>>Phoenix Tech is in the BIOS business, SystemSoft is in the help desk business.
Mike,
Where did you get this information??? Some SystemSoft paid press analyst no doubt. Until 15 months ago SystemSoft didn't even have a help desk! Anyone trying to call the company for support got turned away by the receptionist. Even today they do not have a 'real' tech support dept. Don't believe me? Call in for tech support on CardWizard, you'll end up in someone's voicemailbox. SystemSoft is primarily a BIOS company, a notebook BIOS company. They began about 5 years ago writing peripheral drivers for mice and such, then began making modifications to Quadtel's system BIOS. Later they began working on power management software for notebooks. After PTL sued them, PTL bought Quadtel. This left SYSFT with no BIOS to sell. They found Eurosoft, and acquired the source code for their BIOS. Since then SYSF has been modifying and reselling that core code. Their biggest break came 2-3 years ago when the got in the PCMCIA business. This had been their most successful project yet, producing some very fine pieces of software. But with WIN95 providing native PCMCIA support (which SYSF sold to Microsoft for $500k), and more and more operating systems providing pccard support as well, they knew that their PCMCIA business would begin to fade. And it has. A year ago, in the midst of looking for a new revenue generator, they stumbled on the SystemWizard idea (partly because of the work they did on CardWizard). They then went out looking for sponsors, and amazingly found a couple who were willing to help in it's development (DEC, Intel).
I know this company's heritage deeply, don't kid yourself this is a BIOS company pretending to be something more...
Bob |
