After years of fighting in the courts and paying lawyers millions of dollars, Microsoft and Stac have agreed to kiss and make up.
The story so far: Stac Electronics clever programmers worked out a way to get a personal computer to shrink files to less than half their size for storage on the hard disk and explode them to normal on use. This included program files.
It meant that with this program people could store twice as much on their hard disk, thus postponing the expensive day of replacing the hard-disk with a bigger on.
Microsoft thought it was so good that it ought to have such a program on its next version of DOS to give users an extra reason to upgrade. For many people the program was the only reason to upgrade. A new version of DOS at $99 is cheaper than a new hard disk at $400.
Microsoft duly came out with DoubleSpace. Stac alleged its patent had been breached. The lawyers were called in. Stac won. Microsoft was ordered not to breach Stac’s patent. And Stac won more than $100 million in damages.
Now read on: Microsoft issued a press release last week which indicated that Microsoft has now applied the old adage: If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. It announced last week that it has signed a broad cross-licence agreement with Stac and agreed to an equity investment in Stac.
“”Together we resolved this dispute so we could end the inconvenience the recent judgment had caused customers world-wide,” Microsoft senior vice-president Paul Maritz said.
Stuff and nonsense. The judgement caused no inconvenience whatever to customers worldwide. The court specifically excluded existing licensed users of Microsoft’s patent-violating Double-Space. Indeed, I have got it in the computer I a writing this on.
No; the inconvenience has been Microsoft’s and Stac’s in fighting the matter in court instead of around a business table, though the position of the middlemen has been clarified and in the long-run consumers will be better off because the ideas produced by the small Stac will now become available more cheaply through Microsoft because of the greater number of programs sold.
Stac on its own cost about $150. With DOS it will cost a fraction of that.
ITEM
A conference of “”The Information Highway and Australian Schools” will be held at the Sydney Hilton on July 4 and 5. Further information on Canberra 2411982 or 2882884.
ITEM
Just as mobiles were losing their yuppie image, Vodaphone, the third mobile network carrier, has announced “”the first ever mobile digital service in the Thredbo ski fields”.
Mobile phones will work on the chairlifts, all over the slopes and in the village.
Naturally, Thredbo, the skiing resort for the rich, was picked first. I shall be skiing at Perisher this year.
I suspect that mobile phones will not be usable by cross-country skiers in the main range (where they would be useful for safety reasons) until next century.
For skiers wanting a lightweight phone on the slopes, Motorola has just launched what it says is the lightest mobile phone at 113 grams. It has Motorola’s “”flip” mouthpiece which helps make it pocket-size. But more importantly for skiers, the flip also works as a Receive Call button. When you are wearing skiing gloves it is easier to flip the mouthpiece than press a small button.
ITEM
While on gadgetry Apple has launched QuickTake, a digital colour camera. (Like all new software and computer peripherals it has a capital letter in the middle of the brand name.) It is auto-everything. Instead of using film, the camera stores the image electronically, it is then transferred to the computer through a serial cable. The image can be called up and manipulated in graphics or desktop publishing programs. It works for both Apple and Windows users. $995 with software and connections.
ITEM
The Canberra company Prometheus Information Pty Ltd has launched HealthWiz. It is raw data from dozens of sources about health in Australia and a program to select datasets for use on your computer and to incorporate into documents, reports or whatever.
You could create, for example, tables of all males over 50 with arthritis state-by-state. You can look at hospitalisation statistics and so on. (More information on 2577356).
ITEM
Downloadable upgrades? PC DOS 6.1 can be upgraded to 6.3 by downloading the files free from Internet (FTP address is PCDOS.BocaRaton.IBM.COM). And Norton Anti-Virus 3.0 can download an upgrade from Compuserve or the Symantec Bulletin Board (02 8796322) to fend off the Junkie virus.
Speaking of viruses, the centre of virus creation has moved from Bulgaria to Sweden, Mongolia and Britain, according to Cybec Ltd which markets a virus detector.
Cybec says Junkie comes from Sweden. It mangles .COM files. The viruses Pathogen and Queeg come from Britain and hit data. The viruses get into computers from downloading material from bulletin boards or from pirate software.
ITEM
Lotus has announced that version 5 of Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows will be available in the third quarter of this year. It has a couple of internationalising features: linking data with maps and using foreign currencies.
The maps include Australia, US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and 1500 cities of the world and the world by country.
It will link with Lotus’s Approach database software to produce more attractive reports. It will retail at $735.
Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft’s Excel are the world’s most used spreadsheet programs. Fortunately for users of both, as the companies vie for market share they ensure that each program will read the others’ files (complete with formulas and formatting). This will hold for Version 5.
Excel users will now have to weigh up whether to swap to Lotus (no doubt Lotus will offer Version 5 at an upgrade price around $200) tog et the pretty maps, or wait till Excel matches the functions with its next upgrade.
ITEM
Claris, which markets cheap and easy software for Apple Mac has launched Claris Organizer (with an American Z) for Macintosh and sundry other computers in the Apple family (species?). It has a diary, calendar, alarms, contact book with auto dial fax numbers, searching and so on. It will be $69 until September.
And another Apple product for those who want to organise our lives comes from CheckMark. The program windoWatch automatically records the time spent by network users on certain files. Lawyers and consultants will love it.