When It Comes to Computer Fairs, This Showcase Is All Upside

SAN DIEGO — Every year at about this time, PC industry insiders gather here for Showcase, an annual conference at which a hand-picked group of companies gets to show off new products. The conference is sponsored by Upside, a business technology magazine for which I have written.

What makes the conference special is its executive producer and emcee, David Coursey, an irreverent, outspoken and sometimes irritating computer industry analyst.

Companies don’t get to show their new products unless Coursey finds them interesting. And if a product demonstration goes overtime, gets boring or strays off course, anything is possible--including unflattering comments from host Coursey, hisses from the audience or, in some cases, the sounding of a dreaded gong, signaling an ejection from the stage.

There was no gong at Showcase ’99 last week for Michael Cowpland, CEO and founder of Ottawa-based Corel Corp., who showed off the soon-to-be-released version of the WordPerfect 2000 office suite. It will run on both Windows and Macintosh systems as well as on the up-and-coming Linux operating system.

WordPerfect once dominated the word-processing market. Today it has only a fraction of the users of Microsoft Word, the leading word processor, which is bundled with the Microsoft Office suite. The new WordPerfect program will be compatible with Microsoft Office documents and will even offer features that Microsoft has yet to adopt.

Its Real Time Preview, for example, will enable users to make temporary changes to a document’s format, fonts, font size and other attributes and preview how the change might affect the look of the document. If you don’t like what you see, you can quickly go back to where you were with a single mouse click.

The suite will include Corel’s WordPerfect 9 word processor, Quattro Pro 9 spreadsheet, Presentations 9 and Paradox 9 database. It will also come with Trellix 2.0, an excellent Web page authoring program from Trellix Corp., and Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech-recognition software from Dragon Systems Inc.

I’ll reserve my judgment on the new suite until I can test it, but on first glance it appears to be a welcome alternative to Microsoft Office.

The hit of the show was GoBack from Minneapolis-based Wild File Inc., which can be reached at (888) 945-3345 or at https://www.goback.com. The $69 program can best be described as a time machine for your PC. It enables you to restore the machine to a previous state in the event that you--or a piece of your software--do something disastrous. The program can help you recover from accidents ranging from a deleted or corrupted file to a complete reformat of your hard drive.

With the program running on my notebook PC, I un-installed several programs, deleted several data files and erased the entire Windows directory. Then I re-booted the machine. The GoBack program offered to return my computer to the condition it was in a few minutes before I performed those dastardly acts. Seconds later, the computer was operating as if nothing had happened.

Restoring the machine to the condition it was in before the accident means that you lose changes and new files. But the program gives you a way to get those back.

It can also be used to restore previous versions of files you may have changed. So if you revise and save a document and later decide you don’t like the changes, you can go back to a previous version.

It even works if you damage or delete files while in an MS-DOS window. The program creates compressed backup files that take up about 10% of your hard drive and may slow your machine slightly. But if you have a fast Pentium processor with plenty of storage, that’s a small price to pay for the protection it affords.

You still need to back up data as protection in case your machine breaks or is lost or stolen, but you no longer have to worry about wiping out data as a result of a human or software error.

These days, just about any PC industry gathering tends to focus on the Internet, and Showcase was no exception.

Representatives from Seattle-based WRQ ([800] 872-282 or https://www.atguard.com), demonstrated AtGuard 3.0, a program that speeds up Web page downloads by enabling you to selectively block banner ads, animated graphics and other graphics that slow Web performance.

AtGuard can also help protect your privacy and security by blocking the passage of unwanted data from your browser to Web sites and by preventing Web sites from transmitting malicious code that can harm your PC or invade your privacy. The software costs $29.95, but you can download a 30-day trial version from the company Web site.

Conferences such as these tend to reveal trends, especially when more than one company shows similar products or services. This year, the trend is toward services rather than shrink-wrapped products.

Several companies, for example, introduced free Web-based personal information management services that enable you to use the Web to maintain and view your calendar and address book.

Yahoo is testing a calendar service that uses TrueSync Plus from Starfish Software. With it, you can upload data from Microsoft Outlook or Starfish Sidekick to a Web page and access it online.

Jump Networks Inc. (https://www.jump.com) introduced a similar service that enables you to use the Web to maintain--or synchronize with Outlook--your calendar, contacts and e-mail. Jump also provides personalized news, weather and horoscopes as well as personal reminders.

By storing your calendar and contacts on the Web, you can access your information from any Web-enabled computer or terminal. If you’re on the road and don’t carry a laptop, you can still get your data from a colleague’s computer or at a cyber cafe. Your data is, of course, password-protected. Still, it’s always a good idea to read the company’s privacy policy before uploading data or providing information.

SuperCalendar.com debuted a free Internet calendar service that lets individuals, companies or groups maintain an online calendar to remind them of personal, family or group events. Users can create their own online calendar and--if they belong to a group that uses SuperCalendar.com--automatically integrate group events into it. It’s a great tool for clubs, PTAs, sports teams and other groups that schedule regular events. It can be programmed to send you e-mail to remind you of upcoming events.

When.com, which already offers a similar service, said it has reached an agreement to offer calendar services within Netscape’s NetCenter (https://www.netcenter.com).

I’m no “super dad,” but as a parent of two kids, I can easily see how this service might catch on. Juggling my professional calendar is nothing compared with keeping up with their soccer, basketball and scouting events and other activities. Using the Web to empower real--not just virtual--communities is a very worthy goal.

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Lawrence J. Magid can be reached at [email protected]. His Web page is at https://www.larrysworld.com. On AOL, use keyword “LarryMagid.”