Welcome to the NetProphet Beta (0.6) Release!

The following summarizes important facts you should know about 
features and bugs in this release:

1) Support for WinNT 3.51 w/NewShell or WinNT 4.0 Beta

The installation process may fail to install a NetProphet Icon
if you are running the NewShell extensions for WinNT 3.51.
To work around this problem, we have included a 'run.bat' file
in the Neural\NetProphet\ directory.  To run NetProphet,
execute 'run.bat' from a DOS Prompt, or create a Shortcut to
'run.bat'.

Although we have not extensively tested NetProphet under these 
platforms, NetProphet does appear to function normally after
using this work around.

2) Documentation and other features require a browser.

NetProphet accesses documentation and other .html data via your
Internet browser such as Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet
Explorer or CompuServe WinCim 2.0.  If you do not have a browser,
or elected not to install a browser, we suggest that you re-run 
SETUP.exe and specify a browser before running NetProphet.

3) 'Show window contents while dragging' may slow up NetProphet

Due to the way Java handles repaint messages, you may desire to
disable 'Show window contents while dragging' if you have Win95
and the Plus! package (To disable, go to 'Control Panel',
'Display', 'Plus!')

On WinNT this is called 'full drag' and can be reached via
Control Panel's Desktop configuration.

This will que up fewer repaint messages and may have a noticeable
performance increase on slower systems.

4) Recommended Hardware / Software Requirements

Recommended Configuration: 

For best results, NetProphet should be run on a 486DX2 66 Mhz
or better system with 16Mb or more of RAM under WinNT/Win95.

Minimum Configuration:

NetProphet has been tested on a 486DX 33 Mhz with 8Mb of RAM
under Win95.

The program will function correctly with this configuration,
but due to the fact that Java bytecode is interpreted at run
time, NetProphet may run very slowly.

If you are running WinNT, you may want to consider using
Just-In-Time (JIT) compilers for Java which are available
from Borland or Symantec.  These accelerators may greatly
enhance NetProphet's performance.

For Win95, you are out of luck for now if you want
accelerated performance.

While developing NetProphet using Sun's 1.0/1.0.1 Java release,
we discovered some major flaws in the Win95 Java port.  At this
time, neither Borland nor Symantec's released accelerators have
implemented fixes to all of these bugs.  If you are running
under Win95 and feel NetProphet is running too slow, we 
suggest you ask Borland and/or Symantec to work on their Win95
port.

5) Coming Features and Automatic updating

In the Beta release, we have incorporated the most fundamental
features we felt most Internet savvy investors would appreciate.
However there is MUCH more to come.

We have designed NetProphet to automatically detect that an
update is available and to ask you if you want to upgrade.  We
recommend that you always perform the upgrade, but NetProphet
will not update without your authorization.

Coming Interface Improvements: We are actively working to
expand the Interface to include: the ability to plot many
technical indicators, full portfolio management, and the ability
to print charts and reports.

Coming Stock Prediction Enhancements: We are now applying neural
models to portfolio risk assessment and to perform intelligent
options pricing.  We also have a trading system (being tested
with real money in house) which uses the same neural network
model that generates the daily 'bulls' and 'bear' picks.
Future releases of NetProphet will incorporate these technical
leaps seemlessly into the product.

Coming Data Improvements: We are in the process of working out
arrangements to bring you timely news headlines, better market
data, and company reports.  If your firm is interested in having
its data available through NetProphet, please email
npinfo@neural.com for more information.

6) More Information on the Java 1.0/1.0.1 Win95 bugs

Two major Win95 bugs were found.  Both were fixed by Neural in
the NetProphet release.  Due to licensing agreements with Sun,
Neural will make the corrected binaries available via anonymous
ftp at ftp://ftp.neural.com/javabin.zip.

a) One bug caused protection faults to sometimes occur under
Win95, in Java's garbage collector (which frees memory).
The bug was due to improper accounting for the 16 to 32 bit
mode switches which occur regularly under Win95.

b) Another bug caused graphical objects to display randomly
under Win95.  The problem was due to Windows objects being
instantiated with improper flags, causing graphical contexts to
be confused between objects.