MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Eight months after being overlooked to jump-start Apple's future operating system plans, Be Inc. Wednesday started shipping the first public release of its Be Operating System.

The technological merits of the BeOS, which include multitasking, multithreading, multiprocessing and an object-oriented development environment, have been praised widely by industry watchers since the BeOS was first announced in the fall of 1995.

Most of those same analysts, however, questioned the market feasibility of another desktop OS.

In spite of that, since being founded in 1990 by Jean-Louis Gassee, Apple's former chief technology officer, the BeOS has gained a huge following of loyal developers. The BeOS has increased momentum from deals with Macintosh clone makers Power Computing and Motorola Computer Group, which will bundle the BeOS will all their systems.

The BeOS, now being positioned as the media OS, is aimed at users doing digital content design and Internet communications. The BeOS Preview Release features the new 64-bit Be File System (BFS), which enables the BeOS to handle files and volumes of terabyte-size or larger.

The new BeOS graphics capabilities include anti-aliased fonts; direct and network printing support, including PostScript and AppleTalk printer support; and a software-based version of the industry-standard OpenGL 3-D graphics libraries.

The preview version of the BeOS also offers beefed-up support for moving data between applications via Internet MIME -type identification that lets users share data between desktop and Internet applications.

In addition, the native TCP/IP capabilities of the BeOS are expected to offer increased network performance, integrated FTP file server and personal Web-server capabilities, mail-client support and remote access capabilities. The BeOS includes NetPositive, a built-in Web browser.

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