to HTML). excess of 400 CorelDraw and PaperDirect Finally, CorelDraw users are starting to As usual, this new version of CorelDraw templates, floating objects and tiling textures. see somebenefits from the WordPerfect deal also includes a grab-bag of other supporting Anyone who has followed the fortunes with new writing tools in Version 7.0 that utilities: of this product however, is used to seeing a come from Corel WordPerfect — including a • Corel Multimedia Manager 7 — This 'visu- shopping list of new features, (it's always a spellchecker, a thesaurus and a grammar al file manager' utility is supposed to help long one). But one fundamental new direction checker,as well asB itstream's TrueDoc font users to organize and manage graphics files. that dealers, in particular, should welcome is embeddingtechnology.

• Corel OCR-Trace 7 — Corel calls this an Internet support. Although, as suggested earThe way thatCorel has developed and "enhanced" optical character recog- lier, it is almost obligatory in the current rolled out this latest version of its flagship nition/raster to vector conversion utility.

• Corel Texture — This procedural texture• i • I • I generation program promises to allow the (613) 728-8200 http: //www.co rel.corn creation of simulated natural textures like Corel: marbles, woods, stones, clouds and metals.

1-800-470-7211 Macromedia: http: //www.macromedia.corn • CorelScan — This scanning utility includes Adobe: (206) 628-4531 http: //www.adobe.corn preset processing options.

• CorelDepth — This utility is supposed to Quark: (303) 894-8888 http: //www,quark.corn make it easy to create 3D logos and text.

Microsoft: (905) 568-0434 http: //www.microsoft.corn/publisher/97datasheet/ • Corel Capture 7 — This is a beefed-up Micrografx: (905) 332-6641 http: //www.micrografx.corn/ screen capture utility.

Dealers and resellers specializing in the graphics and desktop publishing software marketsare set to reap the rewards of the recent string of new product announcements made by key industry players. And there is a clear tilt toward providing applications that make World Wide Web pages, as well as paper-based documents, look colorful, stylish and snappy.

44

WHO L E SALER F e bruary 1997 hr tpitwwwccwmag.corn

G R A P H IC S / D E S K T 0 P P U B L I S H I N G graphics product is also a clearer indication of something much more important. Unlike Novell, which analysts say "took its eye off the ball" on its core networking business when it acquired WordPerfect, Corel appears to have continued its long tradition of quickly and effectively continuing to use its acquisitions to add value to CorelDraw, while also allowing them to effectively develop in their own right. (That's a strategy the company d eveloped to great effect when i t f i r st acquired the Ventura desktop publishing software from Xerox more than three years ago.)

Dealers should also be happy to see the system requirements for CorelDraw 7, which promise to encourage a number of users to either upgrade or get completely new systems. To use this graphics monolith, users will need: a minimum of a 60MHz Pentium processor (with a minimum of a 120MHz Pentium recommended); 16MB of RAM (32MB recommended); 40MB of hard disk space to install CorelDraw, Help, filters and fonts; a CD-ROM player (double-speed or higher recommended); a mouse or tablet; VGA display (SVGA recommended); and either Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 as the operating system.

In addition, dealers should also benefit from theappeal of aggressive pricing — particularly where upgrades are concerned.

CorelDraw 7 has a suggested list price of US$695, withan upgrade price of US$249 forusers of any version of CorelDraw from either the Windows or Macintosh platform.

Both Corel Ventura and Corel Of fice Professional 7 users will also be able to take advantageof the upgrade price.

The Macromedia Challenge After Corel laid down the gauntlet to the graphics softw are i n dustry w i t h th e CorelDraw 7 launch, the chall enge was picked up b y Macromedia as i t u n v eiled FreeHand Graphics Studio 7. Although FreeHand has been aroundforyears— and gained fame as a sister product to Aldus PageMaker (subsequently sold off after Adobe took over Aldus) — this is the first major release under the Macromedia banner since the huge success of Macromedia'sShockWave technology for displaying graphical, multimedia Web pages.

It thus includes lots of tools for Web publishing — and also bears the distinction of being s imultaneously released fo r b o t h t h e Windows 95 and Apple Macintosh platforms.

To start with, as one would expect, FreeHand Graphics Studio 7 is Shockwaveenabled, allowing developers to create vector

and bitmap art for the Web. This should give any customers who need to design Web pages a real boost, as it means that their 'active' Shockwave pages can now be viewed by any of the 12 million users worldwide who have apparently downloaded players.

In fact, the release of Shockwave supported in this new version of FreeHand is as good at displaying text as it is graphicswith the ability to embed fonts in documents and display true, anti-aliased fonts, even if the fonts are not installed on the viewer's machine. Macromedia is further promising on-line v i ewers o f Fr e eHand-created, Shockwave-compatible pages will be able to pan and zoom on selected artwork and magnify by as much as 25,600 per cent without sacrificing resolution and clarity. Shockwave also allows users to create "hot links" or add URLs t o a n y g r a phics. I n a d d i tion, Macromedia boasts that the Shockwave A fterburner compression feature reduces file size by approximately 50 per cent, allowing for faster download and display times.

Macromedia is shipping FreeHand G raphics Studio 7 shi p s w i t h th e Fontographer 4.1 font creation tool — as well as 10,000 clip-art images, 500 FreeHand templates, 500 TrueType and PostScript Type 1 fonts, 250MB of high-resolution photography, and "dozens" of three-dimensional models.

FreeHand Graphics Studio 7 is available for Windows 95, Windows NT, Macintosh 68K and Power PC for what it says is an approximate street price of US$449, while registeredusersofthe previous version ofthe product (or any of the software applications in it) can upgrade for US$199. And to grab market share from the competition, anyone using Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Canvas and Micrografx Designer can also get a "competitive upgrade" to FreeHand Graphics Studio 7 for $199.

Don't Count Adobe Out While Corel and Macromedia have been grabbing headlines, Adobe was by no means standing still — particularly with developments for its PhotoShop product. Late last year, Adobe began rolling out A dobe Photoshop version 4.0 for both the Macintosh and Windows platforms.

Adobe saysthe offers a wide range of new features that increase creative control and productivity. Key new f eatures in Photoshop 4.0 include Actions (which support task automation and batch processing) and Adjustment Layers (which are special layers through which image adjustments can be applied without permanently modifying

the original image).

In fact, many of the things you' ll find in CorelDraw you' ll now find — in one form or another — in Photoshop. The company says, for example, that many users have requested an easier way to align elements in a multi-layered file, so Photoshop 4.0 supports custom Guides and Grids. In addition, this new version also includes the same digital watermarking technology (provided by Digimarc Corp.) as Corel that is used for image copyright protection and artist information.

In addition, Adobe has tried to make changes to Photoshop that match those being made across the Adobe graphics product line (including Illustrator and PageMaker), so that users get more consistent access to commands and tool palettes even when switching between multiple applications.

Despite being designed to run on different platforms, Adobe is also claiming that Adobe Photoshop 4.0 makes the most of each of them, with support for symmetric multiprocessing on Windows NT and Macintosh systems, as well as broad optimization for Intel's new MMX chip architecture. The company takes pains to point out, however, that despite this optimization for specific platforms, the Macintosh and Windows versions of Adobe Photoshop 4.0 share a common feature setand userinterface layout,and all data file formats are fully interchangeable on Macintosh and Windows platforms.

And There Are Many More....

This is by no means an exhaustive description of what's on offer from the industry's key players.

