European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 16, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 12 the stars and stripes computers tuesday february 16,1993 chips n bits Micro prose an Access have upped the Ante in computer Golf. Of course the hardware Ante has been upped too for Access links 386 and Micro Rosc s David Leadbetter s greens you must have at least a 386sx machine with two megabytes of ram. Links also requires super via video. Despite the similar hardware demands the two games take different approaches. In terms of play links 386 about $40 at discount is much like regular links fairly easy from Tec to Green with putting a pain. The graphics arc a knockout. You can practically count the leaves in the spreading Oaks. Unfortunately there s no computer opponent. If you have a sound blaster pro audio card you get Birds frogs and judicious comments from your partner. Old courses published for the regular links game can be converted within links 386. Greens about $35 at discount does t go for gonzo graphics. The graphics Are better than adequate but the Whiz bang Here is the to camera it shows you the flight of each shot. Where All other Golf games let you make your shot yen tediously redraw the screen greens turns to blazing Speed. You watch the flight of the Ball from different angles you can control that if you wish and when it comes to rest the game is ready for you to make the next shot. This is the quickest Golf game i be Ever seen. There Are Al sorts of computer opponents. Greens uses a handful of make believe courses. Steve jobs next computer inc., after several years of lukewarm response to its workstations will Stop making hardware and focus on its highly acclaimed software according to a published report. Jobs who co founded Apple computer inc. And started next in 1985, was unavailable for comment and a next spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny the company s plans the san Francisco chronicle said. Next has been praised for its built in next step software considered technically Superior to other programs on the Market. With next step makers of applications software programs that perform specific tasks such As word processing can produce programs in less time than for other workstations or pcs. Many next customers have bought the company s hardware because they want to take advantage of the company s software which can be operated Only on next machines. The company has tried to use the strength of next step to sell its machines to companies that want to develop custom programs. Next however also has been working on software that will work Onibe compatible personal computers. The company is expected to finish work on the program next step 486, this summer nearly u year after jobs first promised it would be done ism Japan Ltd. And Canon inc. Have begun Selling what they say is the world s first notebook sized personal computer with a built in Printer. The computer which contains compact Bubble Jet Printer is being marketed starting this month in Japan with prices ranging from $2,380to $4,190, depending on memory size and hard disk options. From wire reports heavenly performance Gateway s 486dx has All the Speed Power you could use by Jack Warner Cox news service Atlanta if there is a computer heaven i believe i m in it. Recently i replaced the old Northgate 386-20 with a Gateway 486dx2-66, run Ning the fastest microprocessor that has been placed on the open Market. It came with eight megabytes of Mem Ory a 340-megabyte hard drive two floppy drives and a local bus video driving a 15-Inch Flat screen Monitor. I love it. It gives me immense pleasure just to go into the windows file manager and stare at the line that tells me i be got about 200 megabytes of space free on my hard drive. The video is unbelievably fast i can see things in my flight simulators such As Falcon 3.0, that were never there before. This computer Cost me just what it would Cost you $3,095 delivered to the front door. For a machine that s virtually state of the Art if you disregard the multiple processor and Eisa computers that s not bad. Of course it came with a Microsoft mouse Dos and software. Gateway s documentation is excellent. For the beginner there s an on line nicely illustrated guide to the innards of the machine. I was deeply gratified to see that so prestigious an institution As pc Magazine confirmed my Choice the Gateway 486-66 was a finalist for technical achievement of the year citing performance for Price and an editor s Choice among 486-66s. The Ati local bus video won a separate award for tech Nical achievement. I wish i had paid a Little More and received a pc that stands on end. It did t Cross my mind at the time. These Tower cases have room for extra drive Bays. I did not Settle on the Gateway by whim. I be been shopping for a new com Puter for a year. When the Price wars began in Earnest i figured it was time to make a move. I have examined on paper just about every system being offered through the major magazines and the newspaper ads. Most of them Don t Tell