AltaVista Internet Software Inc, the Digital Equipment Corp spin- off, has upgraded its Search software in order to retrieve more information types and domains. According to the unit, the search engine now indexes more than 200 different file formats on the web, intranets and external networks, file servers, and on local desktop hard disks to include Microsoft’97, Adobe PDF and Postscript documents. The new Search suite comprises Intranet eXtension 97 which has customizable query and results pages, supports NT, Digital Unix and Solaris 2.4 or later and is due in June priced $16,000 to $66,000 for 250 users. A license for an additional 250 users is $6,000, $34,000 more for unlimited use; Personal eXtension 97, with added support for desktop applications such as Lotus SmartSuite and Corel PerfectOffice and integration with Internet Explorer and Netscape mail clients, also ships in June at $30 for a single user; and the new Workgroup eXtension 97 for searching, indexing and retrieval of information on file servers such as NT, Novell, LAN Manager and DEC’s own Pathworks, is up on Windows 95 and NT 4.0 workstation and server and will ship in July, when pricing will also be announced. Separately AltaVista announced an agreement with Littleton, Massachusetts-based Linguistics Technology Corp to integrate its products, Expos i and English Wizard Web/Server, to enhance Search’s ability to retrieve information from client- server applications, datawarehouses and databases.
