Word: ashtons
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...These companies are finding that developing successive generations of established software programs is a complicated and time-consuming business. The delays are beginning to irk mainframe- and personal-computer makers, whose powerful new machines cannot be fully used without up-to-date software. Among the more worrisome recent delays: Ashton-Tate's new version of a financial program hit stores three months behind schedule. And Lotus is almost a year late with its long-promised improved 1-2-3 financial spreadsheet...
...evade the intricate triple pursuit that Screenwriter George Gallo has structured and Director Martin Brest has smartly executed. The FBI, led by burly, surly Alonzo Mosely (Yaphet Kotto), wants the accountant to testify against his former employers. The gangsters want him dead before that happens. And Marvin Dorfler (John Ashton), a rival bounty hunter, dull witted and implacable, wants to abduct the abductee and claim the fee for himself...
...good life in Beverly Hills alternating with sudden descents into motiveless and entirely humorless violence; the none-too-subtle maneuverings to bring Murphy into contact with variously dim figures who can be run over by his motor mouth; the police colleague-foils, who, besides Reinhold, include John Ashton and Ronny Cox and whose chief function is to shake their heads bemusedly over Murphy's improvisational nerve and witty, if occasionally obscene, sayings...
Often those calls go unanswered. Ashton-Tate, the Torrance, Calif., publisher of Framework, has 42 full-time service representatives who take 1,100 telephone calls a day; Microsoft's 50 operators field 1,800. The current ambitious goal of WordPerfect is to have its 70 support staffers answer at least half of its 1,500 daily calls. Says Adam Osborne, president of Paperback Software: "You have a better chance of winning the lottery than of getting through on some toll-free lines...
...heavy traffic is proving costly to manufacturers. Ashton-Tate, conceding that during peak hours its current staff cannot keep up with the calls, already spends $1.5 million a year on salaries, office expenses and training to provide software advice. Living Videotext in Mountain View, Calif., figures that the net cost of talking to a single user is between $30 and $40 an hour. "If I talk to them twice," says President David Winer, "I'm starting to pay them to use my product...