There have also been significant new en h ancements ei t h er promised or delivered for the graphics and DTP products by Micrografx, Quark, Adobe's PageMaker division, Microsoft's unveiling of Publisher 97 and lots of other less wellknown releases.

The key point to make is that the graphicsand DTP sectoris one area where there is still a significant degree of supplier choice availablefor software vendors.

While Microsoft, Corel a nd Adobe are major participants in g+ , + =this market, they do not utterly dominate it to the exclusion of everyoneelse.And for resellers and dealers trying to offer a range of solutions, that has to make this market an attractive option for those considering greater diversification. II',IWI Geof 8'heelwright is a Vancouver-based technology and business journalist. He can be reached at geofwheelwright@msn.corn.

hid/twwwccwmag.corn February 1997 WHOLESALER 45

T ECH N O L O G Y

I,C+,I „I"'.n.k

e new s an al Multimediaenhanced CPUs will power this year' s newest

computers

by Alan Zisman

46

Backward compatibility : 'Pentiums and the new MMX P-55C Pentiums is either a blessing or a a r e pin-compatible, you can't simply pop the curse. It means your new m new chip into an old motherboard — you i. technology can still work:, need a control chip-set (from Intel), and a with your old data, hard-:: BIOS that's designed for the new CPU. The ware, and software - :. newest motherboard and BIOS designs anticthat's good. But, it also i p a te this, however, and can be set for either means that you may be m Pentium model. unnecessarily tying yourself to the old gener- I Use r s of older machines need not feel i left out. Intel has announced plans for a series ation's limitations. That can be bad.

CPU king Intel has been following the. :of MMX Overdrive chips to upgrade original backwards compatibility route ever since the . '.Pentiums. Using clock-multiplying technolopopularity of the original Intel processor-dri-:: gies, these will speed up the systems while also adding the multimedia ven 1981 IBM PC. Even five generanons of "Jg(e/ (.Jg~mg capabilities. These Overdrive chips later, Intel's x86 family of chips will require an upgradechips still shows its ancestry. that PrOPerly able motherboard, but will Even the limited number of include built-in voltageregulap~tIm~Zed new processor instructions tors, so that they can convert included in 1985's 80386 chip QPP]/CQ$/P/7S older, 3.3-volt systems to the are only now being included in new 2.8-volt standard. The inig b bt popular 32-bit operating systial P - 5 4TCB O v e rdrive tems. $P P f'Pgde Q p roc essor will upg r ade So when Intel decides to Pentium 75MHz, 90MHz, and Pe~fo™~~Ce 100MHz models to speeds upgrade the instruction set, the collection of commands built bppS) Of Up tp r anging from 1 25MHz t o into the processor, it's news.

166MHz. Later models will be 60 Per Cent."n made available to upgrade In this case, the result is the MMX family of processors more recent Pentiums to speeds — replacements for today's Pentiums and u p t o 200MHz. While Intel will be making Pentium Pros, with new instructions opti- , :these available through retail channels later in mized for multimedia. Computers including . the first half of 1997, there are no plans to the first of the MMX family, the P-55C:: make these chips available for OEM sales. replacement for the standard Pentium,: Fur t h er down the road are other memare becoming available, following;: bers of the MMX family. Intel is planning a MMX's official Jan. 8 unveiling. . : version to replace the current high-end A P-55C machine will run even old : 'Pentium Pro, code-named Klamath (a river in applications a bit faster than a standard 3 Intel's home state, Oregon). Klamath will Pentium running at the same clock speed.: debut at 233MHz, but will entail major But this modest (five to 10 per cent) speed ': changes in the Pentium Pro design. The curincrease is primarily a result of the larger, r e nt processor is really two chips in a single 32KB Level 1 cache built into the new:. package — the actual CPU and a built-in design. As well, the MMX family offers new: :Level 2 cache. Klamath will remove the L2 tricks, such as Single Instruction Multiple i cache, resulting in a chip that will sell for Data (SIMD), which lets the CPU run opera- ': less, but will deliver less performance than tions in parallel. But to take advantage of e q ual-speed standard Pentium Pro systems, these new features, software will have to be : 'even with the beefed-up 32KB Ll cache. It' s specially written. At the moment, virtually e x pected that the release of Klamath will nothing is available that makes full use of the. :drive down prices for P-55C machines, with MMX instruction set, but Intel claims that t h ese Pentium Pro models replacing them as properly optimized applications will be able: entry-level machines by the end of next year. t o provide a performance boost of up to 60: : Around the same time, look for P6T per cent.

Pentium Pro upgrade chips, expected to run at As well, while the standard P-54C . 'around 300MHz.

W H O LESALER February 1997 ht tpi/wwwccwmag.cpm

eae

T ECH N O L O G Y

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And following Klamath, Intel will be launching Deschutes (also a river in Oregon) — a low-voltage, high-speed (starting at 300MHz) processor line that will be aimed at mobile computing. But notebook users won't have to wait until then to take advantage of MMX technology — a variety of companies were showing demonstration machines at last fall's Comdex show, running 166MHz to 200MHz P-55C CPUs. Such notebook designs should be widely available by mid-1997.

Intel's rivals won't be left too far behind, however. Both Cyrix and AMD have announced their own multimedia-enhanced CPU models that will be competitive with Intel's designs. AMD's K6 chip and Cyrix's M2, for example, will both be offering a 64KB Ll cache, double Intel's offering (and quadrupling the cache on a standard Pentium).

Each will also offer the MMX instruction set, and will be pin-out compatible with standard Pentiums, allowing them to be usable in current motherboard designs (with appropriate BIOSs). The Cyrix chip will run at 2.5 volts (compared to 2.8 volts for Intel's design), making it potentially a contender for mobile computers.

Intel and its competitors clearly hope that the MMX-enabled chips will provide next-generation power to the 80x86 family of processors — speeding up 3-D and graphics rendering. This is vital for CAD and graphicsprofessionals, and early reports suggest than a M MX processor may actually run Adobe PhotoShop faster than currenthigh-end PowerMacs. Even more important is the gaming market, which drives the bulk of home purchases. Intel is planning to encourage manufacturers to clearly label MMX computers, and is planning a major advertising campaign, reminiscent of its 'Intel Inside' push.

But there is a flaw in the MMX strategy.

When using the MMX registers of the chip, the CPU has to turn off the floating-point registers — both can't be used at once. This is needed to maintain compatibility with existing operating systems. And switching modes like this takes time — about 50 clock cycles. As a result, Intel suggests that application developers refrain from using floating-point operations as much as possible. This, however, may prove a problem, especially working with 3-D. (Cyrix claims that its model can switch modes in a single clock tick.)

As well, this causes potential problems for multitasking. Try running an MMX-optimized graphics application and (for example), a spreadsheet using floating-point calculations at the same time.

Performance will suffer because of the frequent switches between floating-point and MMX modes, but as well, the spreadsheet may end up with the wrong data, as graphics data mixes with its calculations.

We had better hope those engineers aren't playing games at the same

I I©

time as calculation nuclear reactor designs!

Only time will tell whether this turns out to be a major limitation — certainly floating-point calculations are rarely used by most traditional applications; even your spreadsheet will correctly calculate your tax return without ever once needing to use floating-point math.

Despite these potential problems, count on MMX-enabled designs to be the industry standards, through to the end of the decade. Itcw Alan Zisman is a computer journalist and teacher living in Vancouver. httpt//wwwccwmag.cpm

February 1997 WHOLESALER 47

B USI N E S S B A S I C S

om ee o now

by Douglas Gray

Resellers minimizeyonvrisits whennegotiatinmspacefor yon@ hnsiness

As a retailer or wholesaler, you most likely alreadyhave some form of lease with your landlord. However, if you are thinking of moving at the end of yourlease, or if your lease is coming up for renewal, there are various important strategic and tactical issues to consider.

