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From: Fred Ng <fredng@hkstar.com>
To: OS2News Posting <os2news@teamos2.org>
Subject: OS2News: Utility - Object Desktop Professional Info
Reply-To: Brad Wardell <wardell@ibm.net>
Status:   

Stardock Systems
    Object Desktop Professional
        The Next Generation Business Environment

* List Price: $179.95
* Upgrade from Object Desktop 1.0: $119
* Upgrade from Object Desktop 1.5: $69 (until Fall)
* Runs on: OS/2 2.11, OS/2 Warp 3.0, or OS/2 Warp 4.0 ("Merlin")
* Target Market: Corporate Desktops and Professionals ("Power Users")

The Corporate User/Power User's dream software product!

* Reads virtually any document
* Secures your desktop
* Integrates information into the internet
* Completely repairs INI files
* Manages multiple desktops
* Backs up your system
* And a lot LOT more!

_______________________________________________________________________

What is Object Desktop?
   Object Desktop is an advanced desktop environment that is only available on
   OS/2 Warp. It uses IBM's System Object Model (SOM) and the Workplace Shell
   (WPS) to add features, power, ease of use, and performance to the base
   operating system. Object Desktop is targeted at all users of OS/2, but
   particularly those on small networks and in the home. It has been the top
   selling OS/2 product world-wide since its inception. In fact, in some
   retail channels, its sales rival OS/2 itself.

   The reason for Object Desktop's tremendous success has a lot to do what
   Object Desktop accomplishes: in essence, Object Desktop provides the
   features that end users, corporate users, and reviewers have been asking
   for in OS/2 for a very long time. As one reviewer put it, "Object Desktop
   is like a third-party upgrade to OS/2."

   Because Stardock uses IBM's SOM and Workplace Shell object classes, Object
   Desktop is not version dependent. When new versions of OS/2 are introduced
   to the market, Object Desktop will automatically inherit those new features
   and extend them as well.

   While Object Desktop has been a tremendous success in the end user OS/2
   market, corporate users have asked for features whose benefit are readily
   apparent. Features such as the ability to secure the desktop, read
   virtually any type of file format, robust backup, training cost reductions,
   and so on. To this end, Stardock began the project code-named "Milamber"
   (which many net users have heard discussed) which would address these
   needs. Object Desktop Professional is the result of this effort.

What is in Object Desktop Professional that isn't in Object Desktop 1.5?

   Stardock recognized that corporate users demand features  beyond what is
   provided by Object Desktop. While a myriad of productivity  tools are
   available that address computing productivity issues, a single solution that
   provides the absolute best in quality, reliability, and integration is
   usually preferred. Moreover, Object Desktop Professional offers features
   that are simply not found in any product on any platform. In essence, if
   your corporation uses OS/2, then your corporate desktops should be using
   Object Desktop Professional.

Object Desktop Professional contains all the features of Object Desktop
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PLUS:

Object Viewing

   Object Desktop Professional integrates document viewing into the base
   operating system. Hundreds of file formats are now recognized automatically
   when you double click an object on the desktop. Using Object Desktop
   Professional, computer users will no longer have to worry whether they have
   Word Perfect 5.1 on their system when someone gives them a disk full of
   documents. Presenters will no longer have to worry whether the presentation
   they give is in PowerPoint or Freelance. Object Desktop Professional
   doesn't just support a few of the most common file types, it supports
   hundreds of file types from databases, word processors, spread sheets,
   internet, graphics, presentation packages, and more. The basic rule of
   thumb is, if the format has ever had an installed base of more than 50,000
   users, it's probably supported.

Object Security

   Both IS managers and end users often find it necessary to secure and
   protect their desktops. Object Security offers an impressive array of
   features that allow administrators to prevent custom desktop environments
   from tampering. Object Security can keep icons from being moved, deleted,
   changed, etc. IS managers in particular will like the ability to "keep
   their users from messing up their system." Any end user that shares his or
   her system with others will also appreciate the ability of securing and
   protecting their desktop.

Desktop Backup Advisor

   One of the more anticipated features of Object Desktop Professional is the
   Desktop Backup Advisor which can perform two important functions.

   First, It allows users to quickly and easily manage, backup, and restore
   packaged desktops. Having a wizard-like user interface, the desktop
   backup advisor is very easy to work with. Users and/or IS managers can
   easily package and distribute desktops across the enterprise using the
   Desktop Backup Advisor which uses Stardock s advanced Object Packaging
   technology. Corporations looking to deploy a standard desktop will find the
   Desktop Backup Advisor an essential tool to this end.

   One test site has used the Desktop Backup Advisor to deploy a standardized
   desktop with three variations -- one for technical users, one for their end
   users, and one for managers. When a new machine goes on the network, they
   open the Desktop Backup Advisor, choose the desktop they want and it
   unpackages it.

