Companies rushed to endorse Microsoft Corp’s Windows 3.0 as the company formally launched the OS/2-killer yesterday, with Borland International Inc weighing in with a new version of its Paradox Engine with support for Windows 3.0, as well as an object layer that allows programming in C++ and Turbo Pascal under MS-DOS. The Paradox Engine 2.0 is designed to enable programmers access and manipulate Paradox database tables inboth single-user and multiuser environments. It uses a dynamic link library that programmers can link to their Windows applications to manipulate Paradox data in tables; it enables multiple applications to share a single copy of the Engine and save memory. Shipping this summer, it will cost $500. Tandem Computers’ Ungermann-Bass introduced drivers that, combined with Microsoft Windows 3.0, provide a Windows front-end to enterprise-wide network resources. Net/One TCP for Windows 3.0 enables Windows 3.0 users to access network resources and applications by providing protected mode TCP/IP, Telnet and NetBIOS support. Net/One XNS for Windows 3.0 provides similar support over the XNS protocol. Hewlett-Packard Co added a software driver that will enable Windows 3.0 users to print with the HP PaintJet and PaintJet XL colour-graphics printers, and also launched NewWave 3.0 at $200 for use with Windows 3.0 which it says 2Mb instead of 3Mb extended memory to run several applications. And even IBM got in on the act, announcing version 1.1 of its Current information manager designed to enable users to organise and retrieve personal data. The new version supports Windows 3.0 and 2.0 and costs $400 for the first copy, $300 for subsequent ones; from June 29. Microsoft Corp itself kept the wires buzzing most of yesterday afternoon with voluminous verbiage on what it clearly sees as its most important product launch ever – far more so than OS/2. The new release is immediately available worldwide at $50 to existing users of Windows, including those that got the thing bundled. And despite the experience of early users, Microsoft says that Windows 3.0 it was designed for machines with just 1Mb of memory.