There is always a potentially high degree of personal and business risk in signing a lease. The location may turn out to be a poor one, disputes with the landlord could occur, the building image could deteriorate, the space could be too small or too large for your evolving needs, competition may start to affect the business, or health, marital or partnership problems may impair the business operation.

For these reasons and many more, it is vital that precautions be built into a lease to minimize risk as much as possible.

Many small business owners are not aware of the wide range of protections that can be negotiated into a lease. Here are some common effective techniques to discuss with your lawyer when negohating the offer to lease or renegotiating your lease.

Incorporate The Business It is wise to incorporate in any business situation that involves high risk. A long-term lease obviously involves potential risk.

Statistically, about 75 per cent of small businessesdiscontinue operating by the end of 5 years.

For all these reasons, incorporating a company and signing the lease under the corporate name would be a prudent consideration. That way the liability is limited to the corporation assets only, without any liability by the shareholders.

No Personal Guarantee For a corporate lease, it is not uncommon for a landlord to request personal guarantees from the directors. While approximately 50 per centof landlordsmight request a personal guarantee, the majority of those could be persuaded to waive or modify this request through effective negotiating techniques.

Another approach is to limit the extent 48

of the personalguarantees.You may negotiate a provision that the personal guarantee automatically expires at the end of the first year of the lease. This clause could state that in the event that the lease is terminated by the tenant before the end of the year, the personal guarantor shall be responsible for the balance of the first year's rent. From the perspective of the landlord, the first year is probably the highest risk with a new tenant. The landlord would be protected in that the tenant would be responsible for at least one year's rent.

If a personal guarantee is given, it could be on condition that the guarantee be limited to a fixed amount, such as a maximum of three months' rent.

Negotiate A Penalty Clause You may wish to negotiate a three-month penalty as the total amount of damages that the landlord could expect from the tenant in the event that the lease is breached.

In this example, no other security would be given to the landlord and the landlord would have no further recourse against the tenant if the tenant left before the term of the lease.

Another form of penalty provision could be that the amount of t h e penalty be decreased based on the length of time that the tenant remained in the premises under the terms of the lease.

Try A Short-term Lease With Options To Renew To minimize the risk associated with signing a long-term lease, you may instead decide to have the initial lease period relatively short.

By the end of the short-term lease, you would be in a better posi6on to decide whether it is viable to remain in the leased premises for a longer period of time.

For example, rather than signing a fiveyear lease it might be prudent to negotiate a one-year lease with two renewable two-year options.If you wanted a seven-year lease, you might negotiate a two-year lease with two renewable options for two years and three years.

This type of structure would enable you to stay for the full period of time if desired, but with limited time interval commitments.

WH O L E SALER F e bmary 1997 ht tp//wwwccwmagcom

A provision could be negotiated that there would be no increase in rent at the time of the first option, but that there could be an increase in rent at the time of the second option if the landlord so elects. The clause would then set out the amount of the increase, or a formula under which it would be calculated, if any rent increase was to occur. Also, remember to negotiate for- the maximum additional tenant incentives every time you renew the lease.

Ask for Tenant Incentives Often a landlord is willing to offer a free rent period, reduced rental payments or a lump sum in cash for leasehold improvements as an incentive to rent the premises. This is particularly the case when the space has been vacant for some time.

Try to structure the rent payments in the first year to limit the financial outlay as much as possible. The normal range of options include: graduated rental payments, free base rent period for from two to four months for each year of the lease, waiver of first- year maintenance payments, landlord paying costs of renovations up to an agreed maximum, or a combination of the above.

W henever you are dealing with a landlord, make sure you develop a negotiating mindset that is clear on what you want. You don't get what you don't ask for. Depending on the circumstances and your negotiating leverage and skill, you could end up with a low risk/high benefit lease on your terms.

Also make sure that you use the services of a business lawyer skilled in lease negotiations.

Only a street-smart lease lawyer would be aware of the nuances and implications of lease terms and conditions. 0CWI Douglas Gray, LLB. /Ms had extensive experience as a lawyer specializing in small business. He is also a speaker and author of l5 best-selling business books, as well as an investment software program. His books include The Complete Canadian Small Business Guide and Raising Money (both published by /IfcGraw-Hill Ryerson) and MarketingYour Product and Start and Run a Profitable Consulting Business (both published by Self-Counsel Press).

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M ARKE T

OUTLOOK

Resellers watch the stock market A good understanding of the market can help you identify potential winners and losers

by Thomas Elein

L

50

In the technology sector, 1996 was an interesting year forthe stock market.

Stock performance start ed off slow and started to improve i n t h e s p ring before being pummeled in mid-July â&#x20AC;&#x201D; only to rally to dizzying heights in the last two quarters.

The technology sector since June of 1994 has rallied as a group of companies more than 120 per cent in market value, This begs the question: will tech stocks correct in 1997?

major new product cycles should result in maintained orsurpassed projected growth rates for the industry.

The dominance of Intel and the successful launch of the Pentium Pro should continue to drive sales of PCs. The demand for quality software will remain strong as the usage of computers continues to grow. The Internet and the related infrastructure will once again be a growth leader for the industry. Updating systems for the year 2000 should start to kick in, in 1997. The growth in wireless communications is another sector in the technology industry starting a new product cycle and will contribute to the positive environment for the sector.

Many consumers and corpora"Thereis a cliche in the investment industry tions delayed purchases in 1 9 96 'the trend is your friend.'" because the industry was touting more advanced products for 1997. But 1997 is here,and consumers cannot afford to stand on The majority of analysts do not seem to the sidelines much longer. The innovations over think so. They remark that the technology sector the past three years almost guarantees that is growing at more than 25 per cent per yearupgrades in hardware and software will drive better than any other industry in the market. sales in 1997. With all the new technology prodProfits rose last year at better than 25 per cent. In ucts, plus pent-up consumer demand; the outfact, some of the growth and profits for other industries are poised to slow â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and therefore look for 1997 is indeed positive. more investors will being looking at the technolWhy should resellers care about ogy sector to maintain growth in their portfolios. the stock market?

Many investors realize they should have The stock market tends to be an excellent foresome of their assets in the technology sector and the market is starting to respond. The number of casterof a company's future growth. Many peomutual funds that specialize in the technology ple directly involved the technology industry tend to be blinded by the latest technology. They sector increased last year, as well as the number of analysts covering individual technology comadmire new technological innovations and do not always consider that, in the market-placepanies. This growth in exposure will provide the best product does not always become a comadditional investment capital for the high-tech mercial success! sector, which will help sustain the rapid growth Stock market advisors can assist in moniof the industry.

There are many factors that bode well for toring the acceptance of new products and the continued viability of existing products.

1997. The economy is in great shape. The ecoIn the fiercely competitive reseller market, nomic environment of increased consumer confidence coupled with low inflation and low interit is important to stay on top of product sales, cyclesand the earnings of the companies repreest rates is extremely conducive to growth. The sented. There might be hidden clues as to the positive economic climate along with the fact that the industry is entering the first phase of future success or failure of a particular product

WH O L E SALER F e bruary 1997 ht tp//wwwccwmag.cpm

M ARKE T

OUT L O O K

break. Companies that lag are punished to a by watching the stock market. As a rule, the marpoint where it may be difficult to recover and ket tries to predict a company's future anywhere winners are rewarded so handsomely they from six to 18 months in the future. Monitoring become power houses. the stock prices of different technology compaThe trendsofthe stock pricesoftechnology nies might avert a problem in inventory control companies are good indicators of a company's in either having to much or not enough of a parfinancial health. ticular product.

