Two years ago, Windows 95 had the world's biggest technology trade fair under its spell. Last year, it was the Internet. At this year's CeBIT show, opening today, the buzz is about ``network computing.''

- Having a showcase site for customers on the World Wide Web is no longer enough now that businesses are discovering they can also use the Internet, or set up their own internal ``intranet,'' to cut the cost of corporate computing.

- ``A lot of attention is now being paid to how to make the Internet work better ... (and) how companies can use the Internet not so much to sell to consumers, though there'll be some of that, but also to lower their own costs of computing,'' said Mark Schalck, editor-in-chief of Byte computer magazine, which awards its ``Best of CeBIT'' prizes annually at the end of the six-day fair.

- Progress reports are expected from Intel, Microsoft and leading PC manufacturers on the development of network computers, dumber than standard personal computers but cheaper too. Network computers are intended to work from a central brain where programs are stored and shared company-wide, while each PC has to have its own software installed.

- ``That makes it simpler for the end user to use and takes away a lot of software installation and other things that make computers crash every day,'' Schlack said.

- Not only new hardware but also software for office networking is on display at CeBIT, a sprawling show with 6,855 exhibitors, three times the size of the fall Comdex show in Las Vegas.

- Microsoft will be demonstrating it's newly unveiled suite of business applications, Office 97, which works either on a PC or a networked computer.

- But analysts expect programmers to start designing products solely for networks, such as software to allow people to hold a meeting online or calender programs that an entire community can use to schedule such things as hair appointments or car repairs.

- ``The Internet has given us a way to do this but so far we haven't had the software,'' Schalck said. ``We're going to start to see just out-of-the-box software to do it.''

- Other focal points at CeBIT are ways for improving traffic flow on the Internet, such as advances in ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks. Such broadband technologies sort of widen the information superhighway to allow more data to be transmitted at super speeds.

- But so far it has not been deployed widely except between servers and inside corporate intranets.

- Home users hoping for relief from Internet jams will appreciate a new U.S. Robotics modem that can connect at 56,000 kilobytes per second, twice as fast as the current best and nearly the speed of digital ISDN.

- But Rockwell has introduced a different standard for its own 56,000 bps modem chips, which are used by numerous modem manufacturers. That means if the user has one standard and the Internet provider, such as CompuServe, another, the connection drops to a slower speed.

- ``Such problems always leave a bitter taste behind for the customers,'' said Gottfried Neuhaus, founder of the Neuhaus modem company.

- Digital video discs, which are expected to sound the death knell not just for video cassette recorders but also CD-ROM drives, are also being featured. While a CD-ROM disk can hold 650 megabytes, the DVD has a top capacity of 17 gigabytes, the equivalent of almost 12,000 3.5-inch floppy diskettes, 3,000 300-page books or a six-hour movie.

- The next update of Windows 95, the darling of CeBIT two years ago, is being kept under wraps, although some bootleg beta versions are already in circulation.

- Windows 97, codenamed ``Memphis,'' is expected to incorporate the latest in active Internet technology or ``Webcasting,'' delivering requested items such as news updates or stock quotes automatically from the World Wide Web to the user's computer screen.

Source: Associated Press