HIGH TECH CORNER: HAS AOL-NETSCAPE TAKEN THE WIND OUT OF THE JUSTICE CASE?

Microsoft attorneys are calling it proof that the Department of Justice case holds no water. America on Line and Netscape have formally announced the purchase of Netscape by AOL worth $4.2 billion. AOL was worried that even though Microsoft placed the AOL logo on the Windows 98 desktop to give people easy access, that Microsoft's MSNBC Web site in the future could take away from its massive market share.

Microsoft says that this purchase shows the Internet market is much more dynamic than the slow DOJ's Internet market concepts can react to.

Even better for us consumers is that AOL may finally make its total Web area HTML (WEB PAGE LANGUAGE) instead of being its proprietary version 4.0 interface. This would allow more choice for all of us.

I thought this was exactly what the DOJ said the ever-big Microsoft's monopolistic practices would not allow.

But on a bad note for Microsoft the judge's ruling on the Sun-Microsoft case stated that Microsoft must change its JAVA support in IE (Internet Explorer) to meet Sun's standards, stop shipping Windows, or remove it altogether in 90 days.

I do not think that Microsoft will stop shipping its cash cow product Windows98 so what about the other options. Microsoft has removed all JAVA support from its MAC and UNIX versions. If you want JAVA support for these environments you will have to look somewhere else.

We will have to wait and see what will happen with Windows 98 and IE. Thanks to the legal system interfering with the dynamic Internet market, those 10 million-plus copies of Win 98 in the marketplace may soon become illegal and have to be upgraded again.

Let's see, if Microsoft gets to upgrade all those customers again, who won the battle and who won the financial war. What used to be the No. 1 backup company in the world SYQEUST has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a deep amount of $85 million in debt.

So if you are getting a new computer for the Y2K upcoming problems get a CDR or a new ZIP drive. CDR's support 660-meg backup while the new ZIP drives now support 250 megs and even come in a new USB format that outperforms the older and smaller original parallel format.

The USB ZIP drive does allow easy portability. My true favorite is the CDR because blanks at SAM's Club are a paltry $1.68 and even includes a $1 rebate coupon. Additionally more computers have a standard CD player verses having a ZIP drive to put your backup in.

Office 2000 Consumer Preview Program has just been released. If you want to get your hands on this really neat six CD set, go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/premium/eval/.

The Preview Program gives you a chance to preview the features of Office 2000 Premium. The cost for the six CDs is only $19.95, which Microsoft will send you. One question, is it crash proof?

This suite runs on Win98, but why does Microsoft include NT 4.0 because most of us are running Windows 98. The reason for this is that Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) will be shipped first quarter, and Microsoft plans for us all to upgrade again. The NT 4.0 is there if you want to try NT early to get your feet wet.

Is NT 5.0 better than Windows 98? Yes, but at a price. NT 5.0 is the most stable version of windows to ever be shipped, but that stability comes at the expense of more internal code, which requires additional computing power.

Will the world follow though to upgrade again to NT? Dell computer has decided the answer is yes. Dell computer has traded in all its old Novell NetWare boxes for NT to resolve its own Y2K issues. Dell is replacing its 225 Novell NetWare 3.x and 4.x servers with some 25 servers running Windows NT Server 4.0.

As always, feel free to contact me at DIGITAL@LDD.NET & WWW.DIGITALLABS.COM.

Rich Comeau is an electronics scientist and owner of Digital Labs of Cape Girardeau. E-mail him at digital@ldd.net