A trend to remember from 1996, was that If a company is under sustained downward many of the larger companies were increasing pressure,you can be sure that there are some problems on the horizon.

"Perhapsthe best suggestion isto investin a diverse setofcompanies with I'm not talkcomplementarybut diff erent product lines." ing about normal market fluctuations but rather a distinct shift market-share. It will be increasingly difficult for in sentiment by analysts and investors. smaller companies to penetrate the market. They There is a cliche in the investment industry will either be acquired by the bigger companies "the trend is your friend." It seems to fit the or starved out of the market in short order. technology sector well. The past is full of examResellers and investors alike should choose ples of positive and negative trends for technoltheir companies wisely and look at the big picogy companies. Most significantly, downward or ture. Perhaps the best suggestion is to invest in a upward trends seem to last for more extended diverse set of companies with complementary periods in the technology sector than in some but different product lines. Over the long run, other industry groups. For upward trends, the whether in business or as an investor, a consistent sustainable return will beat out "one-year performance of Microsoft and Intel are excellent examples. A downward trend for Apple was wonders" every time. (fftf' equally evident and forecast by the market.

Since 1991, Apple's stock has declined from Thomas Klein is an investment advisor with US$73 to US$17 at press time. Remember that S cotiaMcleod. H e c a n be re a c hed v i a trends in the technology industry are hard to http: /Iwww. webhaven. corn/money,

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E YE

O N T H E I N D US T R Y C o/u r n n

a

Icrop ex e ye o s promise t/ut timing is everything

by David Tanaka

It's the mythology that drives the inventive spirit: build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. However, the reality is that innovative products by themselvesdon'tguarantee success in the market.

Like good comedy, commercial viability also relies on timing and delivery.

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Take thecase of the NetworkEye/270 Frame Server, from Microplex Systems Ltd. in Burnaby, B.C. If the company makes just the right moves — it could be entertaining to a full house with this product.

The NetworkEye is a cost-effective way to post live images on an Ethernet network and, by extension (and here comes the magic marketing word for the '90s), the Internet or a corporate intranet. The half-pound NetworkEye unit is a model of simplicity: one I QBase-T RJ45 Ethernet port, one ConnectixQuickCam interface and a connector to an external power supply. Plug the unit into an Ethernet node and point the camera at whatever it is you want to monitor, and within 10 minutes, you have live pictures accessible through your LAN. Rather than developing some proprietaryimaging software, the company had the foresight to use technologies that many PC users already have and know how to use: eithera standard Web browser,or FTP client software.

"What the NetworkEye lets you do is basically get images right on your LAN with standard (World Wide Web) browser soft52

ware,"says Gerry Sawkins director of marketing with Microplex Systems Ltd. Web sites featuring live pictures have always had their fans, with "view from Sid's north window" and "camera pointed Harlan's guppies" styled Web sites always managing to attract a fair share of Web hits. Putting real live pictures on the Web has usually required a dedicated PC with video frame grabber to capturethe image from a source such as a camcorder.What the NetworkEye offersis a dedicated image server that costs around $360, less camera.

When combined with a C o nnectix QuickCam black-and-white or color digital camera (it only supports the Connectix so far), it creates an eye on well, that's the question. So far, the company has defined a couple of potential applications for NetworkEye, but the real challenge is creating that spark thatcauses a large chunk ofPC users to say "I need that."

One application proposed by Microplex is to use the NetworkEye as a low-cost video security system. If a company has already gone through the expense of setting up an Ethernet-based LAN, it can extend its value by plugging a NetworkEye into the LAN. "The problem with tit'rditional security systems is that they"re a network unto themselves,"' says Sawklns. "You end up installing a separate network. That.'s usually the largest cost, and then you get all the specialized equipment on there."

The only requirement to setting up a NetworkEye, he says, is to have a LAN in place. "Once you' ve got that, you' re pretty well in business. You just need a IQBase-T network and standard browser software on your PC, and you' re in business. You give it a URL just like any other network node or Web site, and you hit on it just like a standard Web site."

Another potential application is in monitoring of traffic conditions for example.

Sawkins says the company is in preliminary

WH O L E S ALER F e b r uary 1997 ht t pitwwttaccwmag.corn

discussions with the B .C. M i nistry of Highways to set up traffic monitoring "eyes" pointed at bottlenecks such as the Lion's Gate Bridge in Vancouver.

Microplex is also looking at the product as a general retail item. "You could build your own home intranet and use it for monitoring the doors or monitoring the dog or whatever," says Sawkins. "Grandparentscan dialin and see thegrandkids." One Microplex executive is apparently wiring his house and plans to put a NetworkEye in the baby's room so that he can dial into home from his laptop when he's on the road and have a peek at the newborn.

Of course,to make this happen, the company needs to generate some excitement around the product. It did manage to gain some publicity during last summer's Olympic games in Atlanta. Users browsing the Olympic Web site could peek into the Olympic Square vi@.a NetworkEye systee, that had been set up in the Olympic village.,' Microplex is now trying to line up otheli "high-profile'* Web sites where they„c~ demonstrate the technology. The company is also formulating a channel strategy. '"Off the North American contittent

)

+a've been usi~,tbk channel

excul sivity+, ~ )

says Sawldns. "In N<n4 America, for the yei year, we' ve been switching to an indirect, st'tategy completely — A two-tier s~ working with VARs and systems integrators."~ Sawkins says EMJ Datasystems is handling distribution for North America.

The monochromeversionhas been shipping since August 1996, and the color d @I vrt)tt,released just before Christmas. ' This product seems right for the times and with the right push, could turn out to be a nice Canadian successstory. tlIINI David Tanakaisa Vancouver-basedjournal ist specializing in high technology, and l News Editor of The Computer Paper. He ~ hereachedatdattd@tcp ca

.

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T HE

PUND IT

Q '1 UfB n

I

by Graeme Bennett

PC-oriented dealers and, to a lesser extent, manu facturers, will have some new software and hard ware considerations to think about and plan for during 1997. (The operating system upgrade plans of the 5.4 per cent of the market that uses Macintosh aside.)

MMX is sure to make a splash, despite the architectural shenanigans that the chip uses to do its MMX magic. However, I'm betting against Motorola's software-only modem technology running on MMX chips This sounds a little too much like IBM's MWAVE, Apple's Geoport Telecom Adapter and the "Windows only" modems of the last couple of years — all relatively troublesome products. I also expect MMX to fare better in the entertainment-class PCs rather than with business users. All it takes is the mainstream media to fan a few stories about some majorapplications'FPU performance degradation under MMX and you can bet the FPU power users will be playing shy. Despite the high-end focus of initial MMX-based products (and the 10 per cent to 20 percentperformance improvements the chip's 32KB cache brings to business-class apps), I expect it to do well with entertainment-ori ented users.

And, despite reported delays in Intel's follow-up Klamath (multi media Pentium Pro) architecture, it is likely that Pentium Pro systems will approach — if not assimilate — the mainstream. At any rate, our tests have proven without a doubt that MMX systems outperform sim ilarly clocked non-MMX systems by an average of about 10 per cent even on non-MMX-enhanced titles, due to the chip's larger on-board cache. Indeed, 166MHz MMX systems tend to fall in the middle of the pack of non-MMX 200MHz Pentiums.

