Just a few years ago, long-distance carriers and private operators dug up the whole country, congested metropolitan areas and countryside alike, to string 25 million miles of optical fiber to meet the demand for bandwidth long into the future. Quite surprisingly, these 'future-proof' fiber-optic networks are already becoming exhausted.

Word 3.0 admittedly has some bugs and the output to printer can be tricky; however, I still decided to use the program for a 600-page book on Danish stamps that contained quite heavy formatting. During the whole output process, I had to repaginate one section of 20 pages,but apart from that I had no problems with the program. As this particular book is upgraded every three to four years, it was important to select what I thought would be a future-proof piece of software.

Heralding it as the first fourth-generation computer, Tycom Corp. has introduced an Intel Corp. 8088-based multiuser system here that has a performance range extending from a mid-range microcomputer to a high-end minicomputer.

Described by some observers of the London computer scene as "future proof," Microframe contains a vendor-developed bus architecture called Versatile Base Bus Connect (VBC) that enables its chassis, which is available in 6-, 12- and 22-slot versions, to accommodate Zilog, Inc. Z80, Motorola, Inc. 68000 and Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-11/70 board-level upgrades.