Computers: Windows on the World

Two software leaders give video screens a new look

Like women's fashions, computer buzz words change with the season and tend to hide more than they reveal. Last year's programs were all "user friendly," although many proved painfully difficult to master. This year, software is "integrated," which means that information from one program can sometimes be merged with data from another. Industry watchers are now getting a preview of the pet phrase for 1984. Two leading computer software companies, Microsoft and VisiCorp, are offering products with "windows," a system that lets users run several different programs at once, each displayed in a separate section of the video screen.

VisiCorp, the San Jose, Calif.-based publishers of the successful VisiCalc program for financial analysis, next month will begin shipping its VisiOn windowing package. Meanwhile, Microsoft, the leading personal computer software publisher (1983 sales: $100 million), has unveiled a competing product called Windows. Said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates: "This is a milestone in software."

Each program uses a cigarette pack-size "mouse" as a control device; each allows users to split their screens into rectangular blocks, or windows, giving them the look of desktops littered with sheets of paper. Both systems attempt to address two fundamental challenges facing the personal computer industry: how to get the same program to run on machines put out by different manufacturers, and how to swap information smoothly between different programs. At present, for example, software for an IBM machine will not run on an Apple computer, and most users cannot easily take information from a financial analysis program and send it to a client via electronic mail.

The techniques used by the two firms are not new. In fact, the first electronic mouse was developed by a researcher at the Stanford Research Institute, in the mid-'60s. Xerox sold the first product with some of these features, the Star computer system, in 1981. Apple Computer further refined those ideas in its Lisa; that machine was hailed as a technological triumph when it was released last January, but has sold poorly because of its high price (originally $10,000) and poor marketing. Last month IBM introduced a $5,500 desktop machine that gives windowing capabilities to corporate clients with large mainframe computers.

Now a swarm of software firms are writing programs that give many brands of computers a window on the world. Quarterdeck Office Systems, a Santa Monica, Calif., company, has announced DesQ, a $395 window program that can run up to ten programs on the screen simultaneously. Several other products are scheduled to be introduced in the next few months. But the real battle is expected to be between the versions developed by VisiCorp and Microsoft, two of the oldest players in personal computer software.