Eastman Kodak Co’s Interactive Systems Corp is working with Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems to promote the Norton Utilities for System V disk and file management products it released recently. Interactive, which seems to enjoy working with companies based in its own home town of Santa Monica – it is also working with Retix Corp – developed the Unix version of the tools in conjunction with its neighbour Segue Software Inc, a company founded late in 1988 by Dr Peter Weiner to bring standard industry software from MS-DOS to Unix. Selling in the US for $300, the utilities will be available directly from Interactive, and through reseller channels. Sun and Hewlett-Packard have separate agreements to take the products, with Hewlett saying that it will offer the Utilities as part of its Instant Ignition pre-loaded software programme. Around 700,000 Norton Utilities units have been sold in the MS-DOS world. They enable recovery of erased files and directories, and diagnose hard disk problems without damaging live data.