I'm willing to hazard a guess that we will see some blown-out-ofproportion mainstream news stories about MMX 'fatal flaws.' There are sure to be some legitimate concerns about the fact that the FPU registers are doing double duty but this doesn't diminish my feeling that MMX systems are going to be hot sellers.

Packet Writing Another technology that will be a big hit in '97 is packet-writing CD-R technology. This is the method of writing a compact disk that doesn't require the user to write the whole CD — or even an entire ses sion — at once. With packet-writing, one can simply 'Save' files to a CD-R, as if it were a floppy disk. The long-suffering floppy will be put 64

W H O L ESALER F ebruary 1997 hr tpywwwccwmag.corn

out of its misery not by Zip disks. 120MB floppies, but by under-$500 CD-Rs thatare easy enough for mere mortals to use. By the end of 97, CD-R will be widely used as a backup method, and packet-writ ing will be the buzzword du jour in the next generation of CD-R prod ucts from JVC, Sony, and others With the growing number of problems that dealers are finding with Iomega Jaz drives and the recent cuts in prices for Toray PhaseWriter (PD) drives (now as low as US$299), I expect that tech nology to steal a little of Jaz's thunder in the year(s) before DVD recorders finally hit the market Windows 97 betas will undoubtedly appear well before the final product's predicted third-quarter release. Thank goodness for products like Power Quest's Partition Magic 3.0, that can convert FAT16 parti tions to FAT32 and vice versa. Despite the reports that Microsoft has decided to release both FAT16 and FAT32 versions of Win97, the problems and confusion caused by the FAT32-based OEM2 release of Windows 95 amply demonstrates that there will be a market for prod ucts like Partition Magic 3.0 and Norton Utilities 2.0 for Windows 95 I'm not sure that 1997 will prove to be the year that we see the benefits of the new ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Version 1.0 spec announced in January by Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba. Nevertheless, the "Instant On" concept has an obvious appeal to both desktop and notebook users and ACPI-compliant prod ucts should be a hit. (More inform on ACPI is available at http: //www.telep art.corn/mmx) While I'm still surprised how many people chose to stay with Windows 3.x, given the amazing decline in RAM and hard disk prices during 1996, I still harbor a glimmer of hope that PC users will realize that their computers don't have to be as trouble-prone as they appear under Windows 3.x. It would be my guess that many of these people would jump if they could find someone to install their upgrade(s) with out charging an arm and a leg Office 97, which should be out by the time you read this, will very likely be a successful product, and not just because Corel's Office Suite war efforts (and the Lotus boosters) have lost some of their early steam I happen to like the way Office 97 works, (try going to the Compaq FTP site and downloading a 'DOC' file with Internet Explorer 3.0 to see some pretty impressive "DocObject" behavior) and I think others will, too — at least those who aren't "sticking with DOS

T HE Please don't take this as an opinion on the relative merits of MMX the Office titles. I' ve had two of my relatives tell me recently f 'Parka't'Wr'iting' CD-R about mini-revolts currently Windows 97/Office 97 underway at their offices in i Instant On which employees surreptitiousFAT32, Utility software ly i n s t alled a n d use d ( PCs as WebservB WordPerfectOffice products rather than the administratorInstallation services installed M i crosoft O f f i ce ig+ eight notebooks with CD-RQM,'"standards."

NT

PUN DI T

Software-based audio/telephony, Half-duplex audio

I Jaz drjyys, 12QMB flgppim Windows CE

g Cablemo dems/ISDN Warp, MacOS

g Poor customer Tela6ons Notebooks without800x600 screens

I Macs as Web Muvers buzzword in desktop sound cards as well. The price-point for such units is certain to drop well below the $3,500 and up they currently cost. And so they should.

Of course, just because certain industry analysts don't see a growing market for this-or-that technology doesn't mean that you can' t make money from it.

In this business, focus is all-important and, as the vendors out there still selling and servicing niche products will attest, it doesn' t really matter what you pick as your niche (in fact, picking a non-mainstream market segment is often a decided advantage!), as long as you are completely committed to it.

It's the Field of Dreams Principle: if you build it, they will come.

Next time: the Automobile Industry as a metaphor. IHKI

Closer to the end of the year — and I'm betting on a 1997 'Preview' of a '98 release — Windows NT 5.0 will start showing up, primarily on networked corporate desktops, but also as the OS of choice for a growing number of graphics professionals who are likely to find NT's support for multiple CPUs well-suited to the demands of graphics and multimedia tasks. Now that Motorola and IBM have backed away from their early support of running Windows NT 5.0 on the Common Hardware Reference Platform (a.k.a. PowerPC Platform), there may be a few Mac graphics shops that consider packing their bags and moving on, too. Ditto for those who are probably realizing that, despite its architectural merits, OS/2 Warp is always going to be a little too far removed from the mainstream to be less of a struggle. I expect to see Graeme Bennett is managing editor at The Computer Paper, and is a maybe onemore point upgrades before Warp goes into maintenance former computerreseller.Based in Vancouver, he can be reached at mode.

Of course, I'd love to be wrong. To mix a metaphor, Microsoft graeme@tcp. ca. needs someone breathing down its neck to spur it on. And despite Apple's Jan. 7 announcements that a future Mac OS will run on Intel Kurxvvetl tttel c e tnadt I I PCs, (not to mention BeOS and the dream of a Java-based super OS that isn't pig-slow), OS/2 has been the closest thing to a serious competitor to Windows in the last few years. ' ' I I I I x I: I Among slow-moving corporate adopters, the robust NT 4.0+ serI I I vice packs alternative is likely to make a growing dent in the IS departments of companies that previously would have been well-served by Novell's NetWare. As device drivers become less of a problem and < Olct100N intranet-based workgroup environments become more common, moving to NT 4.0 (or beyond) won't seem like such a bleeding-edge step.

It's probably safe to say that NT will still be more popular on Intel (and compatible) platforms than Alpha chips, despite the fact that the Alpha systems have consistently outperformed high-end Intel boxes, v running about twice as fast for the same money. The NT marketindeed lthe 32-bit PC market in general — has proven to be remarkably Package~ (A) Full retell package unadventurous. So, look for OS strategies to cater to this mentality.

I

I

•

~ )roice

(B) OEM package

Utilities People will continue downloading enough software over the coming year to botch up their system configurations more than a few times.

Thus, the category of often-dubious 'fix-it' software that includes CyberMedia's FirstAid 97, Norton Utilities 2.0 and so on, will continue to top the bestseller lists.

Portables I also think that notebooks are due for their biggest year ever (unlike Windows CE devices, which are fizzling). I'd put my money on lightweight Pentium-based units (preferably with MMX technology) with a built-in CD-ROM, 16MB of RAM, a 1GB+ drive, 256KB Level 2 cache and an 800 by 600 active-matrix screen, running Windows 95.

