Laplink Founder Knows How To Connect With Computer Users

Mark Eppley knows links. When someone asks the Traveling Software founder what he does for a living and he mentions LapLink, their eyes light up.

If there were a software Hall of Fame, the Bothell-based company's flagship product would be one of the first inductees. No heavy PC user, especially from the old days, escaped LapLink's remote dial-up and file-management charms.

At one point, LapLink was the most pirated piece of software in Europe. Not something you want to put on the corporate letterhead, but an indication of its indispensability for PC users.

Back then, portable PC owners used Link to exchange files with their mother ship - the office computer. It also saw yeoman duty as a way of transferring files from an old PC to a new PC. LapLink was lightning fast, and its split-screen approach was, and is, the classic user interface for file management.

Today, when you say links, you think World Wide Web. When Eppley looks at how file management is done on the vast global network, he sees lots of opportunity for improvement.

"It's like we're a Web startup company," Eppley said of the enterprise he founded in 1982, "only without the tattoos and body piercings."

As an example of his company's ingenuity, Traveling Software recently released a new why-didn't-I-think-of-that product called LapLink Enterprise Exchange Accelerator. It can take longer to say the name than for Accelerator to work its magic.

Any road warrior or home PC user knows the growing pain of e-mail downloads. People routinely send documents, Web pages, photos and whatever over the Web as e-mail attachments. You dial in for a few hours' worth of messages and all of a sudden you're looking at a 10-minute download for one piece of e-mail with a couple of jpeg files and a Web page.

Chances are you would rather wait till some other time to see pictures from Fred's fishing trip or the latest .GIF animation from wherever.com.

In steps Exchange Accelerator. When you call up your mail, Accelerator lets you decide before downloading whether you want to accept attachments. If you say no, you get the files lickety-split, reducing download time by 87 percent, according to independent tests by Ziff-Davis laboratories. Even if you say yes, Accelerator reduces the download time by 30 percent.

Accelerator does file compression and some other fancy footwork to reduce download times. It also has a more friendly interface, clearly explaining in everyday English what your options are for dealing with mail when you log on.

Accelerator shines best on dial-up, not network, connections. Its speed gains are most noticeable over a modem. And right now it only works with Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook 98 (or Exchange Client). It's available temporarily free via download from www.laplink.com.

But road warriors who have tried Accelerator consider it an automatic must-have. "It's a no-brainer," is the way Eppley puts it.

Accelerator is just one of the tricks Eppley has up his sleeve. A couple of years ago the inventive redhead, known for his Comdex Burn-Out parties and stunt software demos (see http://www.laplink.com and click on First Place! for an Eppley special), actually retired. Last fall, the itch was back.

File transfer is still too hard to do on the Web, Eppley feels. Tell someone to ftp to a Web site and you're likely to get a blank stare. Yet as more people add a personal Web site to the way they communicate, and the Web becomes the default method for trading files among computers, the Internet cries out for far easier procedures.

Try sending a folder of files or a Web site with images to someone as an e-mail attachment. It's pretty much a nightmare. What if you want to put together and manage your own Web site? How do you communicate with the server? Where do the files go, how do they get updated?

It ought to be as easy as picking up a phone or sending a memo through interoffice mail. Someone needs to walk Web users through the necessary steps in a friendly way.

For now, Eppley is back and looking for opportunities. Stay tuned.

User Friendly appears Sundays in the Personal Technology section of The Seattle Times. Paul Andrews is a member of The Times' staff. Send e-mail to: pand-new@seatimes.com.