NSF will stop developing Mac versions of certain agencywide business applications
The National Science Foundation has become the second federal organization in recent months to announce that some of its business applications will no longer run on Apple Macintosh systems. But "people can keep their Macs if they want," said Fred Wendling, director of NSF's Division of Information Systems. After peaking at 12 percent a few years ago, Macs now number 7 percent of NSF's client base, Wendling said.
FAA posts safety handbooks
To reduce printing and storage expenses, the Federal Aviation Administration has posted three aviation safety inspection handbooks totaling 6,000 pages on the Web. Aviation companies must have the manuals for FAA certification, and FAA inspectors also need them. Printed copies are available from the Government Printing Office. The Web version at http://www.faa.gov/AVR/AFS/FAA/home.htm requires an Adobe Acrobat 3.0.1 reader, downloadable from the site.
Dell maintains place atop list of vendors selling PCs on schedule
Which companies round out the Top 20? 11. GE Capital IT Solutions $74.3 12. BTG Inc.* $74.0 13. Edgemark Systems Inc. $65.0 14. Science Applications International Corp. $63.3 15. Pulsar Data Systems Inc. $58.6 16. Telos Corp. $49.1 17. PRC Inc. $44.1 18. Silicon Graphics Inc. $42.4 19. Compaq Computer Corp. $40.8 20. Computer Sciences Corp. $39.6 (Sales in millions from July
Tax agency selects a standard messaging system
The IRS last week chose Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 and Outlook 98 as its standard messaging products and awarded a $4.3 million installation contract to Telos Corp. The tax agency selected Exchange and Outlook because they best matched its requirements and offered the most value, IRS chief information officer Paul Cosgrave said.
ThinkPads replace astronauts' proprietary computers
Astronauts on four space station flights will use space-ready notebook PCs for command and control beginning this December. On the first of a series of missions during which astronauts will construct a space station, they will carry two IBM ThinkPad 760ED notebooks running SunSoft Solaris 2.5, said Linda Uljon, office chief for portable computer systems at Johnson Space Center's Mission Operations Directorate in Houston. NASA tested ThinkPads on a shuttle flight this summer.
Tally's flash-fusion printer handles odd sizes of paper and heavy stock
Tally Printer Corp.'s T9230T Continuous Form Page Printer accepts card stock, heavy labels and plastic-coated paper, among other media. The printer from the Kent, Wash., company uses flash-fusion technology to print on forms as long as 16 inches, and the wide tractor feed can handle a 141'2-inch print line. The duty cycle is 250,000 pages per month.
Navy site and DOE lab retreat from Mac support
Users at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Naval Air Warfare Weapons Division in China Lake, Calif., are waging the latest federal PC-vs.-Macintosh battle. At both sites, users can buy Apple Macintoshes only if they justify their requirements and win management approval. Employees of the NAVAIR Weapons Division in China Lake must obtain permission from the vice commander level to buy any machine other than a Pentium, said Steve Boster, a division spokesman.
Army, VA speed approval processes for technical refreshment
VA and Army officials want to close the competitive gap between IDIQs and GSA schedule contracts. One knock against indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts has been that even their newest products are often out of date. But some agencies are trying to do something about that. The Army and the Veterans Affairs Department have whittled to within a month and a week, respectively, the time it takes them to approve engineering changes to IDIQ buys of PCs.
GSA taps De Vera for new contracts job
Manny De Vera will coordinate the FAST and FISSP programs for the General Services Administration's 11 regions. Manny De Vera takes over today as the General Services Administration's information technology solutions regional services director. His appointment comes nearly two years after Leamon Lee, the associate director of administration at the National Institutes of Health, took away De Vera's responsibilities as program director of the groundbreaking NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center contracts.
MapInfo Pro 5.0 adds CAD translator and report-writing tools
MapInfo Professional 5.0 does thematic shading to show the relationships between data and geography without regard to boundaries such as state lines. Thematic shading gives users a better understanding of map data, said Jules Moyaert, desktop product marketing manager for MapInfo Corp. of Troy, N.Y. In multiple legend windows, the new version also shows cartographic legends for elements such as cemeteries, churches, railroad stations and schools.