Notebook users, who nearly all want to surf the 'Net, will also be prime candidates for the full-duplex audio capability that is the latest

I

I

I ' 'I

Producedby: E-TechCanada Ltd, 7725 Birchmount Road, Unit 4, Markham, Ontario L3R 9X3 Tel: (905) 479-9696 Fax: (905) 479-9582 Internet: http:llwww.etech-canada.corn a • • • Trimex Marketing Inc. ¹1 204611 Viking Way,Richmond, BC V6V 2K9 Tek(604)276-6700 Fax:(604)276-7627

aupercom 3993 14th Ave., Markham, Ontario L3R OZ9 Tel: (905) 415-1166 Fax: (905) 415-1177 Datwa Distribution Inc. 361AidanRoad,Markham, Ontario L3R 3L4 Tek (905)940-6056 Fax:(905)474-0954 •

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hnp/twww.ccwmag.corn February 1997 WHOLESALER 5 5

MARKETING

0W 0

0

by Cathy Cowan It seems t ha t

a l m ost

everybody these days is hosting some kind of seminar — Internet seminars, networking seminars, 'how to hold a seminar' seminars. And why not? Seminars are an excellent way to promote your company while meeting with prospective and existing clients. However, unless seminars are very carefully planned they can be very expensive and not necessarily profitable.

Below are a few pointers on how to plan a successful seminar:

• Who should you invite?

A seminar provides an excellent opportunity to "wine and dine" contacts on your internal database. Prospective clients will be more open to attending an educational seminar than sitting through a straight sales pitch. It's also a good opportunity to make some new contacts by purchasing qualified lists of names from a reputable source like a local trade publication.

• Give out information kits.

At the end of the seminar give attendees information kits including market trend information, product information and relevant

"Consider the old adage: WIIFM — What's In It For Me7" • Make it educational, not promotional.

Your customers can get a sales pitch any time.

If you want to get your targeted contacts to attendyour event you have to remember the old adage: WIIFM — What's In It For Me? Offer your customers market information, a new perspective, or a training program — something that wiII help them in their dayto-day business. Only a very few companies with especially 'hot' or new technologies can hold a seminar devoted only to selling their products and expect anyone, other than their sales people, to show up.

• Select good speakers.

Well-known keynote speakers, such as authors or prominent executives, can be a good drawing card although they can be costprohibitive de-pending on your budget.

An alternative is to host a "How to" seminar (For example, 'How To Protect Your Company On The Internet' or 'How To Create A Virtual Office') with presentations by industry experts; your company and your partners.

Regardless of who you choose to speak at your seminar, they should be articulate and enthusiastic. Interesting slides and support materials will also help to keep the audience's attention.

56

press clippings. Most importantly have your company's name and contact information displayed prominently on the kit folder so attendees have aneasy point of reference when they want to contact you.

• Offer prizes!

Again — remember the WIIFM syndrome and try to offer customers added bonuses in addition to the knowledge your seminar will provide. Door prizes are a great attraction if

invitations with your message printed inside will definitely get your point across. If you' re sending out a mass mailing/faxing to a large database you will want to have your invitations specially designed. Use the opportunity and turn the mailing into an invitation/direct mail piece incorporating both seminar invitation and product information. This way everyone who receives your invitation gets your main messages even if they can't attend your seminar.

And don't forget to mention any door prizesyou may be offering.

• Invite the media.

If you don't already have relationships established with local and trade media your seminar provides an excellent opportunity to start.

Send invitations to journalists who are interested in your seminar's topic — and don' t

forget to follow up with a phone call.

• Follow up with your attendees.

Ask your attendees to fill out a questionnaire (perhaps as part of the draw) providing feedback about the event — so you know where to improve for the next one. Ask for comments about their purchasing needs to determine if your salespeople should call them tomorrow or next month.

"Prospective clients will be more open to attending an educational seminar than sitting through a straight sales pitch." you can offer widely desirable products or services.Offer products from your own inventory to further promote company and your partners.

The ultimate success and profitability of the seminar will depend on the success of identifying and following up on the generated leads. ICCII

• Customize your invitations.

Invitations can be the most expensive component of your seminar — but they don't have to be. If you' re hosting a small get-together for existing clients, 'stock' or pre-printed

C athy Cowan i s a c o n sultant wit h t h e advanced technology division of Continental Communications/ShandwickCanada — a full service public relations finn with offices across Canada.

WH O L E SALER F e b) uatv 1997 ht ipv'www ccwmag.corn

A SIA S C A P E

from Newsbytes

Korea's KD Telecom develops car-tracking (NB) — Are you afraid of having your car stolen? A new paging system from KD Telecom, Inc. (KDT), a unit of the Kumho Group is designed to help.

KD Telecom said it has successfully developed an anti-theft car system through the application of the current paging service system. In KDT's anti-theft car system, a specially manufactured

pager is secretly installed in an obscure place inside or outside the automobile.

In case the car is stolen, all the car owner has to do is call the vehiclepager by telephone or remote-control.

The vehicle pager will then s end out information on t h e stolen car's number, color and type by wireless transmission to nearby police stations, making the car easily detectable. In a recent field test, which was conducted jointly with the police in North Cholla Province in November, the KDT system successfully retrieved all the cars stolen.

"Compared with s i milar systems commercialized in the United States and Hong Kong, KDT's system is far more costeffective in that it uses the existing paging service networks," said a company spokesperson.

The company is applying for a patent for the new anti-theft paging system in the U.S.

Meanwhile, S 1 Corp. is also planning to launch a commercial automobile-tracking service in the second half of 1997, which is intended to swiftly retrieve stolen cars through wireless communications technology. S 1 Corp.'s tracking system is composed of a control station, small-size car ter-

"autoinobile SOS service" to its paging subscribers. The user is required to install a pager inside his orher car,along with a special sound sensor. The sensor, which will be set off by t he pager's vibrations, will make the stolen car easily distinguishable on the road.

minal and radio-wave locator, which will allow stolen cars to send out strong, electric radio waves in order to make them easily detectable.

Korea M obile T e lecom (KMT) an d N a ray M o b i le Telecom arecurrently offering an

According to police figures, car theft is becoming an increasingly serious crime. In 1995, about 57,000, or one per cent, of Korea's 5.7 million passenger cars were stolen and only 30,000 retrieved, with the rest, some 20,000 cars, still missing.

Matsushita develops LS-120 external disk drive (NB) — M a tsushita Electric Industrial Co. has announced the development of an external disk drive that supports both conventional floppy disks and t he recently developed LS-120 disks.

The drive is designed to connect to a notebook computer via its PCMCIA port. It supports both the DOS/V and PC-98 hardware systems used by IBM compatibles and NEC computers respectively.

The LS-120 system offers 120MB of storage space on a read/writable diskette. The drives are backward compatibleand accept conventional 1.44MB floppy disks, making the system an attractive option for PC manufacturers and users because both systems are built into one drive.

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Samtack Computer launches graphics/video accelerator (NB) — SamtackComputerlnc.ofMarkham, Ont., has announced the MegaVision 3D PT5933 graphic/video accelerator. Designed for Intel-standard personal computers, the PT5933 can output video to a television screen using PAL or NTSC (North American television Standards Committee) video standards.

Its power management suite supports VESA

k-.e

1996 HomeTax is available

Display Power Management Signaling, the vendor said.

Samtack's subsidiary, Pine Technology Ltd., manufactures the accelerator card. Both companies are Canadian-owned business units of the Pine Technology Group. The suggested retail price is $92.

Samt a ck is at (905) 940-1880.

Mitsumi Electronics Corp. announces 16X CD-ROM

(NB) — The Mississauga, Ontario-based HomeTax unit of The Learning Co. Inc. has M i t sumi Electronics Corp., a manufacturer of ferentiation as well as consumers who want announced the1996 Ready-To-File version of CD - R OMand CD-R drives has announced a cutting-edge performance from their multimeits Canadian income tax software is ready. n e w 16X (sixteen times) CD-ROM drive with d i a systems."

