Presenting the First Annual Shelly Awards
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
At a BYTE breakfast during this year's Comdex, we were asked to
mention a few of the most notable products at the show. But
rather than just naming the products, we decided to give them
awards. True, there are already a number of awards in this
industry. But the awards we presented are a little different than
the other ones you might be familiar with.
 
The BYTEWEEK Awards for the Best of Comdex -- informally called
the Shelly Awards -- are tied to a particular event, no doubt the
computer industry's most important event of the year. Whether we
love it or hate it, all of us in the industry would have to agree
on its importance.
 
And not only do we as an industry say impressive things about
Comdex, we should also note that Comdex says some impressive
things about our industry. One way to gauge an industry is by its
trade shows, and you might expect that the most exciting industry
would have one of the world's largest trade shows. Well, Comdex
is that trade show. According to the Interface Group, which
produces this extravaganza, Comdex is the largest annual trade
show in the United States. And it's also the fastest growing
trade show. In fact, recently there was a groundbreaking ceremony
for a new convention center in Las Vegas. The current Las Vegas
Convention Center, the main hall at the Comdex show, contains
about 1.2 million square feet, of which about 660,000 square feet
is exhibit space. The new center, which will be right behind the
Sands Casino, will provide a million square feet of additional
exhibit space. Approximately half of this space should be ready
by next year's show.
 
When we were thinking about names for the awards, obviously
awards such as the Emmies and the Oscars came to mind. For these
Comdex awards, there was really only one name we could pick: the
Shelly awards -- in honor, of course, of the man who made Comdex
possible, Mr. Sheldon Adelson. He built Comdex up from the small
Computer Distribution Expo in 1979, with less than 4000
attendees, to the current show, with over 30 times that number of
attendees.
 
We handed out four Shelly awards, and although their number is
small, we regard them as serious and prestigious awards, in
keeping with the spirit of Comdex and the honor of having Mr.
Adelson's name associated with them. The purpose of the award was
not only to honor the most interesting products at the show but
also to help point show attendees to those items, which in our
eyes were the best of the show.
 
The criteria for winning a Shelly was quite loose. To win an
award a product does not have to be shipping. Nor does it have
to be brand new at Comdex. All that is required is that the
product be viewable somewhere in the huge show, and that when
people do view it, they are quite impressed.
 
The two most prestigious awards are for Best Hardware and Best
Software. But we also have two awards for products that may be
overlooked.
 
 
Best Supporting Software
The first of these is for Best Software in a Supporting Role, the
most impressive package that supports other programs or hardware.
A good example of such a product is Allways, a package that did
such a good job making 1-2-3 spreadsheets presentable Lotus
includes it with the new Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2.2. We had three
nominees for the Shelly Award for Best Supporting Software.
 
The first was MultiTrans from Microlytics (Pittsford, NY). This
is a pop-up utility that helps you translate your thoughts into
other languages, a task that may become increasingly common in
the next few years.
 
The second product was Open Desktop from the Santa Cruz Operation
(Santa Cruz, CA). Who would expect that a Unix product would be
one of the most colorful and graphically interesting products at
Comdex? Although Open Desktop has been displayed before, Comdex
marked the first time that this product had been seen by a
majority of the industry.
 
The third nominee was BackLoader 2 from Roxxolid (which is
pronounced "rocksolid," of Pleasant Hills, CA). BackLoader will
automatically download fonts to an HP LaserJet printer, allowing
you to make use of a large number of fonts without having to have
a large amount of memory for your printer.
 
The winner of the 1989 Shelly Award for Best Supporting Software
was SCO's Open Desktop.
 
 
Best Supporting Hardware
The first nominee for Best Supporting Hardware was the PS-600
from DP-Tek (Wichita, KS). This interesting board, which costs
less than $1000, increases the resolution of an HP LaserJet
printer to 600 by 600.
 
The second nominee was the 80486 Single Card PC developed by a
British company called United Computer Technology and sold by
Konan Corp. (Tempe, AZ). This single AT card contains an entire
486-based computer, including VGA graphics and a SCSI port.
 
The third nominee was the Pocket Token Ring Adapter from Xircom
(Woodland Hills, CA). Like the company's Pocket Ethernet Adapter,
which was introduced at Comdex Spring, this new product connects
to a system's parallel port and makes it vastly easier to connect
systems -- especially portables -- to local area networks.
 
And the winner was: Xircom's Token Ring Adapter.
 
 
Best Software
The first nominee for Best Software was the new FoxPro database
manager from Fox Software (Perrysburg, OH). This program, which
just started shipping, combines dBASE compatibility with a
character-oriented windowing system that should put it
significantly ahead of similar dBASE-compatible software.
 
The second nominee was 1-2-3/G from Lotus Development Corp.
(Cambridge, MA). This forthcoming graphical version of the famous
spreadsheet should have a tremendous impact on other spreadsheets
and other software in general.
 
The third nominee was WordPerfect for Presentation Manager, from
WordPerfect Corp. (Orem, UT). This new version of the most
popular word-processing package has some very interesting
graphical features.
 
The winner of the 1989 Shelly Award for Best Software was 1-2-3/G
from Lotus.
 
 
Best Hardware
Once again, there were three nominees. The first was the LTE/286
from Compaq (Houston). Although quite expensive, this 6-pound
notebook-size computer is very attractive and is so well designed
that it has a good chance of ending up in the permanent
collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
 
Just a few feet from our first nominee was our second, the
just-announced Compaq Systempro. This new 486-based deskside
system has so many impressive features, such as multiprocessing
capability, that it probably will singlehandedly guarantee the
success of the EISA bus.
 
The third nominee was the Poqet Computer from the company of the
same name (Sunnyvale, CA). This 1-pound system does everything
that an IBM PC does, and then some. It is a fantastic engineering
marvel.
 
The winner of the 1989 Shelly award for Best Hardware is Compaq
Computer for its Compaq LTE/286 laptop.
 
 
                              --- BYTEWeek Staff
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
