What is new out there in the PC world?

What is new out there in the PC world?

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Competition in the upper market display monitor
industry is really tight, with new and good monitor products such
as the ones from Nokia beginning to share the awards
traditionally monopolized by Nanao and NEC. Competition in the
lower end is not easy, either.

NEC, a maker of an award winning upper market display monitor,
has just upgraded its budget SVGA 14" monitor. Its new MultiSync
2V, with a list price of US$355, is capable of a 70 Hz vertical
refresh rate at the resolution of 1024 by 768. At 800 by 600, it
is capable of displaying images with a 76 Hz vertical refresh
rate, which is very easy on the eyes.

The new entry level monitor complies with the MPR-II elec
tromagnetic radiation specifications. It also complies with the
Display Power Management Signaling (DPMS) standard, as specified
by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA). This
feature allows the monitor to power down itself to comply with
the EPA's Energy Star specifications. Boy, isn't it interesting
to see how many specifications and standards that new computer
products must comply with today?

Not to be beaten by NEC, Sony is also launching its new 15"
Trinitron monitor, called MultiScan 15sf. Like NEC 2V, Sony 15sf
also incorporates digital controls. It is also both VESA DPMS and
MPR-II compliant. But, unlike the 14" NEC, Sony's 15" maximum
refresh rate at 1024 by 768 is 75 hz.

A new feature to be found in Sony 15sf is the Color Tempera
ture control, which the company claims will ensure color accuracy
in desktop publishing and graphics design applications. Well,
interesting as this new feature may be, would you really consider
using a 15" for any serious DTP job?

Movies on your PC

Do you know that, for a little bit more than the price of a
video laser disc player, you can turn your 386 machine into a
movie theater? Thanks to Sigma Designs, a Fremont-based company,
you can now add ReelMagic MPEG Playback Controller and PC
Multimedia Upgrade Kit to our PC. The kit will enable your PC to
display full screen, TV-quality video and produce CD-quality
audio from standard CD-ROM drives.

The product basically consists of two components, a 16-bit
sound card (which is the standard for PC audio today) and an MPEG
playback board. Using the Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG)
compression method, ReelMagic can play back up to 74 minutes of
full-motion video from a single CD-ROM at the rate of 30 frame
per second (FPS) for NTSC, 24 FPS for PAL, or 25 FPS for films.
If a movie runs longer than 74 minutes, it'll have to come in two
CDs. The software even supports OLE 2.0.

I've had the chance to see ReelMagic in action, and it's
amazing. The CDs containing full-featured films look just the
same as the ones that contain my favorite Hetty Koes Endang's
Kroncong songs. Undoubtedly, this will represent another moun
tainous challenge to Indonesia's Film Censor Board (BSF), which
has been under a lot of criticisms lately. How can they exercise
controls over movies that are indistinguishable from an ordinary
audio CD?

In fact, the CD-based software for ReelMagic is already
available in Jakarta, with the price ranging from Rp 40,000 to Rp
200,000. Sounds like there will be another reason to get glued to
our PC, doesn't it?

New MS DOS

Two weeks ago I wrote about Version 6.21 of MS DOS, an upgrade
that untraditionally gave you less that its predecessor as it no
longer included the disk compression utility DoubleSpace. Micro
soft has brought back a disk compression utility into the oldest
operating system that we know in the PC world. I guess the people
in Redmond understand how a disk compression utility is such a
necessity, given such a large amount of disk space that today's
applications require.

In addition to the disk compression utility, which is now
called DriveSpace, MS DOS 6.22 also features better integration
with Windows and better memory management. DoubleGuard and Scan
Disk are still available to ensure the well being of your hard
disk data. The upgrade price from Version 2.11 or later, through
a U.S. software mail-order company, is $49. If you have Version
6.0 or later, the upgrade price is only $10.

The funny thing is, Microsoft decided not to call it version
number 6.3 and used the weird sounding 6.22 instead. I guess we
all can understand this, as IBM gave its latest upgrade of PC DOS
version number 6.3. It's obvious that the war still continues,
isn't it?

New from Corel

With such strong leadership in the PC based graphics world, it
stands to reason that Corel should start marketing spin offs from
its flagship CorelDRAW! graphics illustration package. A case in
point is CorelFLOW, a program that enables you to create fancy
flowcharts, diagrams, schematics, etc.

Like Visio, our favorite chart creator, CorelFLOW also
supports drag and drop drawing, automatic shape connecting, and
direct text and line editing. Like Visio, it also supports OLE
2.0 and has customizable, smart symbol libraries. And, oh, yes,
it comes with a spellcheck, too.

Corel's habit of throwing in everything into the packages it
sells is carried onto this one as well. For a suggested retail
price of $99, CorelFLOW comes with 2,000 symbols, 1,000 clipart
images, 1,000 Corel Photos on CD-ROM and 100 TrueType Fonts. Oh
dear, how big should my hard disk be if software continues to
come in large quantities like this?