Artisoft Inc, the Tuscon, Arizona-based manufacturer of LANtastic, has the knives out for Novell Inc. In the latest sally of their publicity war, Artisoft is kindly offering to adopt NetWare 2.2 users affected by Novell’s announcement to discontinue that product. Well, there must be quite a few NetWare 2.2 users out there that are worried about the switch in development effort to NetWare 3.11, although how many would switch to LANtastic is debatable. Anyway, the company is saying that NetWare 2.2 users with networks of up to 300 users can upgrade to the new version of LANtastic for $500, a saving of some $2,000. However, LANtastic can be dismissed as a cheap and cheerful local area network no longer. The company has been adding features and the latest release, 4.1, shipping by the end of this month, boasts a number of enhancements both in terms of performance and features. Artisoft has introduced improved caching, but the new printing and systems management software sounds impressive with features like the remote installation of network software and creation of accounts. If the product continues to develop and grow from the bottom end of the market, Novell’s NetWare Lite may turn out to be the most timely of launches.
