This year's annual Spring Comdex (COMputer Distribution EXposition) and Windows World was held in Atlanta, Georgia at the Georgia World Congress Center. There were over 85,000 attendees (5,000 international) attending 120 conferences and 1100 exhibits. These exhibits ranged from computer hardware platforms and network products to multimedia software and hardware.

Bill Gates, of Microsoft, officially announced that Windows NT is "in its final stages of development".

OS/2 Version 2.1, from IBM, is currently shipping their 32 bit operating system, in volume, in both floppy and CD versions. It offers support for Windows 3.1 applications, 32 bit graphics and built-in multimedia features.

Protobyte, Inc. of Norcross, Georgia is shipping an interesting DOS based multimedia authoring tool which allows the user to develop quick fast interactive displays. There is no run-time license required.

Visage used an innovative approach for touch screen technologies, which turns any monitor into a touch screen. The Touchmate is connected to the base of the monitor and eliminates the problems associated with an actual overlaid touch screen.

North Coast Software, Inc. is shipping their "morphing" software, PhotoMorph. It is a Windows software package which allows you to create a "morph" sequence where one image converts into another like those used in commercials and movies.

New sound cards and improved sound cards proliferated the multimedia section of the show. New companies showed their new sound cards and older sound card companies displayed new versions of their products with more included software. Several vendors were showing boards capable of producing a realistic 3-dimensional sound.

Video cards with 16.7 million color support were everywhere, however many of the software applications still only support 16 or 256 colors.

Many companies announced future updates to current products like WordPerfect's Version 6.0, Lotus Development's Lotus 123 Version 4.0, Fractal Design Corporation's Fractal Painter Version 2.0, Kedwell Software's Windows version, Micrografx's Designer Version 4.0, Blue Sky's Windows Maker Version 5.0, Microsoft's Visual BASIC Version 3.0 and Qualitas's 386MAX Version 7.00. Other companies have announced many CD based educational and adventure games for this year's Holiday season.

Notably lacking was Virtual Reality. There were no exhibits dealing with this technology and none of the exhibit descriptions even mentioned virtual reality. This wasn't true at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show.

Copyright © 1993 Rick Smith All rights reserved.