European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - July 27, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 12 the stars and stripes computers tuesday july 27,1993 chips n bits Appl computer announced ii hns null a its first move into consumer electronics by shipping it6multimedia Power cd play Erin tin rope. Apple which will begin shipping powered in the United states and Asia late this month put n $495 Price agon the player. The machine has the capability of playing audio compact discs photo s and cd rom videodiscs Andl work when connected within Apple macintosh personal computer or i television. Apple said the Clevice gives users the flexibility to Access a variety of types of cd technology in variety of locales. The move is part of Apple s strategy to carve a Niche in the consume electronics area using the digital cd rom technology for its planned personal digital assistant devices also dubbed the Newton. The powered is the first in a line of cd rom based multimedia products from its personal interactive electronics division. The powered is not the first machine to offer such capabilities and appears to reflect Apple s strategy of waiting for other companies to break ground markets. It was not the first to enter the computer notebook Market waiting until 1991 to debut the pow Crook after years of . opposition a .-Madesupercomputer has gone on Sale in China the official China daily newspaper said sunday. A computer made by Cray research was displayed at a geophysics exhibition in Beijing last week the newspaper said. It said chinese Petroleum officials showed keen interest but that no deals were immediately struck. The . Government blocked licenses for High technology products with possible military uses after 1989,when the chinese army crushed popular pro democracy protests in Beijing. In late 1991, China agreed tour taplits missile exports in return for Access to .-made sat ilits an supercomputers. However As recently As Las december Washington was still blocking the Sale of a Cray supercomputer to China because of new reports of chinese missile sales to Pakistan and other countries. The ism pc co. Said it has formed division to develop personal computers based on the Power microprocessor which the ism unit developed in a joint Effort with two other companies. The new group called the Power personal systems division and based in Somers ., will be led by Nobuo Mii an International business machines vice president who has served As general manager of entry systems technology. The entry systems unit will be merged into the new pc company. Texas instruments has in three Days manufactured an integrated circuit from raw Silicon a process that normally takes at least three weeks the company said wednesday. We were Able to achieve this fast Cycle time by using single wafer processing at All manufacturing Steps said said Robert Duering a to company scientist. " integrated circuit manufacturing traditionally has used Many Batch processes which Are inherently from wire reports finding the right word reference books translators assist writers of All types by . Shannon the new York times practically everybody is a writer at some time. Students write papers. Managers write memos and reports. Politicians or their aides write speeches. Kidnappers write Ransom notes. And practically everybody except the unusually skillful or terminally arrogant can use help. Corr Flitcr programs can be a big help. We Al not talking Here about word processing software itself which with its instant and nearly painless revision Al most makes one Long for the Quill pen but about those add on programs that can help a writer make a piece of prose More Concrete and vivid. A thesaurus for example is a resource one suspects that few writers past the Stu Dent stage Ever bother to pull off the shelf. But an on line thesaurus is incomparably handier and therefore More Likely to be used. For instance the thesaurus that is part of the word processor i am now using re quires that you highlight the word Handy and then select the thesaurus from a menu. You arc almost instantly presented with skilled proficient adept practical available accessible 1 and a Host of other near synonyms. Highlighting a word in the list leads to another list of its near synonyms and so on. This is a built in Aid and with about 220,000 words More than Good enough for most purposes. However people who really revel in words can Wallow to their heart s Content in the latest version of word finder plus for windows or macintosh. Word finder plus from Micro lyrics of Pittsford ., contains More than a Mil lion synonyms with definitions of about 50,000. It works with Many popular word processors and can be adapted to work with Many More. As with thesauruses that Are built into their word processing compan Dank thanks. Ions a word selected from the list of synonyms will automatically replace fhe orig Inal word. There also is a quiz to test your knowl Edge of definitions and synonyms. The suggested retail Price of either the win Dows or macintosh version is $59.95. A writer whose work often require foreign words would find another Micro lyrics product Berlitz interpreter to be Handy practical and accessible. There arl2,000 words in each of five languages English French