Terminal emulation company Attachmate has launched a Vista version of its Reflection software, even though the company admits that take-up of the operating system has been low.

Attachmate's technical services director Neil Harrison said that the product had been designed to build on Microsoft's security implementations. He said that despite the slow take-up of the operating system, the new version would be successful. "Vista is a great opportunity for the product's development and takes advantage of the new security features being offered. Reflection for IBM 2007 has been Certified for Windows Vista, the second Attachmate product to be approved in this way.

He said that besides the Vista support, there were some other new features including a spellcheck function. "I was surprised to see the demand for a spellcheck myself as it was not something that I could see a demand for, but several of our users wanted it." We've also added the Microsoft Office 2007 user interface meaning that it's included in the Microsoft "ribbon" within that application.

Although terminal emulation connection to mainframes seems like an old-fashioned technology, according to Harrison, there's still plenty of mileage left in mainframe. "Fujitsu has just announced that it will continue to support its mainframes until 2020 so there's plenty of life left in them yet." He said that there was a lot of legacy data remaining on mainframes and Attachmate would continue to develop products for the technology.