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Monday October 6, 1997
XEROX CHALLENGE TO HP
BEHIND these new office printers from Xerox is a story of full-blooded corporate rivalry. Xerox released their first high-speed "DocuPrint" printers in the US and Europe last week, and these 24- and 32-page-a-minute machines will be available in Australia by late December, priced at around the $5000 mark for the most basic model.
In the US, analysts see the new range as a direct assault on Hewlett-Packard's supremacy: one called it the start of "a bare-knuckled brawl"
Xerox's Australian manager of networked office printers, Forest McGregor, does nothing to dispel that impression in Australia. He acknowledges that HP is the market leader in printers "by a long way, particularly in that sort of area", but says the Docuprint machines will give them a run for their money.
ECONOMY COLOR
EPSON has cracked an inkjet color barrier that would have seemed unimaginable a couple of years ago - a printer for less than $300. The Stylus Color 300, which achieves 720dpi resolution and uses four colors in the one cartridge, has a RRP of $299.
Epson says the Color 300 "produces high quality letters, reports and graphical images and is ideal for school projects, invitations and greeting cards". The Color 300 features an "automatic" mode that prompts the printer to scan the page to be printed and select the best settings for each item. Inquiries: (02) 9903 9000.
OUTTA SPACE?
MANY a desk-bound PC user besieged by technology and paperwork will delight in the sight of Hitachi's Super TFT LCD desktop computer (pictured). The TFT measures just 19 centimetres in depth, compared to the 60 centimetres taken up by the traditional computer. Hitachi's senior vice-president Tadahiko Shinohara, was showing off the TFT for the first time in the USA at the California Public Affairs Forum in Los Angeles.
WEB BOUNCING
IF THAT Web address you want sounds good, looks good and makes sense, there's a fair chance someone else already has it. With 500,000 (and growing) .com addresses already secured it's becoming an increasingly difficult task to get the one you want.
One clever answer to the problem can be found at http://bounce.to, which unlike other services offering a free Web space far down a server document tree, allows users to move right up behind the very short domain names.
By inserting bounce.to before the name you wanted the visitor attempting to find you is automatically moved to your site. There's a small price (so to speak) to pay: the visitor will be confronted by an adverstising banner for five seconds before moving on to your site. But in real cost terms it is free to you, the site owner. More details at http://bounce.to/
MAKING IT EASY
INTERNET service provider Microplex has released a product aimed at luring consumers who have not yet ventured on to the World Wide Web: an advanced version of its Internet-access card starter kit. The kit comes with what Microplex claims to be "unique" diagnostic software that provides technical support if the card can not connect the user to the Internet immediately.
The new card gives one month or 15 hours of Internet connectivity for $24.95. Users can also purchase 40 hours for $39. The kit installs dial-up networking and TCP/IP if needed, configures the PC for appropriate POP and installs Microsoft Explorer. Inquiries to Microplex: (02) 9438-1234.
THEY'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!
EVER been in one of those situations where you simply had to be able to take eight photographs in a second? No, we thought not. Professional photographers aside, it's a rare need.
That hasn't stopped Fuji releasing this little shutter-stopper, an eight sequence-shooting disposable camera that is loaded for 15 shots, with eight images within each frame. Just one click of the shutter button and you've got eight sequence shots.
Reuters says the camera goes on sale in Japan tomorrow and "will be targetted at young girls". Nope, we don't know why either.
RIVEN: THE TENSION MOUNTS
FOR millions around the world its imminent arrival is evoking enough excitement to create admiration even among those who created the hype for Windows 95.
Riven, the follow-up to the best-selling game Myst, will go on sale on the 31st of this month and distributor Dataflow has planned for 35,000 sales on the first day of release here.
Myst created a benchmark in PC gaming and US reports from those with inside knowledge suggest that Riven will again raise the bar for excellence in story-telling, graphics and sheer fascination.
It's estimated Riven has cost $5 million to produce, against Mysts's $600,000. It has been made with five times the number of people who worked on Myst, 10 times the budget, 500 times the computing power and had a development team of more than 30 artists and designers.
It has more than 7000 finely detailed mages and one hour of animation. Myst, which was released on PC in February 1994, has stayed in the Top 10 best-seller list ever since.
Riven, on five CD-ROMs, will be released simultaneously for PC and Mac at a RRP of $99.95.
WAVE A WAND
IT MAY not be real magic, but the Bar Code Wand still seems destined to charm a lot of people involved in portable data collection: it's a case of taking the scanner to the product instead of vice versa. The system combines two components: Socket Communication's Serial PC Card and Welch Allen's Scanteam 6180 barcode scanner/decoder.
When the card is inserted into the PC card slot of any handheld PC, the attached pen-like wand is used to collect bar code data directly into any Windows CE application. Users can then dock their handheld device with desktop units and copy the collected data to a company network by using utilities included with CE.
Potential applications include point-of-sale, shelf-price audits, store transfers, inventory management and tracking goods in shipping and receiving. The whole kit comprises a credit-card sized PC card, a flexibile coiled cable, a wand scanner and Windows CE software drivers. The BarCode Wand for Windows CE has a RRP of $749, including tax.
Further inquiries from Advanced Portable Technologies (02) 9433-8300 or toll free 1300 300 213.
© 1997
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