   Secondly, it completely repairs OS/2 INI files. The most common cause of
   system instability and performance loss are damaged INI files (os2.ini,
   os2sys.ini). Over time, OS/2 INI files collect a great deal of unused
   'junk' that can slow OS/2 down and make odd behavior creep in. While INI
   repair programs go far to help the situation, there is no replacement to
   being able to totally cleanse the INI files without losing user
   customizations. The desktop backup advisor, simply by restoring a desktop,
   completely cleanses the INI file and ignores all the damaged and unused
   data. The net result is that a system that has used the desktop backup
   advisor behaves like a freshly installed OS/2 system without losing any of
   their class registrations, customizations, or their desktop.

   The beauty of the Desktop Backup Advisor is that it itself is a tool used
   to backup and restore your desktops but the very fact that when you use the
   tool it cleans your INI files almost sounds too good to be true but it s
   not.. I have seen 486 systems that were crawling and would have weird
   errors pop up on a daily basis get a big performance boost and become rock
   solid simply by using the desktop backup advisor. It s a lot easier than
   reinstalling OS/2 from scratch and a lot cheaper than buying a new machine.

Object Schedule

   A user may want to do a backup, a virus scan, a defragmentation of the
   hard disk, and begin compiling in the background. Another user may want to
   run a script that resorts the database and charges batches. Another user
   may want to run a program that downloads email automatically. What do all
   these have in common? They are tasks in which human intervention is not
   necessary. Yet, users end up having to have these tasks running in the
   background during the day. Luckily, OS/2 is a great operating system for
   multitasking but even OS/2 will slow down if you have tasks running in the
   background.

   Enter Object Schedule. With Object Schedule, a special OS/2 folder that has
   much in common with the Startup folder, users simply drag and drop their
   programs into the Object Schedule folder and assign a date and time for the
   program or job to run. In the above examples, the virus scan, backup,
   database update could be scheduled to run at 3:00am when no one is using
   the PC. When the user returns in the morning, the job is completed. Object
   Schedule is easy to use and helps automate your office as well as your
   desktop.

Object Advisor

   The Object Advisor is possibly the most innovative feature of Object
   Desktop Professional. This advanced technology is intended to address the
   huge costs associated with training and re-training end users in
   corporations that have any amount of turnover. The Object Advisor feature
   allows corporations to develop custom computer based training materials
   that display when a user doesn't understand how to perform desktop
   operations. The on-line help technology provided with Object Advisor is
   authored with industry standard Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which
   allows for leveraging next generation internet/intranet technologies in a
   corporate environment, including new internet features such as JAVA. It
   truly demonstrates the benefits of the web/internet in a way that anyone
   can appreciate.

Here are some typical usage scenarios for Object Advisor:

*   An end user is unfamiliar with new procedures in a  particular workgroup,
    or is a new employee in the corporation. Object Advisor  is opened in its
    "trainer" mode. When the user clicks on an object, a small window appears
    displaying information on that object using rich text, graphics and
    multimedia. After reading information stored on internal  networks about
    the jobs the worker is attempting to perform, the end user  easily able to
    begin work or find more information on how to proceed.

    After a while, the end user is stuck once again, and determines that their
    host connection to the corporate mainframe isn't working. The user reads
    information provided in the "3270 Connection" object, and after realizing
    there are still too many questions to begin work, submits a problem report
    over the corporation's internal intranet by filling out a "web" form that
    is linked to every help object on the desktop. Immediately, a corporate
    help desk is notified of the problem and can resolve the problem with a
    simple phone call.

*   An IS manager creates advisors for all the network  resources (eg.
    printers, modems, etc.). If a user has a problem printing, the training
    view is opened, and custom help is available for the desktop printer
    objects. When no paper arrives at the network printers, the end  user can
    fill out a HTML form linked to the printer objects on the desktop  that
    notifies the network manager that there is a problem with the printer. When
    implemented properly, the Object Advisor feature can greatly reduce  the
    funds needed to staff network help desks.

*   Your company's new software product arrives with an  Object Advisor. Now,
    when your users have questions on how to use the new  product, the trainer
    is invoked, and up-to-date information is displayed  for the application
    which links to external resources that provide Frequently  Asked Questions
    (FAQs) and answer resources, the latest fixes and patches for the
    application, internet technical support, problem submission, and  help
    databases.

*   Your company's custom software products interact with a highly tailored
    desktop which provide end users with a complete work environment, including
    workflow, fax, and other office automation capabilities.  End users are
    presented with a custom Workplace Shell training capability  that grows as
    new features are added to the desktop, and whose administration  is
    centrally administered.

   A large company with significant turnover can spend millions of dollars
   over time retraining users on how to use their desktop. Object Advisor can
   make retraining exceptionally easy by providing a global method of
   obtaining help that is dynamically updatable and interactive through
   centrally stored advisor data located on any network file server.

