December
Howard Butler of Executive Software will be showing us disk utilities for Windows NT and Windows 2000. I know that many of you are not running NT yet, but I suspect that may change soon.
We planned a presentation by Meade to show off their telescopes but we were unable to get them to come. Our backup was to have Milt give his own presentation. We thought that we would find a suitable replacement at Comdex and we did. We decided on that small company that makes operating systems, Microsoft.
A representative from Microsoft will be showing us Windows 2000. We try to avoid showing pre-release products, but I have been using a beta version of WIN2K for several weeks and I find it more stable and much more versatile than NT 4.0. When you realize that NT 4.0 is much more stable than Windows 98, you can see why I agreed to have them show it. I do not expect WIN2K to be released, followed by a Service Release a week later. I think that the long beta cycle has really cleaned things up.
I do not know what Microsoft will be bringing to give away, but I can tell you that they were freely handing out copies of Release Candidate 2. Does that mean that we will see RC2 at the meeting? I will let you draw your own conclusion.
Windows 2000 is an update to the NT family, which means that it will not run DOS applications but should run most Windows 95 and 98 applications. Just like when Windows 98 came out, it will not run your old disk optimization software or virus software. So far WIN2K has run all of the software I use on a daily basis. As expected, it will not run the Norton stuff (I will have to wait a few weeks for the 2000 update of Norton).
As is the tradition, there will be an assortment of Comdex goodies as door prizes, in addition to the vendor stuff. I expect everyone to walk out with something from this meeting.
January
A representative from HP will be showing us their latest and greatest scanners and printers. I have always like HP products, but it has been tough getting them to present at our meetings.
A representative from Caere will be showing us OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. This software lets you scan pages of typed information into a machine readable format. This is a great combination with HP.
March
Gene Barlow will be representing PowerQuest. He will be showing us five new disk utility products. PowerQuest is the company that makes Partition Magic, that wonderful program that lets you change partition sizes without reformatting your hard drive. I expect the new stuff to be just as useful.
Gene will then change hats and represent Caldera Systems, makers of Open Linux. He will show us what is new in the world of alternate operating systems.
Openings in the Schedule
We still have February open and openings from April onward, but Milt and I have lots of possibilities from our Comdex trip. We will be getting together soon to decide who we actually book. I saw some great products at Comdex and have invited many to come present to us. Here are some of the possibilities:
* The alternate operating system called BE.
* A fantastic piano with embedded Windows from Van Koevering (with help from Robert Moog).
* GameCam from Reality Fusion that lets you play inside the game.
* Biometric devices that let you use your fingerprint instead of a password.
* A high speed home network that uses your existing phone or power wiring.
We are waiting for Comdex to book this month and most of the rest of the year. So stay tuned.
