Mobile |
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by Chuck Horowitz |
Did you get your wish list last year? I didn't even come close. This year I want a Toshiba Libretto 20, a "mini-sub-notebook," with an AMD 486DX/75, 8 MB of RAM, a 170 MB hard drive, a 6.1" color screen and a keyboard that's only 80% of a desktop version. It also runs Windows 95. Maybe I'll get lucky this year, and I'll have to since it only sells in Japan.
Meanwhile, I guess I just have to settle for the things of this world like the TravelMate 5375ST by Texas Instruments (Falls Church, VA), with 133 MHz Pentium processor, 16 MB of RAM, a 2.1 Gigabyte hard drive, a 3½" floppy drive, PCI bus architecture, 256KB Level 2 cache, an 11.3" active-matrix Super VGA screen with 2 MB of video RAM, a lithium-ion battery, 16-bit sound card with speakers and microphone, 2 Type II or 1 Type III PC Card slots, an infrared port and an external PCI expansion bus for peripherals and a docking port. The unit only weighs 6.7 pounds.
Be sure to take a look at John Moore's article in the October edition of Mobile Computing & Communications. He has comparisons for 61 mid-priced notebooks from 19 notebook manufacturers. He includes all of the points of comparison that you should be interested in, including starting prices.
PCS (Personal Communications Services) will allow retailers to sell wireless telephones and many related voice and messaging services. PCS is an all-digital network that is much clearer and more reliable than cellular. Both voice and data can be transmitted and small messages or pages can be sent through a technology called SMS (Small Messaging Services).
Here's one for you Road Warriors who need to be connected. IBM has a wireless modem (expected out next spring). Their cordless modem adapter (about the size of a pocket calculator) eliminates the need to set your computer near a phone jack. You can be up to 100 feet from the wall jack. The remote transmitter (connected to the RJ-11 jack on your modem) sends data at up to 28.8Kbps. Check it out at IBM's Web site (http://www.research.ibm.com).
Motorola's Mobile Computing Products Division (Schaumburg, IL) has just introduced a 33.6Kbps PC Card fax/modem with cellular connectivity. The Montana card, as Motorola calls it, is currently available. The Mariner, a fax/modem/lan adapter card running at 33.6 Kbps, is also available. Both modems are compatible with all Windows versions and the packages include a dual RJ-11 connector that allows a computer and telephone to share a single telephone line.
Mark L. Cohen has an article in the October issue of ComputerLife, on page 93, that compares PDAs. It looks to me as though his main concern was the communications capabilities of these PDAs because he only included one that does not have a PC Card slot.
Have you heard about the smart pagers? Motorola, Inc. (http://www.mot.com) and Research In Motion (http://www.rim.com) are preparing a series of smart pagers that allow you to send as well as receive alphanumeric messages. Also, you can channel text and other material from the Web to personal folders stored on the pager. These pagers let you view Web content on high-resolution LCD displays.
The Research In Motion pager has a16-bit operating system and includes a built-in contact manager, scheduler and forms-based messaging applications. Hot buttons on the outside of the pager allow you to acknowledge incoming pages.
Motorola's PageWriter has a Motorola 68000 DragonBall processor, one MB of flash ROM, 256 KB of RAM, an infrared port and a rechargeable Nickel-metal hydride battery. Based on Motorola's 32-bit client/server operating system called Memos Client and coupled with the Memos Server component, it lets you send messages, query the Web and retrieve Internet information as well as filter incoming e-mail.
Motorola has also partnered with PageNet (Dallas, TX) to produce a voice pager. PageNet calls it VoiceNow and it uses a Motorola Tenor voice pager which acts as an answering machine that you can carry with you. The page is stored in voice mail (similar to other pagers) and it is also delivered to the Tenor pager which will beep you but not play the message until you ask it to.
Here's an interesting twist in communications, blimps. That's right, I said blimps. Sky Station International (Chantilly, VA) has filed with the FCC for a new global wireless communication system using blimps. They propose a network of 250 stratospheric geostationary dirigibles. Each dirigible will consist of two blimplike craft with an antenna system suspended between them. Suspended 18 miles above the earth and providing 64Kbps digital broadband service to 1.5 billion customers throughout the world, they will remain aloft for 10 years at a time.
Chuck Horowitz is a HAL-PC member and can be reached at 713/486-6043 or e-mail at brisassoc@aol.com.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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