by , 9:25 AM EST, January 13th, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Apple Specialist Pavilion at Macworld has three companies showing off new products during the show this week: Actoris Software's Xpress Schedule 1.1, EZQuest's Thunder Pro external hard drives and Xsilva's LightSpeed 1.1.

The version 1.1 release of staff scheduling tool Xpress Schedule offers the ability to print graphical views of schedules, interactive calculations of scheduled hours during the scheduling process, a new two-week schedule report, the ability to e-mail schedules and more.

The update is not yet available on the Actoris Software Web site. The full version of Xpress Schedule is US$99.

EZQuest's new Thunder Pro external hard drives come in five versions: the Thunder Pro A/V Studio DUAL Interface, the Studio QUAD Interface, the Studio RAID Triple Interface, the Studio RAID+ Triple Interface and the Studio Rack 8. They include such features as smart power switches and FireWire 400 ports on the front.

Version 1.1 of Xsilva's multi-user sale system LightSpeed won't be available to users until early February, when it will be a free download for registered users. The update offers a new floating point-of-sale interface as well as new sales and backend tools.

Shawn King of Your Mac Life interviewed Xsilva CEO Dax Dasilva in a video clip that includes a demonstration of the new features in the software. It can be downloaded from the Your Mac Life web site.