Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/products/volume_06/issue_12

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 17KB | 349 lines

•    Acorn have moved − Acorn Computers’ new address is Acorn House, Vision
Park, Histon, Cambridge, CB4 4AE. The telephone numbers all remain
unchanged − switchboard: 0223−254254 and fax is on 0223−254262. Vision
Park is appropriately named as the place from which Acorn will be
delivering their new ‘Vision for the Future’... watch this space!
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•    Alpha-Sound from Xavier Educational Software Ltd (£29.50 +VAT) helps
children with their letter/sound correspondence and alphabet sequencing.
Sampled speech is used throughout and the teacher has control over the
selection of letters and sounds. It provides printed report sheets for
some tasks.
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•    ARM3 upgrade upgrades! − If you have got an ARM3 upgrade without an
fpa socket, we are prepared to do a part-exchange on your old ARM3.
There isn’t much of a market for second-hand ARM3’s without fpa socket,
but we are prepared to offer £60 off your old ARM3 against one of the
new ones. If anyone then wants to buy these second-hand ARM3’s we will
sell them at £75. (We have to add VAT to the £60, = £70.50, before we
add anything for admin and postage.) The part-exchange price for the
ARM3 + fpa would therefore be £185 + £107 − £60 = £232.
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•    Artworks and Impression are available in a new dongle-less version for
network use. It now works with all the new Ethernet cards including i³,
Beebug and Digital Services as well as Acorn, Atomwide, Oak and SJ Nexus
cards that they worked with previously.
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•    Back trouble? − Anyone who has back trouble and is doing a reasonable
amount of computer work should consider buying a decent chair. For over
five years now, I have been using a Stokke Wing chair − see opposite. In
fact, I have two − one in the office and one at home. I’m always singing
their praises to people who visit me. I find that if I ever have to use
a conventional office chair for any length of time, I get back-ache
whereas I can (and do) sit on my Wings (so to speak!) for hours on end
without tiring.
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“If they are so good, why don’t you sell them?” someone said to me
recently. Why indeed?! So, I have made an arrangement with an importer
(they are Scandinavian chairs − you might guess!) and I can sell them
for £320 inclusive. They have a five-caster base so you can move around
easily and a gas-lift mechanism so that you can adjust the height for
the best position relative to your monitor and keyboard. The chairs are
extremely robust and the material with which they are covered is very
good quality. The one I use in the office is just beginning to wear a
bit thin on one side of the knee-pad after over four years of constant
use.
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I’m so confident that you will be pleased with them that I will give you
a full refund if you buy one and find you don’t like it. You may feel
that £320 is a lot of money for a chair but as far as I am concerned, it
is a kind of insurance policy − keeping my back in good condition − and
I’m prepared to pay for that. I can say from personal experience that
they are very long-lasting but in any case, they come with a five-year
guarantee (although this does not apply to the covering material).
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The Wing chairs come in natural beech, rosewood and teak and the covers
are available in black, blue, brown, red, cream or grey.
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•    CIS prices − The special offer that we had last month for some of the
Cambridge International Software packages has finished but C.I.S. have
had a general price drop. New prices are as follows:
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Serpents    £10
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KillerBugs    £10
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Humanoids & Robotics    £10
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CardMania    £10
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MicroDrive II    £19
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MicroDrive Designer    £19
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Mah Jong    £10
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Crisis    £10
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FireBall II    £10
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Chequered Flag    £10
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TurboType    £19
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Sound-FX Maker    £19
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Photopia    £23
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E-Numix    £10
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Mental Maths & Memory Magic    £10
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•    DataPower is Iota’s new database for RISC OS computers. Amongst other
features, it has support for ArtWorks files, so that they can be stored
directly in a database file. All pictures stored using DataPower
(including drawfiles and sprites) are compressed ‘on the fly’, so
storing them in a database file saves you disc space. Datapower costs
£149 from Iota or £160 through Archive. Site licences are available from
Archive at £375 for up to 10 machines and £650 for more than 10
machines.
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•    Diet Manager (updated) − For the weight-conscious Archimedes owners,
this multitasking application will allow you to keep track of all those
calories (and proteins and fats). It also gives information about
energy, carbohydrates, fibre, vitamins and minerals contained in
individual foods, complete meals or diets. This updated program from
MEWsoft costs £55 inclusive.
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•    Eizo monitor pricing − It wasn’t a ploy to get you to buy monitors
quickly, honestly! Eizo did say that the prices were going to be
increased on 1st August. They then said they were trying to avoid
raising prices. Now they are saying that there will be “a number of
changes in our price list from the 1st September.” All I can do is
report to you what they are saying.
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•    FontDir − LOOKsystems’ font filing system, as mentioned several times
already in Archive, has reached the stage that the program is ready but
the full documentation has still to be written. Brian Cowan has a pre-
release version and has reviewed it − see page 13. When it is released,
the price will be £35 inc VAT from LOOKsystems or £33 through Archive.