Brian C o stello H o m eTax an Enhanced IDE (ATAPI) interface, for The d r i ve is an internal, half-height 5.25a p r i ce of US$240."The demands on inchform factor,which can be mounted either „phhe'„'"eteetttp + comes with a new conversion module this year to let users i>~e g CD - R OMdrives continue to increase as vertically or horizontally in a PC. It comes fgl export personal data from last hl encl - '~m m arsr a s o f t ware applications grow larger and w i t h a one-year manufacturer s limited warneeehpepeeenoe oeooo • nannian year's electromc return to tins larger,according to Jim McCaffrey, ranty. For more information on the products, year' s. It also comes with 100 vice-president of sales and marketing for see http: //www.mitsumi.corn, hours offree Internet access, Mitsumi. or call: (408) 970-0700. hop via the Sympatico service, and "New software applications can the newNhmni better print resolution. Using IGNP8tLi typically require the transfer of 1Nsyeal the Internet, users can upgrade 50MB to 100MB of data, CDCD40NN"L to the Deluxe Edition, the vendor said. For ROM games have enormous MPEG more information on HomeTax, see http: // movie files to stream, and CD-ROM www.hometax.corn/-hometax. databases like (telephone) white pages require fast searching capabilities.

"The Mitsumi 16X drive means no more waiting for software. (At the price) we expect this product will be very popular with both OEMs looking to give themselves some difMess caused by old style accordion bottle Microsoft unveils beta Internet Explorer script debugger eliminated with our i],i (NB) — Microsoft Corp. is shipping beta test Explorer. Known officially as the Script calibrated syringe. If copies of a script debugger for Internet Debugger for Microsoft Internet Explorer, the a cartridge has probExplorer. The package is a Web page debug- package is billed as providing a debugging lems we' ve delisted. HP, Canon, ger for JScript (Java) and VBScript (Visual environment that integrates with the latest Epson, IBM, Xerox, TI, 600 more.

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Open Text extends its Web search technology in the latest version of Livelink (NB) — Open Text Corp. is now readying new technology to extend the capabilities of its open text search engine, a product sold on a stand-alone basis, as well as being fully integrated into the company's Web-based document management software for the first time in the latest edition of Livelink.

Open Text Corp. originally produced the Open Text search engine only, noted David Weinberger, vice-president of strategic marketing. Because the search engine was able to understand SGML (standard generalized mark-up language), most of its nutial applications were in the specialized arena of SGML, a precursor to HTML (hypertext mark-up language).

In late 1995, Open Text purchased Odesta, maker of Livelink, a document management software product originally based on SGML and used primarily in the oil, utilities, and pharmaceutical industries.

According to Weinberger, the latest edition, Livelink Intranet Suite 7, adds at least a dozen new features in the areas of search; workflow; project collaboration; and the LiveLink library. Taken together, the new features are aimed at giving Livelink increasingly greater support for "mission-critical, mainstream" collaborative applications in Fortune 500 corporations, and at allowing end-users to perform more tasks by themselves, without assistance from an administrator, he said.

Open Text's new search engine, also at

the version 7 level, and fully integrated into Livelink 7 for the first time, adds the ability to search at three levels: Livelink documents; and documents on the corporate network and Web. To promote project teamwork, enduserscan now createprojectpages "in a single click, without the help of an administrator," as well as to be alerted through E-mail of key events such as new messages or task modifications. More i n f ormation about L ivelink i s a v ailable on t he Web a t http: //www.opentext.corn/livelink. CCWi

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ServiceWorks Distribution Inc. is at (604) 273-4453.

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I NDU S T RY

P E RS P E CT I V E S

Are you working the Web.

by Mare LeBlanc

We' re living in the age ofinformation; t h ere' s no doubt about that.

The Internet and the W o rld Wide Web in particular, give us information at our fingertips. It's there for the asking. But is anyone in the business world actually asking for ito Look at the environment we' re working in. Today's business principles are fundamentally the same as ever. To succeed in business, you have to develop products and/or services, sell them, andthen take care of your customers to ensure satisfaction and attract r e peat b u siness.

There's nothing new about that, but what has been added to the mix is the over-hyped Internet.

Many businesses have been lured onto the 'Net with promises ofgreaterreach forbusiness,a larger customer base and more

basement. For larger companies, experts in Internet business soluthe 'Net promised to streamline tions, there is a huge opportunity operations and make life simpler. for resellers and VARs to estabBut the Internet is not yet lish themselves as key players. living up to all these promises. Companies are looking for someThere are a few examples of one to give them a hand when it corporations using the 'Net and comes to making the Web a place of business.

They are investing a lot of money into the technology. Smart resellers will plan today to become the experts of tomorrow — and reapa few of the rewards.

There are several ways to do this. Begin by getting eduthe World Wide Web wisely, but cated onthe technology. Many for the most part we' re seeing vendors have certification proWeb surfers searching for their grams to teachthe nuances of name on the Internet or people the products. Becoming certified sending E-mail to their friends also helps prove to your cusacross the country. tomers that you have the confiUntil recently, this was realdence of the vendor and you do, l y all you could do on t he indeed, know what you' re doing.

Internet. The biggest problem It is also a good idea to look was the technology. It just wasn' t into partnership programs. Build able to do what everyone thought an alliance with the vendor by it should do — enable business becoming one of the premier applications. On top of that, there resellers or VARs they deal with. were very few experts who knew Not only is this a good way to how to take advantage of the build your business and establish technology that did exist. yourself as an Internet expert, The technology barrier is but many vendors will also work now being broken down with with you to promote your busiproducts that allow for true business. ness applications. Software is Finally,make sure you are available for developing a wide using the technology yourself. range of business solutions for Become achampion ofyour own the Internet and intranets. It' s productsand services.Don't just now possible for Web developers sell boxes or talk in euphemisms to rapidly develop applications about "implementing a great that deliver personalized content business solution." based on the user's identity and Do it. preferences.Some software can Understand it. alsoprovide forums forcollaboOperate your own business ration; extend the reach of legacy on the Web. and RDBMS s ystems; and, There is money to be made streamline and automate daily in this brave new world of the business activities with workInternet. We are just in the early flow processes. Security and stages. So get out there and integration are more the rule than "Work theWeb." CW the exception today.

That's all good news. But Mare LeBlanc is Canadian thereremains a barrier where the product managerfor Lotus human element is concerned.

Development Canada.

Because there are still so few He is based i>i Montreal.

"Companies are looking for someone to give them a hand when it comes to making the Web a place of business." direct contact with customers.

The Internet was going to make businesses more competitiveremember: on the Internet, no one knows your firm consists of one person operating out of a

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P EO P L E Distributors Inc., Nabu Network Corp. and SHL Systemhouse Ltd. He is a board member of the Canadian Advanced Technology Association, Fulcrum Technologies Inc., Autoskill International Inc., Operation Online Inc. and JetForm Corp.

Feh. 14-16

Computer Fest '67 Toronto Cali: (416) 925-4533

Informix adds new manager Larry Elchesen has new job Larry Elchesen,president of Ingram Micro Canada has been appointed to president of Ingram Micro Asia-Pacific, and is relocating to Hong Kong.

In this new position, Elchesen will be responsible for developing strategies to expand Ingram Micro'sAsia-Pacific presence, including building relationships with vendor and customer partners, as well as strategic acquisitions, says the company.

