What's Hot-and What's Not!

Most of our Biz Tech articles cover computing products and issues in depth. This month we'll take a brief detour to comment on a variety of products and technologies that will affect the way you run the computing side of your business.

PCs: Is too much power finally more than enough?

Intel has long dominated the microprocessor market for the chips that run your PCs. Recently it has been hyping its Pentium lll chip that offers enhanced graphics capability. As we go to press, you can buy a respected Dell 500 MHz Pentium lll PC for $1953 -- that's with 128 MB of RAM, a 9.1 GB hard drive, and a 17"-inch monitor; it also includes MS Office Small Business Edition. This monster offers more power than you are ever likely to need for typical business applications. Unless you use heavy-duty graphics applications, you can certainly make do with a 400 MHz Intel Celeron-based PC from Dell for $1200. If you are looking for even less expensive solutions, you can buy an AMD-powered PC for less than $1000 at Office Depot or Circuit City.

In our shop, we are running a 350 MHz Dell NT server along with a potpourri of PCs and laptops of various ages. The server is plenty powerful enough for our six person office. But we need to upgrade at least one of our PCs. My advice for us -- and for you --is to replace anything that runs at 166 MHz or less with PCs that run at 350-400 MHz with at least 64 MB of RAM.

In years past, I have recommended buying the most powerful PC available in order to get the most out of your applications. That's no longer necessary. However, your employees will experience a dramatic improvement in productivity if you dump those early Pentiums for today's very affordable choices.

Windows 98, NT, and 2000

Yikes! Windows 98 Still Lives!

Microsoft has confused us all with its recent announcements on Windows 98. If you haven't been paying attention (and who could blame you), it appears that Microsoft has gone off the track with its Windows 2000 initiative. We wrote extensively about the drive toward Windows 2000 (formerly Windows NT 5.0) in January. Suffice it to say that Microsoft has stated unequivocally and repeatedly that Windows 98 was a dead-end, that there would be no new versions of Win98, and that, for business, Windows 2000 was the way to go. But in March, they announced to almost everyone's surprise that there would be at least one new release of Windows 98.

Apparently, there were so many bug fixes and minor enhancements in what is called a "service pack" that Gates & Co. decided to call it, "Windows 98, Second Edition. In addition, it appears that Microsoft was unable to bring a version of Windows 2000 suitable for the average user to market in this century. When it is ready this fall, Win98 SE will ship with new PCs and probably be sold at retail. I am still not a Win98 fan.

Windows NT-Still the Way to Go for Business

For the first time, our office has become a Windows NT 4.0 (service pack 3) user courtesy of our new Dell network server. Although we had a professional network type do the initial installation, I have been able to add users and set up an ISDN LAN Modem for Internet access myself. NT 4.0 runs very comfortably on a 350mHz server with 128MB of RAM. Our NT Server has now been running for 60+ days. It has never crashed. My Windows 98 laptop crashes several times /day. Enough said.

Our next office PC will come pre-installed with Windows NT 4.0.

For more on the direction of Windows, check our website, BusinessNewsNow.com.

Office 2000-Wait Until 2001

Office 97 has more bells and whistles than any single human being can be expected to understand, let alone use. We are only using a fraction of its capabilities, like we use only a fraction of our brains. Now Office 2000 looms on the horizon. It will be more Web-centric and will be more tightly integrated with the Windows operating system (the Justice Department, be damned, apparently). Early reports on the Beta version suggest that Office 2000 is a nice but unnecessary upgrade.

In the months to come, we'll report on Office 2000 in depth. But, for now, I would advise waiting at least a year after it's released before considering it. After all, Office 97 had enough problems that Microsoft had to issue two major service packs to fix them. These are available for free, by the way, on Microsoft's website. In addition, if you are buying new PCs from companies such and Dell or Gateway, you get Office 97 preinstalled-with a free upgrade offer for Office 2000. That's the way to experiment with no risk.

Voice Recognition -- It's Not Soup Yet

I'm a sucker for new technologies, especially when I think they will let me do something more quickly and more easily. I love the idea of being able to tell my computer what to do by voice rather than by hand. Unfortunately, my experience on a 300 MHz laptop with 64 MB of RAM: Disaster.

The voice recognition software I evaluated slowed my PC to a crawl, caused even more crashes than normal and exhibited laughable accuracy. The vendor claims that laptops may add noise that inhibits accuracy. But that's not an acceptable excuse in a world increasingly populated by laptop users. Voice recognition? It's a great idea, but I'd wait for another generation or two of PCs and software before fooling with it.

ISDN Internet Access -- It's Available and Affordable

You may have the image of any telecom technology other than a phone as complicated, expensive, hard to get and hard to use. But, I'm here to tell you that Sprint had our service installed in 10 working days and charges only $65 per month for 128k access.

The other miracle is our 3Com ISDN Office Connect LAN Modem. I was able to install it with no outside help in less than an hour. As a result, all five of our folks have simultaneous Internet access with a single Internet account. You can connect up to 10.

I'll write next month in detail on high-speed access alternatives. Your requirements may be more demanding than ours. Happily, there are lots of exciting turbo paths to the Net currently available and on the way. But, if you have a network, rely on the Internet, and have multiple users, check this out.