Meta Tools Inc. and Fractal Design Corp. merged together in one company called MetaCreation specialized in video, digital imaging, animation and 3D graphics.

Microsoft announces a new video system to replace Video for Windows, called ActiveMovie. This will take advantages of the latest software and hardware acceleration technologies available through Microsoft's Direct X technology.

Microsoft has unified its multimedia APIs into the new DirectX 5.0 API. New features: file formats and services for multimedia authors, Internet publishers, real-time communication and entertainment. Includes ActiveX technology.

Corel Corp. sold a number of its products to International Microcomputers Software (IMSI). Among the products: Corel CAD, Corel Lumiere, Corel FLOW, Corel Click & Create, Corel Family Tree Suite, etc.

HP released version 11.0 of its 64-bit Unix based operating system, HP-UX.

Microsoft has unveiled version 2.0 of Windows CE operating system.

Macromedia Authorware 4 that support ActiveX controls.

In October EDS and Intergraph announces plans to pool the assets of the CAD software (Unigraphics and Solid Edge) in a joint venture.

In October Microsoft was sued by the US Justice Department for anti-competitive trading by including Microsoft Explorer with any copy of Win 95.

Corel claims that there are 26 million Word Perfect users worldwide.

There are over 3 million Visual Basic users worldwide.

Leader in CAD/CAM market is Parametric Technology with their product Pro/ENGINEER that has 105,000 seats installed.
Parametric Technology employs 3432 people.

CAD/CAM market share worldwide (1997):
1. Parametric Technology,
2. Dassault Systems,
3. EDS/Intergraph,
4. SDRC,
6. Autodesk

There are over 1 million DB2 licenses and 40 million users worldwide.

Top software companies by revenue in 1997:
1. Microsoft,
2. Adobe,
3. Novell,
4. Autodesk.

Intel launched the first Pentium MMX (P54C) in January. MMX technology adds much needed multiply and accumulate instruction vital to signal processing complex analysis and 3D graphics. The first computers to integrate it are IBM, Dell, NEC, and Digital.

Intel Pentium Overdrive with MMX technology for 75, 90 and 100 Pentium systems in January. A 75 MHz system will run at 125 MHz, 90 MHz will run at 150 MHz and a 100 MHz system will run at 166 MHz. The performance is improved with around 30%.

The DVD Consortium reached version 9.0 of DVD-RAM specification at 14 April.

Intel introduced Pentium II (Initially called Klamath). Includes MMX technology, new packaging format Single Edge Contact Cartridge (SEC). It uses a 242-pin Slot 1 that is not compatible with existing Pentium Pro boards.

Western Digital announced a new hard-drive technology called SDX, which enables removable media peripherals as CD-ROM to be connected directly to EIDE drives via a 10-pin SDX cable.

Packet Writing is the new innovation in CD recording with the ability to write small increments of data to CD without requiring the huge amounts of overhead time and space.

Intel's new chip sets: 430TX and 440LX. The last one supports data throughput of up to 432 Mb/s, supports Ultra DMA/33 hard disk protocol, USB and Accelerated Graphics Port.

True Vision shipping the Targa 2000 SDX the first desktop video editing system to support SDI (Serial Digital Interface) digital video and AES/EBU digital audio communications protocols. Price: 11995 U$

Hitachi releases the first MPEG Video Camera, which allows for real time compression and full-motion video. Records video in MPEG format and stores data on a 260 Mb PC Card Hard Disk (up to 20 min.).

Introduced on the market the first Panel LCD monitors for desktop computers. They display high- resolution, no radiation, used only 25% of the power used by CRT monitors, require less space but they are very expensive.

CRAY T3E-900 from Cray Research is the world's largest available supercomputer with more than 1000 processors. In Nov. CRAY T3E-1200 has 2048 processors and a power of 2.5 TFLOPS.

Pioneer announces the first recordable DVD drive (DVD-R) for a price of 17,000 U$.

On 31 March Digital Equipment unveils the Alpha 21164, the fastest chip in the world. It runs at speed of 600 MHz.

Imation ships SuperDisk external disk drive that reads it own 120 Mb SuperDisks as well as standard 1.44 Mb and 720 Kb floppies. The driver comes with a power supply and a connector cable.

Iomega announces at end of the year the Jazz2 removable disk drive with 2Gb cartridge. It can read the original Jazz cartridge (1 Gb). Price ~ 1000 NZ$.

Sony and Fuji have announced the HiFD drive, which reads and writes to old 3.5" floppy disks as well as to new 200 Mb disks.

The first 56K modem announces. It uses changes in voltage amplitude to send binary data at 56 Kb/sec.

Cyrix announces Cyrix M2 processor that runs at 200, 225 and includes MMX technology.

In October IBM introduces the new RS/6000 Enterprise Server model S70 with AIX 4.3 operating system and 64-bit implementation. Allows up to 12 processors and 16 Gb memory. Starting price 150,000 NZ$.

AMD announces the K6-266 processor at end of the year. AMD has 10% of the market.

Centaur Technology announces a new Pentium-class processor, the IDT-C6. Runs at 200 MHz, supports MMX instructions, execute only one instruction at a time, 64 Kb L1 cache, 5.4 mil. trans., 0.35 micron process and use socket 7.

IBM announces a new manufacturing process using copper instead of aluminum to yield CPU. Copper promises to speed up processor by allowing smaller and more power efficient circuitry.

The first year that NT based workstations had outnumbered that for Unix based. 1.3 mil. NT based systems were sold compared to 660,000 units with Unix. HP becomes the top seller of workstations, beating out Sun for the first time.

Seagate holds 42% of the NT storage market, followed by Computer Associates with 28%. There are about 12 disk drivers manufacturer in the market.

ATI has sold over 6 million graphics cards in this year holding 30% of the market.

There are 195 mil CD-ROM drives installed worldwide.

41% of the US households have a computer.