In a statement, Ingram Micro Inc. president and worldwide COO, said: "Larry is one of our most talented executives. For the past eightyears, he has been the driving force behind Ingram Micro's growth strategy in Canada. Under his leadership we gained the number one market share in Canada in 1995.

Larry is the perfect candidate to lead our Asia-Pacific operations."

In a separate announcement, the company appointed David Rutledge to president of Ingram Micro Latin America, with continuing responsibilities over the company's Export Division. Rutledge was previously responsible for the company's Asia-Pacific operations, as well as Latin America and the Export Division.

Ingram Micro Canada will be conducting a search for a new president. In the interim, Rutledge will serve as acting president of the company.

jetForm CEO is now a director for FrontLine Technology FrontLine Technology Partners Inc. of Vancouver, has named John Kelly as a director.

He is president and CEO of Ottawa's JetForm Corp., a software vendor in the electronic forms and administrative workflow industry.

Informix Software (Canada) Inc., in Ottawa, has appointed Susan Currie as business development manager,Public Sector and Health Care.

Currie is responsible for meeting cust omer b u siness a n d technology r e q uirements and implementing marketing strategies, across Canada, the company says.

Currie was most recently regional manager, Gartner Group Canada. She has held varioussales, marketing and senior management positions with Income Security Program Redesign, Verity Inc., Oracle Corp. of Canada Inc., Xerox Canada Inc. an d D i g ital Equipment of Canada Ltd.

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Maire Kushner goes to Xerox Xerox Canada Ltd. has appointed Maire Kushner to the position of manager, channel sales, desktop products group. She will be responsible for channel marketing and sales activities in Canada. Kushner is the former generalmanager of Radius Inc. Canada.

DCI's Datahase StClient/Server World And DCI'sData WarehouseWorld Toronto

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Fulcrum CFO resigns post (NB) — Peter Reid, chief financial officer of Fulcrum TechnologiesInc has resigned. The company said Reid will stay in his job until a replacement is found, and will continue on Fulcrum's board of directors after that.

A company spokesperson said Reid intends to become more involved in charity work and in high-tech consulting.

PictureTel picks president

(NB) — PictureTel Corp. has promoted Dom LaCava to the position of president and chief In a sta t ement, operating officer. LaCava will continue to FrontLine's CEO Jim report to Dr. Norman E. Gaut, who will Yates said: "John's suc- remain chairman and chief executive offlcer cessful entrepreneurial of Picture Tel. LaCava reportedly joined PictureTel in and managementexperience isa welcome asset 1993 as vice-president of its new Personal to our organization as Systems Division. In 1996, he was promoted we transition to the next to vice president of th e newly created '1 step of ou r d evelop- Enterprise Systems Group, which combined ment."

PictureTel's Group Systems Division and Kelly has held positions with: DVS Operations organizations with the desktop Communications, Computer I n novation business he had built. ICCW~

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hrrpltwww ccwmag.corn February 1997 W H O LESALER 6 1

T HE

Co !urn n,,-:

LA S T W O RD

Are Resellers Ready ForCyber-Shopping?

by Doug Alder because making the sale is obviously the consumer either orders and waits or moves on. With the Internet, there is no physical most complicated to do. It requires a fairsized investment by the reseller, or their g r a tification. The consumer is required to W Internet service provider, to set up the back- wait for the product to arrive by courier.

The cyber reseller has more options end, complete with secure credit card probut no Web site. then. The on-line reseller can take the concessing, invoicing and shipping set-up, and Most distributors, software companies sumer'sorder and have it drop-shipped this system has to be integrated into the and hardwaremanufacturers have informafrom the supplier. The entire formula starts reseller's existing operations.

There is still tional Web sites listing local dealers and to look much more like a mail-order operamuch work to do here.

From the consumer their product line. Many local retail dealers tion. Setting up efficient shipping arrangehave Web sites thatarebasically marketing side, there is still much insecurity about brochures,givingsomewhatmoreinforma- p u t ting credit cards out into cyberspace, ments and having good credit terms with though this will no doubt change over time. suppliers will mean the difference between tion than is contained in a regular print ad. success and failure here.

However, a recent survey of the ads in In physical space, computer retailing is about location, inventory, pricing and ser- Building B • Canada Computer Paper Inc.'s other publiTraSc AndLoyalty cations: The Computer Paper, Toronto vice. If all this talk about Internet shopping On-line shopping will still require retailers Computes!, Quebec M i cro!, O t t awa is going to come true, a couple of the ele- to get customers to their sites. The first I ments of that formula are going to be Computes.,andtheContputerPlayer!,sugstores there will have an o pp o rtunit y to gests that Web sites are starting to happen impacted. Service will still be a big factor, build loyalty, if the can deliver Product because computers, by their nature remain reliably. Once numerous stores are availfor Canadian computer retailers and distribcomplex to setup, configure and maintain. utol's.

T his is isiswwhy y I believe e i e ve there t ere will w ccont' o ntmuet to an important Recently, I took a look at a nnumber u e r oof factor,as cybershoppers click these sites. My cyber from store to store, looktravels revealed a numWith all those Pieces in Place, 1998could shaPe uP asthe year on-line ing for the best deal. ber of things. Almost all Internet service pro- shopping takes off. The problem is that retail merchants who wait until then viders have Web pages run the risk that competitors will have already established an on-line cusMany resellers as yet have no electronic presence at all. Some just have an E-mail address,

•

publi ations have web sites

tomer ase a i s a r t o crack. ny retailer who's not in the game by Christmas '97 will have a very difficult time gaining mind share and market shar • tt + " " m " - yst •

tively, run the risk of h aving t h ei r na m e smeared in newsgroups,

— depending on the tar- Communications.

ylang P@eli Jan g fgg7 get market.

Occasionally, I hit on sites where the listed address just plain b e a desire for proximity to the place of purdidn't work. Many sites have counters, c h ase. As computers become simpler which suggest that they are not well traf- m a nage, this factor could gradually decline p 't'nt"I p" bl f icked wi t h as few as two thousand hits i n i m portance At th is point, however, locaAho>shoPPlngchili inomiclont in six months. tion and service are closely linked.

Beforebuying decisions can be reduced to The next step up in complexity are 7 B kg a question of price, the search tools of the Web sites with uot' " Webwillhavetoim rove. often E-mail front ends, that require a . f 0 con f'@ Currentlyth eWe b ' i s a mass . human operator to come back to the cusincentive for on line sho" in . sion.

Instead of bringing perfect informatomer with a quote. Occasionally, they are If acompany buys a computer from If tion, it seems to have brought perfect chaos. s imple databases with pro roduct r icin in in uc pricing " " 'P Clicking through the corridors of c berthem. Some locations offer a large selection sales tax, (except in Alberta where there space can be as tedious as fighting crosss i is no ). ccording to Provincial town traffic ~an is operating as an on-line catalogue. legislation, companies are supposed toself.

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The Final Frontier — Buying Something asse s s this tax and pay it themselves. Many The final step in the sales process is obvi- c o mpanies and individuals do not do ' ously making the sale and delivering the h o wever. ever. i sThissavings is of ten offset ff bby He can be reached at product to the customer. I„my travels. I did h i g ers her ippingc shippingarges, char , butitcanneafactt b f @ not find many Web site systems that offered t o r for consumers. an actual selling mechanism to buy cornPricing and inventory are going to be puters on-line. big factors in the success of cyber-retailing.

I believe that full-fledged on-line If a c o nsumergoesintoastoreandrequests shopping sites are slow to materialize a p r oduct that the store does not have, the '

62

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