German Spanish and italian and when you select word in the source language you get its synonym in the four others As Well As its part of speech and in the Case of the european languages its gender. The source language docs not have Tobe the one you Are writing in. On the opening screen Click the source Button select one of the five languages and if translations exist they will be displayed if a translation docs not exist the pro Gram displays a list of words alphabetically close to the desired word. Sometimes you will have to find the uninfected for of the word mice is not listed but mouse is like word finder plus Berlitz inter Preter has a vocabulary building feature. Click the quiz Button and a randomly selected word in the source language is displayed. After you try to translate the word a lick on translate gives you the Correct answer. Berlitz interpreter is now available i windows and macintosh versions for a suggested retail Price of $49.95. Perhaps the ultimate in writing aids Isa desktop encyclopedia that docs not take up any room on the desktop. The Kings of computer encyclopedias Are the ones supplied on cd rom Grolier and Compton s come to mind with their hundreds and hundreds of Mega bytes of text illustrations and video and audio clips. But not everyone has a cd rom player with the associated High Quality video and audio devices. The electronic edition of the random House encyclopedia for windows is just text 1.5 million words of it a enhanced and unburdened by sound bites. Still there Are about 20,000 entries in the kind of detail expected of a desktop rather than a Multi volume encyclopedia which should be just enough to add an air of authority to writing an aside on . The entries come under eight main headings geography history philosophy religion and mythology social science the arts science sports and Leisure and Law and government. The time Chart lists significant historical events in chronological order divided into periods like Iron swords and the alphabet 1200-700 b.c., printing and Dis covery 1400-1500, and from depression to recovery 1925-1950. All this is shipped on three floppy disks taking up a Mere 4.2 megabytes of hard disk spaced thanks to compression technology developed at the Xerox Palo Alto research Center and licensed to Micoly tics. The ultralight compression Means that you could have All three products a your and Call at a Cost of Only about five megabytes of storage room. There Are games even screen savers that hog More space than that. A Little help balancing your budget by James Bernstein new Day Islandia , computer associates International a software company that achieved Fame and Fortune making programs for big business released its first product for Consumers and said twill give away 1 million copies to stimulate sales. The program called Kiplinger s Ca simply Money is intended to help Home computer users manage their Money bet Ter. It offers advice from Kiplinger Washington editors inc., a newsletter publisher on subjects ranging from How to Findlow mortgage and Auto insurance rates to How to meet the Legal requirements for hiring household help. It also does More routine tasks such As Check Book balancing. The program Marks a Milestone for one of Long Island s largest and most promising companies. After years of designing and manufacturing software for mainframe computers used by Banks insurance companies and airlines. Computer associates has targeted the personal computer Market As Ripe for growth. Charles Wang chairman of compute associates called the new program the right product at the right unlike previous personal finance managers Kiplinger s Ca simply Money really is simple. It s for people who Aren to buttress its argument that Persona finance software is a product with room to grow the company released a poll i commissioned by the Gallup Organiza Tion. The poll found that a majority of 1,000 adults surveyed by Telephone in May know Little about How to invest and save and wish they were better at managing Money the company said. Only 10 per cent now use personal finance software although 31 percent have Home computers. Computer associates will compete with Microsoft corp s Money program and Intuit inc s quicken product. Microsoft of Redmond wash., is the world s largest personal computer soft Ware company while Intuit is a Start up firm in Menlo Park Calif. Our Money product is doing Well Microsoft spokeswoman Karen Meredith said when asked to comment about com Puter associates entry into the Market. It will be interesting to see what Hap pens. But i Don t think you can say we re trembling in our the most unusual aspect of computer associates product Roll out was its announcement that the first million copies will be free to those requesting it. Sam Whitmore editorial director at pc week a Trade Magazine called the Giveaway the ultimate game of Chicken because other software companies might feel compelled to do the same. Computer associates declined to say How much the Giveaway would Cost the company. After the first million copies the program will retail for $69.99. The program unveiled last week works in the Microsoft windows 3.1 operating environment used on most new ism compatible pcs. To order the free software Consumers can Call 800-373-3666. To
