Bellevue, Washington-based developer of communications software Attachmate Corp says it has raised the stakes for its competitors and dramatically increased the communications capabilities of Windows95 with the launch of Extra! Personal Client 6.0. Extra! incorporates several Attachmate products aimed at providing companies with seamless communications from host computers to desktops, across local or wide area networks and out to the Internet. Version 6.0 has been completely re-written to take full advantage of 32-bit architecture with multi-threading, and the company says it has been specifically designed to make the most of the Windows95 operating system. Users can access mainframe or server-based host systems from their personal computer and save host sessions as a word processing-type document. Host applications can then be accessed using the standard Windows point and click method. Extra! Personal Client 6.0 also enables the use of World Wide Web-style bookmarks and page events, by using Object Linking & Embedding 2.0. The user points to an application, Extra!’s 32-bit navigation engine works out the quickest route and automatically takes the user there, regardless of the machine on which the application sits. Object Linking & Embedding also enables users to drag and drop host data into applications that support it such as Microsoft Office, Lotus Development Corp’s Smartsuite and Novell Inc’s WordPerfect Office. Extra Personal Client 6.0 also incorporates IRMA for Internet, a suite of applications that includes a Winsock-compliant TCP/IP stack, several TCP/IP applications, local network and dial-up connections to the Internet, Internet electronic mail and Netscape Communications Corp’s Navigator Web browser with encryption and authentication security for electronic commerce. NetWizard 2.5 desktop software distribution and management system is also in, enabling system administrators to load and manage new releases of software on desktops throughout the company from one personal computer. Client-server applica tion development tools and database query tools are also part of the package, as is Remote LAN Node 4.0 with integrated ISDN for remote access. The package supports IBM Corp and other MVS mainframes, AS/400s, Hewlett-Packard Co and Digital Equipment Corp hosts, a variety of Unix servers, Windows NT workstations and the Internet, with optional Unisys Corp mainframe support – OS 1100, MCP A or MCP V? Attachmate’s vision is that companies will develop what it calls Intranets, an Internet-style operation that is internal to the company, harnessing Internet-type communications and browsing facilities, with controlled links out to the public Internet. Extra! Personal Client 6.0 ships this month and is #335. Both the existing 16-bit version 5.0 and the new 32-bit version 6.0 are included on the CD, to aid customer migration to Windows95. IRMA, NetWizard and Remote LAN Node are also available as separate products.