you who made the stuff inside their Box. No computer manufacturer makes All its own components. Some make a few items most make none. The important thing is not so much the name on the Case but the names on the components inside the hard drive the drive con troller the Motherboard the bios Basic input output system and very important to me the video display card. Gateway is quite upfront about All this in fact it uses the names on its innards As a Selling Point. When the Competition be came cutthroat last summer after Compaq s introduction of a Low priced line it was interesting to watch the gyrations. Some manufacturers got their prices Down by cutting features one big name went Back to Selling machines with 2s6k video cards when four times that amount of memory is Standard now on any decent card. Gateway however just Cut its prices a Little More. I was unable to find another manufacturer offering this kind of Quality for anything like the Price. Gateway is a direct mail dealer. My com Puter came with the Standard 30-Day Money Back guarantee that s already expired and a year s free on site service. A lot of people i know would never consider direct mail. I m just the other Way i prefer to go that Way. Read All about it on cd rom byjoe Fasbinder United press International you can t read it on the train and it s awkward to hide behind while sitting at the breakfast table but other than that Usa today the 90s volume one has newspapers beat. The electronic newspaper contains More than 100,000 news stories from Jan uary 1990 to August 1992. It also contains loads of pictures and even sound for radio television fanciers who prefer what the Media Call sound bytes to lengthy printed quotes. The stories pictures and sound record Ings Are stored on a single compact disk for use on High end ism compatible computers equipped with a cd rom drive and a sound card. To Access photos and graphics contained on the Usa today cd you also need a super via graphics adapter card and Monitor. Ism compatibles equipped with Only a Standard via graphics adapter can Access the stories and sound bytes but will not be Able to display the pictures. Cd rom stands for a compact disk acting As a read Only memory device. It Means you can View the material that s stored on the cd but you cannot change it or put More information on it by using your computer. And you can store a lot on a single cd. So if you re in the mood for news and information Usa today the 90s vol ume one gives you plenty. All the stories graphics photos and even audio files Are organized into the same key sections As the Usa today newspaper so if you know where to find material on a certain topic in the newspaper Odds Are you will find it in the com parable spot on the cd. We wanted to make the software As easy to use As our newspaper which revolutionized the publishing Industry said Carolyn Martin director of hew business development for Usa today Gannett new business. Cd rom offers us the ability to compress vast amounts of data and bring it to life using sound clips and vivid  what that Means is that Usa today the 90s volume one is divided into the same sections As the newspaper news Money sports and life. The cd rom program also highlights five main topics considered most Perti nent to the 1990s" by the people who put the cd together the fall of communism. The recession. The aids crisis. The War in the persian Gulf. The Battle of the sexes. Each of these topics has a hot but ton on the main program screen. Just Click on the Button with the mouse and the computer will search the program and provide a menu of All the material available. You re not restricted of course to the topics deemed pertinent to the 1990s." there s a lot More information on the cd. And you can retrieve it by just asking your computer to find it. Usa today the 90s volume one is equipped with smarter ice a natural language interface designed by conic ton s new Media. What a natural language interface does is allow users to ask questions using the keyboard in the same words they would use if they were talking. There s a smar Trieve Button on the program screen. So for example if you want information on a 1991 plane crash in Columbus Ohio you just Click the smar Trieve selection on your screen. Then you Type in an appropriate instruction such As find All plane crashes in 1991 in  the program will search the cd for in formation on 1991 plane crashes in col Umbus and provide a list of All the mate rial about 1991 plane crashes in Columbus with a Brief description of each item. Just Click again on the description of the item you want and it appears on the screen. The disk also contains the Merriam Webster online dictionary in Case you get stuck trying to understand one of those big words reporters sometimes use and a comprehensive Atlas so you can see where things happened. Usa today the 90s volume one requires an ism compatible with a 386 or better microprocessor Microsoft win Dows version 3.0 or better is Dos ver Sion 3.1 or higher a cd rom drive super via card and Monitor mouse speakers and sound card