sneak peeks

Home Office Computing,  Oct, 1999  by Cristina Gair

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AN UP-TO-THE-MINUTE REPORT ON NEW HARDWARE AND SOFTWAR

Ergonomic and Gnarly, Dude

If you haven't caught the ergonomic wave yet, you're setting yourself up for a wipeout. Haworth's Boogie board ($250; Haworth Inc., 800-344-2600, www.haworth.com) isn't built for body surfing--it's a keyboard pad with spring-assisted height and tilt adjustments and an integrated mousepad designed to save your wrists from injury. When you find the perfect fit, you simply lock it with the cable-controlled brake. For a different ride, try Goldtouch's Adjustable Keyboard ($99; Goldtouch Technologies Inc., 800-593-2453, www.goldtouch. com), which sports an oversize space bar for your thumb and lets you move its two alphanumeric sections both horizontally and vertically.

Skip the Paper Trail

Did you come home from your last business trip with more paper scraps than frequent-flyer miles? To lose the documents you accumulate when you travel, check out Hewlett-Packard's CapShare 920, a handheld scanner that works like a copier. In addition to capturing up to 50 pages of letters and business cards, this successor to last year's convenient CapShare 910 also lets you store 150 flip-chart pages and 15 pages of graphics. Compared with ail those pages, it takes up a lot less space in your briefcase; it weighs 12.5 ounces and is about the size of a sandwich. The 920 comes with Pagis Pro 2.0 OCR software for turning scanned documents into editable files, e-mails, and spreadsheets, and its bundled serial cable and built-in infrared port let you transfer data to any Windows 95/98 notebook or Windows CE or Psion Series 5 handheld. $499; Hewlett-Packard Co., 877-473-6772, www.capshare.hp.com

SEND A MESSAGE

Teach your old phone some new tricks. Try CallAttendant 2, an auto-attendant and voicemail system that expands your phone line's repertoire. You can route faxes to a pager, another fax number, or to an e-mail inbox. If your home business relies on customer service, you can set up a fax-on-demand system so callers can dial in and retrieve information automatically. The Active Message Delivery feature lets you forward voice messages to your cell phone or another location. $70; ObjectWorld Inc., 613-721-0710, www.objectworld.com

Seeing Double ... Triple ... Quadruple ...

If you're lucky enough to view your work with a 19-, 20, or 21-inch jumbo display, Cornerstone can help you get the most out of--or onto--your big-screen monitor with ScreenPro. It's a software utility that works with any Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0 system and graphics card to arrange up to five different applications onscreen at once, with no need to resize or close windows. The program lets you save and switch between six layouts, and best of all, it's free for the download. Cornerstone Peripherals Technology Inc., 800-562-2552, www.bigmonitors.com

UPDATES

You've got mail--in your pocket. If you subscribe to America Online and are a 3Com Palm user, there's good news: Now you can send and receive AOL e-mail via select Palm organizers, which will bundle AOL's new e-mail software. Likewise, AOL will offer a special Palm III and Palm-Modem bundle to its mobile customers. Go to www.palm. com or www.aol.com.

Stocking up on water and canned goods is one way to prepare for the year 2000. But we'd rather play it safe with Symantec's Norton 2000, the Best Buy award winner from our August issue's Software Buyer's Guide. Revamped to Version 2.0, the $50 program now boasts a Fix Assistant to make it faster and easier to find Y2K glitches. Leave the bunker and visit www.symantec.com. Sure, Starburst has fruit flavors, but it's nothing compared with the colorful crop of peripherals popping up in the wake of Apple's iMac and the new iBook. Artec's 1236USB-iMac USB scanner now comes in the same blueberry, strawberry, lime, grape, and tangerine hues that adorn the iMac. This $140 scanner offers 36-bit color and 600 by 1,200dpi optical resolution. Taste the flavors at www. arfecusa.com.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Line56
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