There has been a rumour floating about comp.os.geos
for several days concerning a possible release of
Ensemble/NewDeal Office Version 3.00 sometime in the
second quarter of 1997.
GWRepMark (a volunteer in the AOL Geoworks forum)
posted the following in comp.os.geos summarizing
current and possible future desktop developments.
CROSS POSTED from Comp.os.geos:
From : GWREPMARK
To   : ALL
Subj : Re: More Info On New Deal
Numb : 832 of 834                            Date      : 09/11/96 1:00pm
Read : [N/A]                                 Reference : NONE
Conf : 193 - comp.os.geos                    Private   : NO
:I must admit I get quite confused in trying to understand the
:relationships between GEOWORKS, New Deal, USI, etc.  And
:the  differences (if any) between Ensemble and New Deal
:Office (is this just a name change??)
Geoworks: an OS company, creator of the GEOS
                 operating system, creator of the desktop
                 application suite Ensemble.
New Deal: a software publishing and development company,
                dedicated to providing GEOS based desktop
                software. New Deal has purchased rights for
                desktop use of GEOS operating systems, and
                the Ensemble application suite and related
                software. New Deal is establishing its own
                software development team in order to update
                its existing products and write new ones.
USI:          a software marketing and sales company that
                (among other things) works under contract for
                New Deal. USI will be the distributor for New
                Deal products, and is currently distributing
                Ensemble 2.01 for New Deal. USI is also involved
                in the planning, marketing, and manufacturing
                of New Deal products.
New Deal and USI are two separate companies. New Deal is an American
corporation and USI is Canadian. USI has substantial business unrelated
to GEOS products, while New Deal is exclusively devoted to GEOS desktop
products. But there is admittedly some overlap. The owner of USI (Bill
Osborne) is the President of New Deal. The CEO of New Deal (Clive Smith)
is a former VP at Geoworks. Both Geoworks and  USI do work for New Deal
under contract. Thus there can be some confusion about the employee of
one company 'working' for another, such as Ken Lemay (USIKenL@aol.com)
who is a USI employee working on New Deal projects (Hi Ken!) and of
course Steve Main (GWSteve@aol.com) who is a Geoworks employee who
works 'for' just about all Geoworks customers. Don't worry, Ken and
Steve and the others don't get upset about people getting confused
about their 'real' employers.
Ensemble and New Deal Office are pretty much the same thing at this
point, at least from the consumers point of view. Besides the name
change there is very little apparent difference, underneath the cover
there is a change in that NDO uses a newer version of the Geos
operating system. Functionally it is about the same, the user will
notice only a few minor tweaks like two line file names under icons.
Plus Book Reader 2.0 is now an included application (Ensemble users can
download BR 2.0 for free from AOL and a number of FTP sites). Files and
applications from Ensemble will work just the same in NDO. Anyone who
orders the initial release of NDO expecting a 'upgrade' over Ensemble
2.01 will be dissappointed, but I highly recommend ordering it if you
want to install the software on another system, or to give it as a
gift. The success of NDO sales will drive new development.
The 'real' upgrade that most of us want will be a version of NDO running
on GEOS 3.0, the newest version of the GEOS OS with enhanced
communications features. New Deal has the rights to 3.0, and is working
on such a version.  The current software applications can probably be
slapped onto the new OS substantially (or entirely) unchanged, but that
wouldn't offer anything to the consumer except an OS with unused
capabilities.  At a minimum fax, telnet, and WWW browsing applications
ought to be added. Ideally, such capabilities would be integrated into
existing apps. I suppose it could be done by the end of 2nd quarter
1997, but I admit that sounds wildly optimistic to me. I think the best
we could hope for is for a BETA version around then... but I've been
wrong before...
\Speculation mode on\
OTOH, we are not talking about a total rewrite like Geoworks did between
Ensemble 1.2.8 and 2.0. Most of the components exist now... NDO
exists... GEOS 3.0 exists... a fax program (Fax9000) exists... a text
version of a browser has been rumored to exist already... one or two
replacements for Geocomm are in the works...  adapting and integrating
may be a difficult task, but surely not comparable to developing from
scratch. New Deal may be further along on the project than I suspect.
\Speculation mode off\
-Mark
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