Food inspectors find it online
Agriculture Department food inspectors have a common reference point for indexing and retrieving information from a pile of electronic updates they receive each month. They all turn to Isys 4.0 information retrieval software running under Microsoft Windows 95 on the Food Safety and Inspection Service's 1,700 Gateway Inc. 266-MHz Solo 2500 notebook PCs and more than 800 Dell Computer Corp. OptiPlex desktop PCs with 350-MHz Pentium II CPUs.
Program aids agency's move to secure E-FOIA responses
One of the smallest federal agencies is taking some of the largest steps toward an all-electronic Freedom of Information Act request system. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. rolled out its Electronic FOIA system in May and eventually plans to move to secure, Internet FOIA responses. The E-FOIA system, built from commercial hardware and software, cost PBGC $83,000.
Navy eyes all-electronic maps
Working toward the goal of using maps that are exclusively electronic, the Navy is preparing to install CD-ROM jukeboxes and storage management software on 115 ships. The jukeboxes will run Fire Series management software from Luminex Software Inc. of Riverside, Calif., and will store more than 200 CDs of maps aboard each ship.
Navy negotiates three BPAs for PC products
The Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command has negotiated blanket purchasing agreements with Gateway Inc., Government Technology Services Inc. and Tracor Information Solutions Inc. to supply notebook and desktop PCs, peripherals, servers and software. Under the New Technologies for Office and Portable Systems (NTOPS) agreements, Gateway will sell its own notebooks, PCs and servers.
Norton AntiVirus 5.0 lets users analyze their viruses
The research center sends out tracking info via e-mail. In addition to new ActiveX and Java detection capabilities, Norton AntiVirus 5.0 now can isolate infected files on a hard drive. Users will more easily receive analyses of unknown viruses they send to the package's vendor, Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif.
Toshiba puts its 266-MHz Portege 7000CT on a diet
Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. has slimmed down its Portege 7000CT notebook computer to one-inch thickness and 4 pounds in weight. The Portege 7000CT comes standard with 266-MHz Mobile Pentium II processor, 32M of synchronous dynamic RAM, 512K of Level 2 cache, 4.3G hard drive, 56-Kbps modem, 12.1-inch active-matrix display and Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98.
Work begins on Government Computer-Based Patient Record
The goal is a "seamless exchange and access to information." Litton PRC Inc. will develop the first version of the Government Computer-Based Patient Record, under a one-year task order that could set broad new standards for health care records. Six of the seven Lot 3 prime contractors for the Defense Medical Information System/Systems Integration, Design, Development, Operations and Maintenance Services II contract submitted GCPR proposals to the Defense Supply Service–Washington in June, said Col.
MathSoft boosts reporting feature of latest MathCAD
MathSoft Inc.'s MathCAD 8 Professional draws 2-D and 3-D charts and has rich OpenGL graphics features for reporting, said Chris Randles, vice president for sales and marketing at the Cambridge, Mass., company. Users can mix different measurement units, such as meters and feet, within the same MathCAD 8 document. An IntelliMath feature attempts to automate routine calculations by anticipating the user's next move.
FAA seeks budgetary nod to switch e-mail systems
The Federal Aviation Administration has laid out technical requirements for an e-mail system to replace Lotus cc:Mail and is awaiting budget approval from the Transportation Department. When FAA officials submitted their fiscal 1999 budget in March, they cut two-thirds from their migration budget, said Janet MacNab, FAA's integrated product team leader.
DOD seeks way to buy software enterprisewide
DOD's Marvin Langston says "there's got to be a smarter way of buying software" for users. "There's got to be a smarter way of buying software" for 2 million users, said Marvin Langston, deputy chief information officer and deputy assistant secretary of Defense for CIO policy and implementation.
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