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LOOKsystems are not predicting when the manual will be ready, so anyone
desperate to get hold a copy of FontDir can have a pre-release copy, as
supplied to Brian Cowan, by sending £33 to Archive. We have arranged
with LOOKsystems that we supply this on the understanding that (1) it
only has limited documentation, (2) the full documentation will be
supplied free of charge by LOOKsystems as and when it is ready, (3)
until the full package is available, you must not contact LOOKsystems
for technical assistance − if Adrian is too busy answering technical
calls, the manual will never get written anyway!
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•    Forms Suite Plus allows you to combine large size and standard text
with lines boxes and grids. You can include drawfiles and sprites into
your form and the resultant form can be saved as a drawfile for
inclusion in DTP packages, etc. Forms Suite Plus costs £55 inc p&p from
MEWsoft.
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•    Frontier 2000 − “Two thousand years of history for 8 year olds to
adult”. Cambridge Software House have produced a simulation/resource
package for history that could be useful in the primary classroom, in
the secondary school or in the home. There is a disc version for £95
+VAT (which needs a 2Mb computer) and a CD-ROM version for £175 +VAT
which is bigger and better with more paper resources as well as more
computer data. The CD-ROM plus the disc version are available as one
pack for £195 +VAT.
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•    Hatchback is a new utility from 4Mation. It allows you, simply and
easily, to add various types of cross-hatching, striping and patterning
into drawfiles. Hatchback costs £35 from 4Mation or £38 through Archive.
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•    Keystroke is a new desktop utility which allows you to perform a range
of desktop activities, including using existing desktop programs like
Impression by just pressing keys. For example, at a single keystroke you
can call up Impression master pages and go straight to the master page
you want to edit. You can add auto-save to those applications that lack
it. You can even make up your own button bar. It comes with example
files of keystroke definitions for Filer, Paint, Draw, DrawPlus,
TypeStudio, Vector, WorraCAD, Ovation and Impression amongst other.
Keystroke is available from Quantum Software. (This software was brought
to our attention by a subscriber, Richard Skemp, who thinks it is
“simple, powerful and very useful”.)
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•    Mac removable drives − The 42Mb and 84Mb removable drives have had a
major drop in prices this month. The 42Mb has dropped from £485 to £410
and the 84Mb has dropped from £670 to £550! (This is the drive that will
read and write both the 42Mb and the 84Mb cartridges.) The prices
include cables (please specify podule type) and one cartridge. The 42Mb
cartridges stay at £75 but the 84Mb cartridges go down from £120 to
£100. This price drop has probably been precipitated by the arrival
of...
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•    New 105M 3½“ removable drives − There is now a 3½” removable drive
from the same manufacturer (SyQuest) as the well-established 5¼“ units.
The new drives have a formatted capacity of 105Mb. We have had a brief
opportunity to try one and they seem to be much faster than even the
84Mb drives. Here is a summary of the quoted specification plus our own
observations (in italics):
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    42Mb    84Mb    105Mb
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Size    5¼“    5¼”    3½“
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Speed (rpm)    3,200    3,200
3,600
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Ave access (ms)20    20    15
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Buffer size (Kb)    8    32    64
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Transfer rate (Kb/s)    590
900    1370
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“File copy” test (Kb/s)    45    47
60
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Max power (W)    28    28    6
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Ave power (W)    13    13    3.5
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Cartridge weight (g)    183
183    79
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Drive price (ext)    £410    £550
£570
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Media    £75    £100    £75
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Cost/Mb    £1.79    £1.19    71p
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As you can see, the price of the 105Mb drives is very similar to the
84Mb drives and the media, as well as holding slightly more data per
disc, are somewhat cheaper (£75 compared with £110) and especially so
when you works out the price per Mb (71p cf £1.19).
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The internal units look like being £490 each and they fit perfectly into
a normal second floppy drive slot. This mean that owners of A5000s can
put one in the second floppy drive slot − a wonderfully neat solution
for anyone who is looking for more data storage (who isn’t?!) and/or who
is concerned about backup of their existing drive and/or data security
in, say, a school environment. A310/A400/A540 owners could also install
an internal 105Mb removable although only as an alternative to the
internal hard drive. Also, you would have to hack a hole in the fascia
of your computer. (I have three spare two-slot fascias available for £10
each, if anyone wants them but I am using the fourth one for my own
A540! Ed.)
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The other significant comparison between the 5¼“ and the 3½” removables
is that the smaller drives only take a maximum of 6W power compared with
28W for the larger ones. Anyone who has, like me, felt nervous at the
temperature that their removable cartridges reached on a hot summer’s
day, should be well pleased with these new drives − and the external
units don’t need ‘wind tunnel’ sized cooling fans!
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These drives really look superb. When you see them, you really cannot
believe that such a small unit could hold so much data and be so fast.
Obviously, as these are new devices, I cannot say anything about the
long-term reliability but the manufacturer claims the same “mean time
between failures” (100,000 hours) as for the older drives.
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“What about magneto-optical drives? They are 3½“ and hold 128Mb and the
discs are cheaper!” The trouble with optical drives is that they can
only manage 675Kb/s on reading and about 250Kb/s on writing (cf 1,370Kb/
s on both) and the average access time is only about 40ms (cf 15ms).
Also, although the discs would cost about £40 each (cf £75), the drives
themselves would cost about £1,100 instead of £570.
