Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page 47

Thursday, May 4, 2000 THE HARTFORD COURANT D3 I EVERY THURSDAY PIXELS i nntlnns A I s'' JUL 1 'nyi pie LT i Storrs Company Rides 1,687 ,9.566 'XX0am 958,425 0,177 'A'003" 414,433 1,748 Shareware To The Top With Shrinks And Bundles Files Intel And User ID Intel's new Willamette chip has two distinctive features: It's a lightning-fast 1.5 gigahertz, and it keeps its nose out of your business. Last year, Intel's Pentium HI chip was boycotted when it was discovered that a user-identification feature was embedded in it Intel eventually released a program that disabled the feature. Willamette is scheduled for fall release. Analyze This Are Microsoft executives getting too old to see the future? (It sure doesn't appear as if they saw the federal government demanding the company's breakup.) Although they anticipate an age of the perpetually wired whether it's a PC, a cell phone or a hand-held device they need some help on this theory of evolution. So they hired two consultants: Jennifer Corriero, 19, and Matthew Furdyk, 17.

Aside from a paycheck, Corriero is earning college credit at York University in Toronto. Furdyk hasn't finished high school and he's not sure when he will. He was a millionaire at 16, one year after starting his first company, MyDesktop.com. He now presides over his second company, a site called BuyBuddy.com, which helps users buy technology products. While at Microsoft, he'll continue working for his Toronto company via the Internet.

DSL, Delivered Digital Subscriber Line service, the super-fast Internet connection via telephone lines, usually requires buying both hardware and the service. That hardware, which can cost more than $200, might start showing up as standard equipment in new computers because of new technology called softDSL from Motorola and PCtel. Motorola says SoftDSL will reduce the cost of DSL hardware by as much as 40 percent. The Panja Connection Microsoft recently showed a device it hopes will unite the home computer with the home theater. Panja, which uses Microsoft's Universal Plug and Play, connects a TV and audio system to the Internet without a PC.

When a PC is used with Panja, it would act as a server to increase speed and help manage the network. The Universal Plug and Play feature, which allows easy connection of various appliances, is part of Windows Millennium, which will be built into PCs expected to ship by the end of the year. The PC VCR The new personal video recorders from Ti Vo and ReplayTV borrow from the PC, using a hard drive to store programming as sort of a digital VCR. Now it's the PC's turn to borrow from the VCR. Ravisent Technologies demonstrated CineMaster software at the recent Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in New Orleans that, with a TV tuner card, turns a PC into a digital VCR.

The software will be sold with Conextant's $150 HDTV tuner card, which will turn a PC into a low-cost alternative to a high-definition television, which costs about $5,000 now. Untethered Product: Wireless Modem (WMJ900) Manufacturer: RCA 1 Mm no iri I I li 0 I da I I I A I 4 I s. during an interview this week. "The whole shareware concept of distributing your software among as many people as possible is still our biggest selling point," he said. "People need to experience the convenience." WinZip got its start nearly a decade ago by filling a gaping hole in the utility software marketplace.

At the time, the Zip compression system was available almost exclusively as a DOS program named PKZip, after its author, Phil Katz. But Microsoft Windows was starting to gain favor among PC users, who wanted to run software with the same point-and-click functionality. When Katz's company, PKWare, lagged in releasing a Windows version, a programmer named Nicolas Mak wrote WinZip in 1991. Eventually PKWare would release its own Windows version. But by then WinZip had established a substantial lead as the Zip utility of choice among Windows users.

(Tragically, Katz was found dead last month in a Milwaukee hotel room of complications from alcoholism. He was 37.) This latest release of WinZip, Version 8.0, is an important update for WinZip Computing, formerly known as Nico Mak Computing, after its founder. In the year and a half since WinZip 7.0 hit the market, competitors like NetZip have had time to enhance its own offerings. Some reviewers even suggested that NetZip may have leaped ahead in terms of features. WinZip has responded with a few new features of its own.

This latest version includes an enhanced "wizard" that helps CanoScan FB63CUi Canon has recently introduced the CanoScan FB 630Ui, a diminutive $149 fiat-bed machine targeting Mac users, but not for them only. The 630Ui is one of the first scanners to be both connected and fully powered via the computer's USB port. This means there's only one cord to keep up with. After placing a photo on the glass, the user pushes the scanner's only button to bring up the CanoScan Toolbox on the computer screen, a pretty cool and fast way to launch the softwa. Canon's software allows scans to be sent directly to a printer, to e-mail or to a fax modem.

Also included are an optical character recognition program for scanning text and Prove A Utility That 1 Mr' distribution. Last week saw the release of a much-anticipated upgrade called WinZip 8.0. In just its first week in circulation, the software was downloaded 329,000 times by prospective customers using CNet's Download.com. Copies were available from dozens of Web sites worldwide, including some in Brazil, Japan, Malaysia and Thailand. Over the years, according to CNet statistics, various versions of WinZip have been downloaded about 20 million times.

