Third Party Watch
by
Shawn M. Gordon
President of S.M. Gordon & Associates
10/93

To start this month off I want to dispel some rumors going around about me. I am not, nor have I ever been a telepath or capable of astral projection. What this means is, I can’t read your minds or peek into your offices while you sleep. Some vendors are upset that I haven’t mentioned them in my column, but if you don’t tell me you exist, how am I supposed to know? So I encourage everyone to get me information, this is good for the readers, and it is good for you, me too since I get more contacts for information. That said let’s move on to what is new and exciting in the world of HP.

First off I want to mention the new SpoolMate PC Gateway from Unison-Tymlabs. This, in conjunction with SpoolMate gives you the ability to move your spoolfiles around your network including UNIX, MPE, and DOS as I understand it. It should be out of beta test several months by the time you read this.

The Plan B PC Network product from QUEST is now being handled by orbit software. This should fit in more comfortably with orbit since they already are doing backup software. As I understand the product, you connect the PC Network Server up to the 3000 and then you can initiate a process on the 3000 that will back up the files from the Server onto the 3000, from there you can take advantage of your high capacity tape drives to back it up even more.

Hitachi just made a very small announcement about being a distributor for HP-PA machines, I am not sure how this is going to impact us, but it is news all the same.

Well I want to make one last observation about the job hunt process now that I am so recently out of that arena. In the five weeks I was looking for work I dealt with about 13 employment agencies, not one of them got me an interview. I sent out at least 12 resume’s from ad’s in the paper, only one company was kind enough to acknowledge receipt of it. I interviewed with several companies from friends recommendations, and that is how I finally got the job. I don’t know what this is telling me, but there are some figures for you. I think that companies are using word of mouth much more to find employees now because it is just too expensive to use an agency.

Has anyone seen the specs on the new HP OmniBook portable computer? This thing isn’t for everyone, but it is very very cool. It is very small, but has a normal keyboard, runs on AA batteries for about 10 hours, has Windows and various applications built into ROM so they come up instantly, and is the only portable I think that relies exclusively on the PCMCIA card slots for data storage. This is probably the smallest, fastest Windows machine you could get your stubby fingers on. I wonder if any of that infrared technology they were playing with is going to show up in there at all.

<:#1728,9360>This next bit is for those of you in the Orange County area of Southern California. I just recently went to the first meeting of the Orange LUG, and there was really a great turnout, vendors, ton’s of users, and HP was kind enough to host and provide food.
This is going to be a real regular meeting as I understand it, the next one is supposed to be the third week of September. Everyone should lend their support if possible, in these confusing times it is nice to be able to network with other people that are experiencing some of the things you are

Those folks at Quest have just taken on-line report viewing to a new platform. They now offer Vista for UNIX, this combines with NBSpool for UNIX in the same way that it works on MPE. Some of the new features for both systems include being able to lock display headings, configure and save window settings for a report that are automatically loaded every time the report is viewed, controlled printing, enhanced security at all levels, enhanced searching, and various other functions. I know I have a copy of the MPE version and it is very nice.

Well IMAGE/SQL is now available, according to Jim Sartain at the Image labs it will be part of your next maintenance agreement. If you want to get it earlier then you can call 800-437-9140 and order it. I know I will be ordering it soon, this looks like a very exciting advancement for all of us “proprietary” type people.

The only words of wisdom I can think to bestow on you to close this month is, try a good wheat beer, it’s very refreshing.