Can't read a strange file on your PC? PentaWare offers help. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. How often has it happened to you? Someone sends you an important file by email... .and when you try to open up, what you get on the screen looks like gibberish. Maybe you don't have the right software to open a spreadsheet or a document from a different word processor than the one you use. A company called PentaWare is out with a new version of PentaZip... .which serves as a Swiss Army Knife of sorts for computer files. PentaWare President Claude Ostfeld... .

"You might find yourself using a portable computer in a hotel someplace and receiving email and not having on that portable computer the software necessary to consult the attachments that you just received. Say for example, you don't have Microsoft Office on that portable computer, for example, with our software you could consult either Word or Excel. That's one example. You don't have a media player and you need to consult an advertising clip that you just received, you can do that using our viewer."

The software also lets you compress and uncompress files in a variety of formats... .and can be used to back up your system as well...

"You have to back up your whole system everyday at 1:15 while you're out at lunch, the system will memorize this and will take care of it at 1:15 while you're out at lunch."

The software, which until last year was sold only in Europe, is available online at PentaWare.com, for under fifty dollars. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.