Not bad for a company that does almost no advertising and avoids publicity at every opportunity. With numbers like those, you'd think WinZip Computing would be rolling in money, like so many of its counterparts selling commercial "shrink-wrapped" software in your local mall. But WinZip is shareware, which means that it is distributed free over the Internet. Prospective buyers promise to pay $29 for it if they continue to use WinZip beyond a trial period. This distribution method saves a lot on packaging, shipping and promotion.

But only a small percentage of those who download under the shareware "honor system" are honorable enough to pay up. As a result, WinZip Computing remains a rather small company of only about 15 to 20 employees. "We like to stay lean and mean," said Hans Top, WinZip's president. Even so, WinZip remains committed tft the shareware approach because the folks there believe it's the best way to get people to try their product. "We started off this way, and we thought, why bother changing?" Top explained player to be upgraded as technology changes.

The Nomad that I tested had a 32-megabyte flash memory card, which holds up to one hour of music. Transferring audio files from a PC is extremely quick and easy with the USB connection, making the Nomad II perfect for the novice MP3 user. The Nomad II with a 32-megabyte memory card is available only online for $229; a version with a 64-megabyte memory card is more widely available at $329.99. See www.nomad world.com or call 1-800-998-1000. -PAULA FELPS, DALLAS MORNING NEWS ACUOli httV LCeniP 'f' I new users move through the program in a step-by-step fashion.

The program makes it easy to download and install desktop themes and screen savers from the Internet. WinZip is also more tightly integrated with the Windows Explorer, making file management even easier. And yet another new feature makes it easy for users to attach a Zip file to an outgoing e-mail. Top is happy about the enhancements but said WinZip won't be lured into a mad dash to add features that might make the proSuct unstable. "Quality is incredibly important to us," he said.

Only time will tell whether the user community believes WinZip has held on to its leadership among compression and archive utilities. But the early signs are encouraging. "If you want the easiest zipper on the market, turn to our favorite, WinZip," wrote CNet's reviewer, Gregg Keizer. The company also lists WinZip among its top five "must-have" utilities. Jim Freund, of the Computer Shopper, was equally effusive, saying: "Whether you're compressing e-mail attachments, organizing seldom-used files or decompressing archives found online, WinZip 8.0 is the latest, and still the greatest, way to get it done." Despite WinZip's history and popularity, there are still hordes of new Internet users who haven't tried it and haven't even heard of it.

"That's great," Top said, smiling. "It means that we still have more work to do." John Moron's e-mail address is a package for making greeting cards and calendars. This 36-bit, single-pass scanner captures more than 68 billion colors at a resolution of 600 dpi. It weighs just over 3 pounds and is 10.1 inches wide, 14.7 inches long and 1.5 inches high. A translucent blue cover is standard, though other iMac-inspired colors are available for $12.99 each.

The CanoScan FB 630Ui is the easiest scanner I've used. I was processing images five minutes after unboxing it. Canon doesn't leave out owners of Windows PCs either. Windows 98 drivers and software are included. Call l-800652-2666or see www.ccsi J7MfiOS.SAf.4iV, DALLAS MORNING NEWS JOHN MORAN DIGITAIDIARY The two-story structure in rural Storrs looks more like an overgrown Colonial-style house than an office building.

No sign announces that this is home to perhaps the most popular shareware program ever written: WinZip. And that's the way the company, WinZip Computing, likes it. Their software may be popular, but company officials try hard to keep a low-profile. WinZip is a compression and archive utility that allows users to shrink computer files and bundle them together. File compression was a vital trick in the early days of personal computing, when hard drives were small and modems were slow.

Compressing files saved precious megabytes and download time. But even in these days of multi-gigabytes drives and broadband Internet connections, WinZip remains a handy way to gather files for e-mailing or downloading as a single package. And no matter how big your hard drive is, a little compression is always a bonus. Despite WinZip's low-key attitude, its software is again making waves in the hyper-competitive world of shareware Creative Labs Nomad II Creative Labs crams a lot of features into its Nomad a portable audio player weighing less than 3 ounces. Like its predecessor, the Nomad comes with an FM tuner that stores 20 presets and a voice recorder.

The new model is designed to support multiple digital audio formats, including MP3, Microsoft Windows Media or CD music downloaded from a PC. Software extensions available on the Nomad Web site will allow the mm Price: $249 Comment: Does this thing fly? No, but it looks as if it could take any minute. The base of the modem, with two transceiver units, connects to any phone line. Data is transmitted by radio frequency (RF) from the computer to the base unit The wireless modem allows access to the Internet from anywhere in the home. Available: Fall Information: www.rca.com Daily Riffage It's not too late to see some of the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival 2000, as long as you go to Riffage.com, which has an exclusive video deal with the festival.

The music stops A off slVV; Kevin Hunt (huntcourant. com) Ik I.