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The unique launch pad of Helawadana
by Lester Jansz
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Microimage, the award-winning 100
percent Sri Lankan owned software engineering company, unveiled its
“Helawadana Nawayugaya”, the most comprehensive local language suite
ever at the Hilton Colombo Residence on Friday. A novel concept of
the launch was that the entire function was good at.
“We at Microimage pride ourselves
on being the innovators in language technology solutions. Helawadana
Nawayugaya crosses a new frontier in making a vast number of
computer benefits accessible to local language users,” said CEO of
Microimage Harsha Purasiughe.
Microimage’s “Helawadana” and
“Helawadana with Arichchusadu” are already the most widely used
user-friendly Sinhala and Tamil word processing packages in Sri
Lanka. “Helawadana Nawayugaya the latest Unicode feature rich suite
allows Sinhala language computer users to do almost everything with
Windows-based applications that English-language users can do,” said
Purasinghe.
“These include working on MSWord,
Excel, PowerPoint and a host of other popular windows based
applications.
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Helawadana Nawayugaya includes
four types of keyboards |
A user-friendly launchpad takes
Its place as an icon on the windows desktop and provides guidance at
any time. Helawadana Nawayugaya includes four types of keyboards to
allow users their preference. The phonetic keyboard is the most
fascinating feature, which means that a user only has to press the
letter whose sound resembles that of the Sinhala letter, and it
would appear in Sinhala. For example, when you type “mama oba ena
thuru balaa sitimi” using the normal English keys on the keyboard,
it automatically converts into Sinhala, accordingly.
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“Helawadana Nawayugaya” provides
Unicode fonts (the standardised language fonts) as well as its
previous non-Unicode fonts while it includes a local language
spellchecker, find and replace functions, calculator, calendar,
contact list, conversion table, diar3c world time and a host of
other useful features.
Helawadana Nawayugaya also
includes the Photo Previewer “Pinthura Ekathuwa” which allows local
language users to preview and sort photos.
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Another unique component is the
“Elavena Kola” sticky notes to remind users of personal tasks, with
an alarm. It also includes innovative computer games that are
designed to master and speed up Sinhala typing.
Another unparalleled feature is
that the Suite includes Gaveshaka, a self-learning package, which
teaches MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in one all in one CD through
audio and video contents, and another feature is on “How to Use
Windows XE”
“Helawadana Nawayugaya” is priced
under Rs.lO,000. Installing “Helawadana Nawayugaya” is a breeze just
launch the CD and the wizard takes over. You are up and running in
no time. Pesky little changes to the Windows Registry, which at
times could bring your PC to its knees too has been avoided by the
programmers at Microimage.
Minimum requirements are P3,
128MB RAM, 300MB hard disk space, and although previous versions of
Windows are supported it works best with Windows 2000 and XP
Why a high price tag for a local
product - Harsha explained that it was the cost of the war against
piracy. The CD comes with a hardware lock, which is imported from
China that prevents unauthorized copying. “Unfortunately the
end-consumer has to pay for our war against piracy. If the
department that handles the patents is efficient and the
law-enforcement authorities are strict on pirating we would be glad
to sell this product at a very much reduced price,” Harsha said. The
CDs are available at Microimage’s corporate office and other
Microimage business partners.
Microimage will be constantly
upgrading the Helawadana Nawayugaya product. Any person who
purchases a Helawadana Navayugaya CD could download these updates
for free from the website (www.microimage.com)
free of charge, ensuring that they will have the most up-to-date
local language software for the foreseeable future.
Prof. V K. Samaranayake said that
brainy young individuals such as Harsha and his team of young
programmers should be taken care of by the Government in order to
get the maximum benefit to the country. He too emphasised the need
for more stringent measures to curtail piracy.
Prof Samaranayake said a
comprehensive suite such as “Helawadana Nawayugaya”, which began as
a game for a bunch of teenage computers geeks, would immensely
benefit in uplifting computer literacy in rural areas of Sri Lanka.
Dr. Gihan Dias, Senior Lecturer
at the university of Moratuwa and an Advisor to ICTA said
“Helawadana Nawayugaya” would standardise the input of Sinhala into
a computer.
“Before long customers would be
able to purchase a Sinhala enabled computer over the counter, which
is taking place in other countries where the native language is not
English,” Dr. Dias said.
Country Manager for Microsoft Sri
Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. Sriyan de Silva Wijayarathne and CEO and Managing
Director of ICTA Manju Hattotuwa also made presentations. |