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“They look very nice and I would like to buy one but will the price drop
five minutes after I have bought it? The 42Mb drives were £680 when you
first sold them!” No, I don’t think it will, not for a few months,
anyway. The thing is that I am gambling that the buying price will be
dropping at least a little, so what I have done is to set the Archive
price as low as I dare, allowing only a very small profit margin. That
way, I can hopefully sell larger numbers initially and then, if the
buying price does drop a little, it will bring it back to a more
realistic profit margin. I cannot (sadly!) predict the future, but my
guess is that it will be several months before the Archive price will
drop. On the other hand, if I get several early orders, I might be able
to force the buying price down a bit − in which case, everyone will get
the resultant lower selling price. So, if you are prepared to have a go
with one of these new drives, send in your order as soon as possible − I
will wait a week or so, to see what other orders I get and whether I
can, as a result, reduce the price.
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I shall certainly be going over to using them myself. For the last six
months, I have had to carry two 42Mb cartridges back and forth every day
− one isn’t enough and I didn’t feel I could justify the cost of going
to 84Mb. However, the step up in size/speed/convenience ratio that these
new drives represent is certainly worthwhile for me. I will obviously
let you know how I get on with them.
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(Many thanks to David Bower, one of our subscribers, for bringing these
exciting new drives to our attention. Ed.)
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•    Pictogram is a program from KudlianSoft that teaches children the use
of graphs for representing data. This is aimed at Key Stage 1 data-
handling. The datafiles it uses are compatible with DataPlot in
DataSweet. Pictogram costs £20 +VAT from KudlianSoft but this price
includes a site licence.
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•    RemoteFS no longer comes with both serial and parallel cables as
standard. You have to choose which type you require. The Archive prices
are Serial £53 and Parallel £53 but if you do want both, you can have
Serial + Parallel for £64.
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•    RISC OS 3.1 upgrades − Acorn have now withdrawn the A5000 RISC OS 3.1
upgrade. (They have already sold several times as many copies of this
upgrade as A5000s with RISC OS 3.0!) The only upgrade available now is
the full upgrade (Archive price £50 inc carriage) which includes manuals
and has the software on two 800Kb discs instead of one 1.6Mb disc.
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•    ScanLight Video 256 − This is a greyscale scanner and video digitiser,
combined on a single card − what a good idea! It combines the Computer
Concepts ScanLight 256 scanner (5.4 p30) and the Wild Vision GreyHawk
video digitiser (6.9 p7) on one single-width expansion card. The scanner
is a 400 dpi, 256 grey level scanner and the digitiser offers real-time
greyscale video digitising from any video source with quarter screen
real-time previewing.
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The individual products will continue to be available and upgrades are
possible from either the scanner or digitiser to the combined ScanLight
Video. Upgrade pricing and details are available from Computer Concepts
or Wild Vision. The new ScanLight Video costs £220 + VAT + carriage or
£245 through Archive.
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•    Sleuth − Risc Developments’ OCR program, Sleuth, is in stock now. We
hope to have a review of it fairly soon. The price is £49 +VAT from Risc
Developments or £54 through Archive.
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•    Stunt Racer 2000 − In the year 2037, the world of motor sport has
developed somewhat. Will your driving skills match up to the demands of
the 16 courses across a variety of terrains doing jumps and loop the
loops? 4th Dimension’s new racing game works on 1Mb machines and will
install onto a hard disc. Stunt Racer 2000 costs £34.95 from 4th
Dimension or £32 through Archive.
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•    Soapbox from Xavier Educational Software Ltd (£35 +VAT) links spelling
patterns and vowel sounds by using sampled speech. As each word is
pronounced, the consonant pattern is emphasised by highlighting and
contrasts are made between words with short and long vowel sounds. 400
words are included but you can add your own words by using a sound
sampler such as the Oak Recorder.
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•    Sound Advice − This is a new 24-track sequencer for the Archimedes
produced by The Really Small Software Company. It includes support for
both Midi and the internal sound system allowing up to 32 internal
sounds in a song. It is pattern-based with the number of patterns
limited only by memory. It runs on a 1Mb Archimedes and costs £39.95
inclusive from TRSSC with an education price of £31.95.
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•    The Dungeon − 4th Dimension have produced a new 3D adventure game
which works on 2Mb machines and will install onto a hard disc. The plot
is that you have fallen through a hole into a subterranean world
inhabited by all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures, most of whom
need to be avoided or fought. It has an option for ARM3 machines to
benefit from improved smoothness of animation. The Dungeon costs £34.95
from 4th Dimension or £32 through Archive.
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•    Turbo drivers − Computer Concepts have said that their Turbo Drivers
for the HP Deskjet, Deskjet Plus, Deskjet colour and Laserjet 2, 3 and 4
are definitely now available. Their Epson Stylus 800 Turbo Driver is
also available now.
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•    Word Library is a program from KudlianSoft that provides a small
window containing a list of words which, when clicked upon, can be
entered into any desktop application which accepts text. This can be
used up to secondary level and is particularly useful within modern
languages. Word Library costs £20 +VAT from KudlianSoft but this price
includes a site licence.
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