From: goyal@utdallas.edu (Mohit K. Goyal)
Subject: COMDEX Report #2!!!!
Organization: Univ. of Texas at Dallas
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 06:06:53 GMT

I DID NOT WRITE THIS MESSAGE
REPOSTED WITHOUT PERMISSION

I got this from FIDOnet:
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From: MARK WOOLWORTH
To: ALL
Subject: COMDEX AND OS/2, DAY 2

Well, Day 2 of Comdex is over... (and the aching feet sure can tell! <g>)

In yesterdays message I stated that I felt that IBM had severly
underestimated the level of interest there would be in OS/2. To
point this out even clearer, IBM has been giving anyone that
walked into any IBM boot tokens that could be taken to the OS/2
showcase, and "gambled" for T-shirts, caps, posters, or chances
to win $6000 in IBM hardware.

They ran out of everything at 3:00 today. Then at 4:30, they took the
"wheel of fortune" away. Counter and all. I believe the
"gambling" is over for this show.

I still have 8 tokens myself... Maybe they will be collectors items.

The OS/2 showcase was PACKED today. It easily surpassed the croud that
was there yesterday. The room was so crowded, it really got hot
in the center of the room, and remained that way for hours. The
shows that IBM is putting on in the room are to standing room
only crowds, and people are standing so far back, that they
literally cannot see the stage.

Several weeks ago, I read several threads here that indicated that Word
Perfect was abandoning their OS/2 development. I talked to the
Development Manager today. They have -NOT- abandoned anything.
25 programmers are working on a 32 bit, fully PM version of Word
Perfect for OS/2 right now, and he said that the demand for the
product has been nothing short of amazing. However, he would
only say that it will be released "sometime in 1993".

I promised in yesterdays message to list the companies that are
displaying software in the OS/2 showcase, and list prices and
availability dates. I did my best, but it simply was too busy
to get around to all the booths today. Anyays, here goes:

American Mangement Systems - Imaging and Record Management
client/server solution for OS/2.

Archive Software - OS/2 backup software for OS/2. I was told to come
back tomorrow for any word on CMS drive support.

Borland - Showing their C++ ObjectVision tools.

CaseWorks - Showing CASE:PM VIP. Design and code generation tools for
C, C++ or COBOL.

Cirrus Technology -  Showing Unite 2.0, document imaging, and color
imaging. Designed to be used on LANs. Also suports optical
jukebox technology.

Commix SP - Showing a series of multi-media based databases for storing
images, audio and full-motion video.

Computer Associates (CA) - Demoing their entire line os software which
is being ported to OS/2. Release dates should be sometime next year.

Continuum - Distrinutes object-oriented system for managing and
tracking workflow in an enterprise network computing enviorment.

Corel Draw. Showing version 2.5. As reported last week, the main program
in this package is a full 32 bit PM program, but ALL of the
utilites are WINDOWS APPLICATIONS! It does clearly state this
on the outside of the box, but you will most likely not be told
this if you were to order it mail order. They promised that not
only will all of the Windows based applications be converted to
OS/2 PM apps, but the 2.5 release will be upgraded to version
4.0 sometime next year. They seemed to be clearly surprised that
someone would feel they had been mislead, and kept repeating
that they had made the decision to package the product as is,
in order to not delay the release any further.

DeScribe - Versions 4.0 is being demonstrated, and as a die-hard Word
Perfect user, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this thing
was to use. I wont get into all of the features it has, but it
can definately do all of the things I have ever asked Word
Perfect to do for me.  Suggested retail $495, street price
probably around $300. Version 4.0 is out now.

DigiTalk - Showing a program called PARTS. A parts assembly and reuse
tool set technology that enables rapid application contruction
from prefabricated parts. The first in a series of programs.

Easel Corp - Showing EASEL Workbench which is a integrated enviorment
for creating Windows, OS/2 (16 bit), and DOS client server
applications. They are also showing ENFIN/3 which is an object
oriented environment for creating client/server apps for 32 bit OS/2.

FaxPro Corp - Showing FaxPro-4-OS/2 which is a fully modular system
capable of providing quality fax capabilities to any app runing
under DOS, Windows or OS/2. Appears to take the output, and
convert it to fax formats. I will look into this more before
the show ends.

Financial Information Management Inc - Showing PROPHET, which takes
industrial data in real time, and can feed the numbers into
spreadsheets, reports, etc...

GUIdance Technologies Inc - Showing Choreographer, which is a highly
graphical, object oriented environment to speed development of PM apps.

GUILD Products - GUILD is a toolkit of graphical user interfaces which
are portable between OS/2, Windows, Unix and Macs.

Hilgrave Inc - Showing their award winning communications software for
OS/2. They are still bundling the OS/2 version with the DOS
version, and charging $199 for the pair.

IBM: IBM is showing numeruos programs... Here is a partial list, and a
little about some of them:

BookManager Build/2 takes most popular word processor format files, and
creates online books out of them, which can then be searched in
various different ways through the IBM Book program.

CICS OS/2 turns OS/2 into a server for DOS, Windows, OS/2 clients, and
ASCII terminals. LAN/WAN support too.

OASIS version 2.0 allows you to span hard drives (Make multiple drives
appear to be one unit to the operating system), and fully
supports RAID 5 fault tolerance. They allowed me to turn off
one of the 1.0 gig hard drives, while two different OS/2
stations were pulling full-motion video off of the Raid Array,
and there was no more than a quarter second pause, as the
system detected the missing drive, and rebuilt the data on the
remaining drives. They had eight 1.0 gig drives in the array,
which was configured as a single 8.0 gig hard drive formatted as
an HPFS drive.

Workstation One, which is a LAN based productivity tool for
mutil-vendor environments. Connects to numerous types of hosts.

As you can no doubt see, this is going to be a massive listing... I am
going to highlight a few more of the booths I visited, and then
end it for tonight. I will continue this listing tomorrow night.

Stacker today did say that the OS/2 and DOS versions of Stacker will be
compatible, so if you install the OS/2 version of Stacker, and
then boot DOS, the DOS version of Stacker will be able to use
the same drives, all as long as the partitions are formatted
using the FAT based file system. As I reported last night, HPFS
will not be supported by Stacker until June, '93. (see my next
message...)

Micrografx is there showing all kinds of amazing things with their
Designer and Mirrors programs. These are two very well done
programs, and in the hands of the Micrografx demonstrators,
look like you could almost do anything with them.

Symantec is demonstrating Norton Commander for OS/2. More on this later
in the week. They also have Zortech C++ for OS/2 in a booth.

Sytron is there showing Sytos Plus backup software. I could not even
get close enough to the booth to see which tape unit they were
using, or to talk to anyone. There is an extream amount of
interest in this booth.

Multi-Net Communications is demonstrating a very nicely done PMComm
program, which is a full 32 bit PM app. There is also a 16 bit
version. Both versions are available for a suggested retail
price of $89.95.

Have you ever called the IBM NSC BBS in Atlanta? The BBS software they
are running was written by Multi-Net Communications also.
Strangely, they did not even bring a copy of it with them to
the show. They were calling there support BBS with a 2400 baud
modem to show parts of it. They have single user, multi user,
and LAN versions of the BBS, priced at $195, $395 and $995 respectively.

Thats all for tonight guys (and gals). I gotta get some sleep, so I can
go back tomorrow.

Mark
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PLEASE post ANY Comdex information you have!!
I'm sure almost everyone will be interested!

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc