Artisoft Research p. 1 WHY? Q. Now that Novell has its NetWare Lite peer-to-peer network, why should anyone buy a LANtastic system from Artisoft ? A. Because in terms of price, performance and overall capability, the LANtastic network wins hooves down. All you need to remember is that we WAPPEM. Windows support The LANtastic Network Operating System fully supports Microsoft Windows, the point-and-shoot operating environment thats taken the DOS world by storm. Run your network as a non-Windows application or, with the LANtastic for Windows utility, as a full Windows application with icon selection, pull-down menus and on-line help. NetWare Lite is accessible as a non-windows application, but only in real mode, which addresses up to one megabyte of memory. Beyond that, Lite doesn't do Windows. Pity. Added value The LANtastic 4.0 system is a fourth-generation product with built-in benefits that blast Novell's newcomer network. The LANtastic network's NET_MGR program sets up highly individual security accounts with personal or group passwords. Limit access to a specific length of time, time of day, day of the week, available devices or file areas. Lite offers security feat ures in a binary mode; instead of picking and choosing the security you want for particular users or stations, the security feature is all or nothing--completely limited or wide open.. A LANtastic network has electronic mail built into the system, including capability for voice-mail with optional Sounding Board adapters. If you want e-mail on NetWare Lite, be prepared to shell out more money for an add-on mail system. A LANtastic network has built-in, easy-to-use CD-ROM support. It can't be done in NetWare Lite. Full-featured LANcache , Artisoft's disk caching program, is an integral LANtastic component built into the system to speed performance. For comparable performance, you'll spend more on third-party disk caching software to run in NetWare Lite. The LANtastic system has built-in support for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices, warning all users when outside power has gone down and immediately saving data from RAM to disk to protect it from loss. NetWare Lite has no such feature. On a LANtastic network, you can use a more secure and less expensive diskless workstation, including capability for optional boot PEROMs to store the server's boot image. Not so with Lite. You can run a LANtastic network server without a hard drive. The Lite way requires hard drive megabytes. Performance Network speed tests consistently rate a LANtastic network as 25 to 30% faster than NetWare Lite. (See attached chart) Price List price is $99 per node for NetWare Lite software. The same $99 buys the software for an entire LANtastic network, which can cover hundreds of nodes. Watch what happens to your costs as the network expands. The LANtastic network includes an AE-2 thin and thick Ethernet network interface card in each node, which has a suggested retail price of $299. Merisel's August 1991 catalog lists Novell's Anthem/ Eagle 10Mbps 16-bit thin Ethernet adapter for $270 per card, or $369 per node for the requisite hardware and software. Look what happens as the network expands up to and beyond the Lite 25-node limit. Nodes 2 5 10 15 25 40 100 NetWare Lite $738 $1845 $3690 $5535 $9225 NA NA LANtastic $697 $1594 $3089 $4584 $7574 $12,059 $29,999 Which conveniently leads us to... Expandability A NetWare Lite network is expandable up to 25 nodes. Beyond that, you must convert to regular NetWare and be tied to its straight-jacket reliance on an expensive dedicated server. A LANtastic system grows as you grow. You can expand to 300 nodes. The network can run on multiple adapters, so one computer can run on several networks simultaneously. Memory A LANtastic workstation uses 12K of the computer's RAM, a server/workstation 40K, making it 22K to 51K lighter than Lite. You can make more RAM accessible to your application software by loading a LANtastic system into high memory when using industry-standard DOS 5. Load the NetWare Lite program into high memory and watch your network crash. WHO? Q. With the industry giant and so many other companies, big and small, offering network products, why should I do business with Artisoft? A. Because Artisoft, the heavyweight champion of peer-to-peer, is the heavy hitter in serving the customer. In fact, matching corporate policy head-to-head, we SOCCEM. Support Artisoft prides itself not only on trouble-free products, but outstanding technical support when a problem does come up. Forget those calls that cost you $20 or even $100 per incident. Artisoft tech support calls are free and unlimited from 7 am to 5 pm Mountain Standard Time and routed directly to technicians trained to solve your particular problem. The Arti-Facts BBS allows users to download fact-filled and binary files . Our Fast Fax information system faxes back product information and answers to frequently asked questions. Both are available 24 hours a day. On-line referrals Members of our Artisoft Authorized Five Star DealerSM program get daily customer referrals directly from Artisoft headquarters. From the hundreds of end users who call us each day, the names and companies are compiled by zip codes and faxed overnight for quick dealer response. Cross-shipping Artisoft understands the urgency of avoiding down-time. So we ship replacements to the occasional defective adapter immediately on dealer request, or when an end user has received RMA authorization from technical support. Unlike other companies, we don't wait for the problem hardware to arrive before we ship the replacement. Enhanced marketing Artisoft is fully committed to helping our dealers market our products. So, in addition to the standard product literature, we have compiled all our product literature on SpecDisk , our electronic product information guide, which we update monthly in dealer and end user versions. We offer dealers free product seminars several times a year and maintain an active staff of Business Development Group representatives to keep dealers up to date. We are intensifying our efforts with end users as well, helping them to form LANtastic user groups to exchange information. Money-back guarantee We insist that the only good customer is a satisfied customer. So if, for any reason, a customer is dissatisfied with any Artisoft hardware, it carries an unconditional money-back guarantee and a five-year limited warranty. THE SCORECARD ArtisoftBrand N Support (technical) free and unlimited N/A On-line referrals N/A Cross-shipping N/A Enhanced marketing N/A Money-back guarantee N/A TOTAL SOLUTIONS Artisoft is the leader in peer-to-peer networking, dedicated to total solutions by providing both hardware and software for one-stop network shopping and devoted to advancing business communication through computer technology now and long into the future. THEY SAID IT Quotes from the war of words between LANtastic and NetWare Lite Quote: Unquote: "NetWare Lite focuses on small businesses that need something very simple to connect together two to five users. This is a market that Novell created back in the early 1980s, and we're coming back to it because of the acceptance now at the small end." Darrell Miller, Novell executive vice president, quoted in LAN Magazine, November 1991 "Novell attempted to position itself as a leader in peer-to-peer networking. It stated that NetWare has had peer-to-peer capabilities since version 1.4 and that NetWare Lite was part of its natural product line evolution. While it's undeniably the leading server-based network operating system, NetWare has never had peer-to-peer capabilities." Craig Burton, from Clarke Burton News Analysis, Sept. 20, 1991 Artisoft comment: Not until Artisoft introduced the DOS-based LANtastic Network Operating System in 1987 were the needs of the small business market addressed successfully and affordably. This democratic peer-to-peer system, in which all PCs can share every peripheral and every resource on the network, has brought about many changes in the computer industry. Most notably, the peer-to-peer network has become an established connectivity alternative. "NetWare Lite helps provide an additional level of functionality and reduces the complexity that some of the small businesses are looking for."Darrell Miller, Novell executive vice president, quoted in LAN Magazine, November 1991 "We've followed their suggestions to the letter. If you do a [directory search] of someone else's drive across the net [under DOS], it looks like normal performance. When we did it under Windows, it slowed to a crawl." Performance improved in Windows real mode, but that solution was unacceptable because that mode addresses only 1 Megabyte of RAM. "Our machines have 8 Megabytes of RAM apiece; we can't afford to run Windows in real mode." Lee Boekelheide, director of Insight into Action, a PC and multimedia consulting firm, as quoted in CRN, Nov. 4, 1991, "Novell has added into NetWare Lite things no one else has done for peer-to-peer. We have gone overboard in making it simple." John Edwards, Novell director of product marketing quoted in LAN Magazine, November 1991 "We should have known not to buy a computer product from a furniture store, but we thought we wouldn't need much dealer support for NetWare Lite. It was pretty easy to install. It just didn't work, and we found no path to resolve our problem. Our hunch is LANtastic won't have as much trouble with Windows." Thomas Clarkson, NetWare Lite user at Insight into Action, quoted in CRN,Nov. 4, 1991 Artisoft is "not one of the major players in the peer-to-peer market. Novell created this market, and IBM came in with their peer-to-peer PC LAN program. TOPS [from Sitka] was also a major player." Darrell Miller, Novell "Artisoft was making and said go ahead and develop it,' said a Novell source." Jodi Mardesich, CRN, July 15, 1991 "Novell is belatedly entering a market controlled by a number of small players, including Artisoft, Inc. and Sitka Corp." Artisoft's LANtastic is "the leader in the peer-to-peer market." Computer Systems News, Sept. 16, 1991 "According to Artisoft, it has built up an installed base of almost 500,000 units in the four years LANtastic has been shipping. We wouldn't dismiss Artisoft so quickly." Craig Burton, Clarke Burton Analysis, Sept. 20, 1991 Artisoft comment: Novell's own sales document obtained by CRN says some of LANtastic's current advantages over NetWare Lite are higher compatibility with Microsoft Windows, better support for CD-ROM and DOS-compatible applications, free technical support and less expensive upgrades. More quotes of note... "In a move aimed at winning a lightweight crown in the LAN market, Novell's new NetWare Lite takes on Artisoft's LANtastic." "Lite is spunky, but weighted down by copy protection and the lack of sophisticated disk caching; it can't compete with LANtastic." "At $99 per node, Novell targets NetWare Lite at the first-time user . . . Once you add network adapters, the price is $200 to $450 per node. Lite's cost-per-node is fixed; other products work on a sliding-cost scale. But compared to LANtastic, NetWare Lite falls in the middle price range for a three-to-four node network, and quickly grows expensive in installations with ten or more nodes." "Novell complicated administration with a copy-protection scheme that forces you to install NetWare Lite from a different disk for each computer. If two computers on the network have the same copy of NetWare Lite installed, both computers periodically report a ÔLicense Violation' on the screen. [This] poses a long-term management effort because someone must keep track of the pairing of each installation disk with each computer." "While security is simplified, the features are less robust and flexible than LANtastic's." "Throughput is good, but Lite's doesn't have the punch of LANtastic. LANtastic's superior performance can be attributed to its caching and its tight integration of hardware and software . . .. NetWare Lite's rudimentary caching service is no match." PC Magazine First Looks, Nov. 26, 1991 "Although its name begs comparison with Miller's popular low-calorie beer, Novell's new NetWare Lite is more like a non-alcoholic brew: it has the familiar taste but none of the kick of the real thing." "In PC Week Labs' tests, NetWare Lite . . . was barely able to keep pace with other popular peer-to-peer LANs, including Artisoft, Inc.'s LANtastic and Performance Technology's PowerLAN." "NetWare Lite also falls short of competitors in network security features . . . security-conscious buyers will sleep better with competitive peer-to-peer LANs and not have to sacrifice ease of use, installation and management." PC Week Labs' First Look, Oct. 7, 1991 "NetWare Lite is a radical departure from Novell's core technology. Because it's completely different, users who buy it and then need to move to a more advanced NetWare operating system will be in for administrative and upgrade headaches." "By putting the name NetWare' on a red box that contains a DOS-based network operating system, Novell is creating the illusion that NetWare Lite is part of an integrated family of operating system products." "Except for the fact that it uses the same transport and the C-Worthy interface, NetWare Lite is no more integrated with NetWare than are LANtastic or other DOS networks that coexist with NetWare . . . NetWare Lite users who need to move to a server-bas ed operating system will have a major transition ahead of them, regardless of which product they choose." "There is no upgrade discount for NetWare Lite users who need to make a transition to NetWare 2.2 or 3.11. In addition, users who buy NetWare Lite from a source other than a NetWare system integrator from one that doesn't sell NetWare 2.2 or 3.11Ñmay fin d it difficult to get the kind of support they need when deciding when and how to upgrade." "Novell's $20-per-incident technical support program may be an obstacle for some users. Practically all other peer-to-peer network vendors offer free, unlimited technical support. Artisoft, for example, offers free technical support and a 30-day money-back guarantee on its software." "We think Artisoft is in a good position to retain its leadership role in peer-to-peer networking, primarily because that is its main focus. It can continue to concentrate on making LANtastic as good a network operating system as possible. Novell, because of the conflicts in its product line and its need to dedicate research and development dollars to its core business, is unlikely to give NetWare Lite the same kind of dedicated attention." "If Novell were really serious about providing a peer-to-peer network operating system worthy of the NetWare name, Novell should have found a way to use the technology that has established NetWare as the leading network operating system." Craig Burton, Clarke Burton Analysis, Sept. 20, 1991 ARTISOFT Artisoft, Inc. 691 East River Road Tucson, AZ 85704 Sales/Customer Service 1-800-TINY RAM Technical Support 1-602-293-6363 Headquarters 1-602-293-4000 Fax 1-602-293-8065 1991 ARTISOFT, INC. All rights reserved. Artisoft, LANcache and Sounding Board are trademarks, Artisoft Authorized Five Star Dealer is a service mark and LANtastic is a registered trademark of Artisoft, Inc. NetWare Lite is a trademark and Novell and NetWare are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. Windows is a trademark and Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp.