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[ Go to February 1997 Table of Contents ]
WinLab Reviews
-- by Lenny Bailes
If you want to improve the client-side functionality of a Windows 95 Internet connection, tap into NetManage Chameleon's smorgasbord of useful Internet browsing and server applications. The package also contains a substitute Internet dialer and a TCP/IP stack. The suite installs six program groups: desktop management, e-mail and messaging, file and printer sharing, network host access, group collaboration and standard Internet browsing. The Internet-browsing group possesses a Web browser, Usenet newsreader, ftp and telnet applications such as IRC and network chat, WhoIs, Archie and Gopher. The QuickTime movie player, Real Audio 2.0 and an HTML editor are also included. Internet Viewer, a sample ActiveX application, is included to demonstrate custom programming with the NetManage NEWT ActiveX control set. The Z-Mail Pro mail client supports all standard POP3 and SMTP servers, as well as the IMAP4 protocol, which permits you to store mailboxes on a common server. It offers more message sorting and filtering options than Win95's Inbox. The desktop management portion includes utilities to find and resolve DNS addresses, as well as a quick-search indexing agent, a modem-sharing utility and a virtual-desktops utility. Besides modem sharing, available server applications include an ftp server, UNIX-compatible NFS File Server, Personal Web Server and Directory Server. The Chameleon TCP/IP stack supports connections to servers using the older BOOTP and RARP log-in procedures. It also supports a multicasting IP-address feature that permits simultaneous LAN and dial-up modem Internet connections. However, due to an imprecise manual, I found Chameleon's TCP/IP dialer and protocol stack somewhat difficult to install and configure. Compared to Microsoft's built-in Win95 support, it was confusing to set up Chameleon's connection profiles and autolog-in scripts. Fortunately, the full-featured ChameleonNFS Internet applications work equally well if you retain Microsoft's Win95 Dial-Up Networking and TCP/IP stack. If you're hungry for client-side Internet apps that exceed those available in Win95, Chameleon will satisfy you. Otherwise, a look at OnNet32 or tcpConnect (both reviewed in this issue) is in order.
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