The most valuable application for Compact Disk-Read Only Memory at the moment is almost certainly the distribution of software and manuals, and Santa Clara, California-based 3Com Corp reports that its product information is now available on compact disk: the 3Com Laser Library includes documentation, full colour data sheets, engineering technical notes and software patches and fixes on one disk – the current release has more than 60 product manuals and 1,400 technical articles, is designed for use under MS-DOS, uses up 200Mb of the 640Mb capacity of the disk and costs $600 a year for four quarterly updates.