   In the future, as JAVA becomes more successful, JAVA applets can be
   embedded in an object advisor to create truly interactive training
   materials through live application interaction.

   Object Desktop Professional provides advisors for most of the default OS/2
   objects. Stardock Systems intends that third parties will create advisors
   for their program objects when they are installed on the desktop. To this
   end, Stardock is committed to making Object Advisors available on multiple
   platforms such as Windows NT, Unix, Windows95, as time goes on in order to
   standardize this revolutionary technology.

Object Backup

   While backup solutions exist in many forms on OS/2, the powerful easy to
   use Object Backup feature integrates itself with the OS/2 desktop and even
   supports the new ATAPI/IDE standard. Users can now backup their system to
   floppy, tape, and/or network drives. Object Backup is not a "lite" backup
   package--feel free to compare the included Object Backup features
   head-to-head against any backup package on any platform. Stardock does not
   plan to support all tape devices, however. For example, we don't (and do
   not plan) to support the older floppy-controller tape drives (usually
   QIC80) for reliability reasons.

Object Navigator Professional

   Object Navigator Professional not only is a powerful and intuitive file
   manager that can see long file names on FAT, works with OS/2's associations
   (and is the only commercial OS/2 file manager available that does that),
   makes working with multiple drives easy, but now, in Object Desktop
   Professional, users can quickly and easily view virtually any type of file.
   Object Navigator Professional allows users to open of a "View Pane" that is
   part of Object Navigator Professional. When the user double clicks on a
   file (any file) it will read it, interpret it and display it. Whether it's
   an Excel95 spreadsheet, an TIFF graphics files, a Power Point for Macintosh
   presentation, or even a Windows 3.1 DLL. Object Navigator will read and
   display it in a flash. The view pane's performance is quite impressive.
   Within a second, users can jump from file to file and it displays that file
   with all the appropriate formatting, embedded graphics, etc.

   Object Navigator Professional works very well with compressed files such as
   PKZIP (.ZIP) files. It can view a ZIP file even faster than Object
   Desktop's own Object Archives by trading off the folder metaphor for raw
   speed. Users who have a large library of documents, graphics, etc. in ZIP
   files can now quickly browse them and view the files they want saving many
   megabytes of disk storage.

Object Inspector

   Anyone trying to manage an OS/2 desktop knows the difficulty of working
   with Workplace Shell objects. Finding out an object's "low level" settings
   can be frustrating and time consuming. Network managers spend countless
   hours setting up workstations so that they are easily used but standardized
   to a corporate reference point. Object Inspector provides the tool to make
   these chores easy.

   To discover any object's "under-the-cover" properties, simply load the
   Object Inspector and Workplace Shell objects are instantly displayed and
   presented in an easily manageable form. Users can even create REXX or RC
   scripts to regenerate objects across an enterprise.

Who is our customer?

   Object Desktop is Stardock's offering as the "next  generation" desktop
   environment for OS/2. We have been successful  in bringing powerful new
   ease-of-use features to the OS/2 market, as well  as enabling new ways of
   using the OS/2 desktop environment. Object Desktop  is intended for OS/2
   users who work in small offices, or home offices, or for mobile computing
   users who want the best in desktop power.

   However, Object Desktop Professional is intended for a different type of
   user. Stardock Systems created Object Desktop Professional to address the
   concerns of corporate users who are connected to large information
   resources and who exchange information with a workgroup or an entire
   corporation. Object Desktop Professional is a must for corporations who
   standardize their desktops and want to reduce their desktop management
   costs. These same corporations can leverage intranet technology for
   reducing their training costs through our powerful computer-based-training
   features.

   Object Desktop Professional is also targeted at the professional OS/2 user
   or "Power User". Professionals using OS/2 for consulting or to improve
   their own productivity realize that the benefits of Object Desktop
   Professional are well worth the cost of entry and will find it a "must
   have" product for their needs.

Conclusions

   Object Desktop Professional is a significant step forward in creating a
   corporate environment that is more productive, more reliable, easier to work
   with, and secure. It provides the features and function  that corporate
   users desire, while reducing desktop management and training costs. See
   Stardock's web site (http://www.stardock.com) for more information  on the
   Object Desktop family of products. For more information, please feel free to
   contact our Vice President of marketing, Alexander Antoniades, at either at
   (313) 453-0328 or sander@stardock.com. For site license opportunities,
   contact Stardock's Worldwide Executive Sales Manager: Maurice Saylor:
   703-404-4274.

   The value of Object Desktop Professional is tremendous. Even if only a few
   of the features of Object Desktop Professional are used, it still provides a
   lot of "bang for the buck."

Object Desktop Professional
List: $179
Stardock Systems, Inc.     313-453-0328    313-453-1480 fax
1-800-672-2338 orders
http://www.stardock.com    GO STARDOCK compuserve

Availability:
   Most OS/2 resellers and PC Wares (for IBM employees)