Fall COMDEX '95 |  | by Fred Thorlin |
The mother of all computer shows attracted 200,000 visitors during the middle week of November. As was the case last year most of the exhibits were in the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), the adjacent Hilton Hotel and the Sands Convention Center. To accommodate the increased attendance the sponsors constructed six temporary buildings occupying well over an acre each. IBM, DEC and some other companies had booths larger than Microsoft's in the exhibit halls, but Microsoft also occupied one of these buildings!
The inundating influence at this COMDEX was the Internet. Everyone is looking for ways to get a piece of the action. An interesting, and typical, approach is that taken by Upside magazine at their web site, http://www.upside.com. They post all of their old issues, a directory of investment bankers and sell advertising space. Microsoft showed its soon to be released Blackbird Internet web page authoring system. If you can't wait for that, or want something simpler, you might try out the Home Page Builder (713-785-4357). For parents who want software to supervise their children's Internet surfing activities there was Net Nanny and CompuServe's Internet in a Box for Kids. Netscape, the Internet darling of the investment community, showed Raven. This platform independent language supports the development of programs that can run anywhere on the Internet. The chairman of IBM, in his keynote address, said IBM will return to preeminence by having its mainframes become the ultimate Internet servers. One thing that was clear is that the Internet is seen as a big new market where the big companies will be going for the action. Look for the telephone companies and the cable TV companies to be racing to be your Internet provider.
An emerging area of activity is infrared, IR, data transmission. Most of the newer notebook computers provide this means of wireless communications between computers. By placing your notebook's IR port within 3 meters of another IR port and within a +/- 15 degree cone you can establish a data link. Sharp (713-955-9909) showed a 4 MB data link which is sufficient for video transmission. Extended Systems (800-235-7576) provides two ways of connecting your IR enabled notebook to other computers at 115,000 baud. A device that plugs into your desktop computer's serial port has a suggested retail price of $118. A connection to your network will cost less than $300 on the street.
Hardware got strange as well as exciting this year. AER Energy showed batteries that could power notebook computers for up to 15 hours. They achieved this apparent breakthrough by making the batteries slightly larger than the notebooks. The batteries look like docking stations. Glare/Guard introduced their Privacy Filter. If the wide viewing angle of your notebook's active matrix screen, which you paid several hundred dollars extra for, exposes your work too much, strap on a Privacy Filter. This makes your screen act just like the cheaper, narrower viewing angle, dual-scan screens. Datasonix (303-545-1880) offered a battery powered tape backup unit that would hold over a gigabyte on a cartridge. The drive is about the size of two cigarette packs and the cartridge is about the size of two quarters. I worried about losing them. Epson showed their new 720 dpi color printers and a digital camera priced at under $500. The camera takes 640 by 480 pixel images in 24-bit color. If you need to get under $200 you can get the QuickCam which produces 64 shades of gray in a 320 x 240 format. Avery showed a clever new form. Using it results in a credit card size document sealed in clear plastic. You can even print bar coded information on it. The biggest disappointment to me was, after talking to four manufacturers of notebook computer luggage, finding none provided storage for CD-ROMs!
As always there was a lot of very clever software shown.
PowerQuest (801-226-8977) showed a
partition management utility that should see a lot of use. It allows you to
change the sizes of partitions on your disk without unloading all of your data
first! If you have one big volume you may have wanted to break it into several
smaller drives to get better storage efficiency. If you have a bunch of small
ones, you probably would like to redistribute the disk space among them or
consolidate as your storage needs evolve. Their product accomplishes this
without extended procedures and rocket science!
Symantec's Norton AntiVirus is filling in
the gap left when Microsoft did not include virus protection in Windows '95.
They provide frequent updates to the program via their BBS, CompuServe, America
On-Line, the WorldWideWeb and quarterly subscription. VirusScan from
Touchstone
makes an interesting
advance in their update procedure. The program includes communications support
enabling downloading their latest virus database by just clicking your mouse.
There were so many screen savers shown, COMDEX should provide them a separate
area as they do for Multimedia. Pegasus Software showcased their
latest JPEG image compression software. The amount a photographic image can be
compressed and still produce a fine image is amazing. For evidence of this try
out a new service available from Konica
(800-955-6642) which uses their technology. Send in a 24 print roll of 35mm film
to them for printing. For $4 extra they will return all of your images on a
single 3.5"disk in 640x480 with 64,000 colors.
Some great new games surfaced at the show. Descent is among the current state-of-the-art 3-D games by virtue of providing six degrees-of-freedom of motion in a fully rendered real-time world. Two booths had previews of the forthcoming Descent II. Expect a teaser version containing 3 levels to be available for $10 in December. Expect the complete game in the first quarter of 1996. It will feature 10 new weapons, a new manual and a Guidebot. A Guidebot is a robotic version of a bird-dog; it will find things for you and then be a pest. The game will also support many new headsets and LCD shutter glasses to provide a 3-D view of the environment. Don't get too excited about this aspect though. The 3-D image looks like a collection of planes like you saw when you read 3-D comic books years ago. Mortal Kombat was the king of the kung-fu games. I thought these comic book characters reached the pinnacle of gratuitous, dehumanizing violence when the winner would rip the heart out of the vanquished. The impact was really not much more than Wily Coyote falling off a cliff. They were both just slap-stick humor. Now we have Nvidia new chip set supporting Virtual Fighter. You don't see stick figures. Nor do you see planar comic book images. These are well rendered, shaded androids beating up on each other with synchronized sound. Watching one combatant break another combatant's back over his knee got to me much more than the aforementioned excardiation. Nvidia showed another game that was as impressive even though it was in monochrome, but in very high resolution. This tank battle had as smooth motion and a sharper image than ever appeared on a black and white television set.
A lot of head mounted displays (HMD) were exhibited. These helmets promise a total visual and sound immersion into the world of the computer. Many game arcades include versions of these now, but their $1,000 price tag is keeping them out of the homes of all but the hard-core, and deep-pocketed, game players. Caligari's efforts may expand their utility. Caligari, the publishers of the leading 3-D modeling program, TrueSpace 2, is developing a 3-D language for Internet web sites. A few virtual reality sites are already operating. In time you will be able to connect to your favorite web site and walk around in it. You could even interact with other people virtually visiting the site. A lower priced alternative to the HMDs are the LCD shutter glasses. These cost less than $200 and provide "through the window" 3-D. This means your computer screen provides a viewing window into a 3-D world. Stereographics, Ahead and Kasan Electronics are, or will soon be, offering these units. The other impressive area was sound. Advanced Gravis (604-431-5020) will be shipping by Christmas a new version of their sound card which is Plug 'n Play. Sound cards have always been a pain to install, this should spell an end to that problem for Windows '95 users with Plug 'n Play support. The unit will support 2 MB of ROM and up to 5 MB of RAM wave table sounds. A large collection of bundled software includes Internet Phone. With this you can get sound/voice transmitted over the Internet. ABC News already posts the news, updated every other hour, in an appropriate format on their web site. Now you understand why the phone companies are more than casually interested. The package will be selling for under $200 on the street and include a microphone.
MIDIsoft (206-391-3610) showed two interesting products that will let you get the most music out of your sound card. Both of them have a Windows '95 logo, meaning that they run on Windows '95 and Windows NT as well as Windows 3.1. Having a program smart enough to install on any of these systems is a sure headache saver. But the high point is the two software products just released in this format. Play Piano teaches you to play the piano by playing the songs you want to play, i.e. not "The Happy Shepherd". Provide it with any MIDI file and it will create a series of exercises resulting in your learning the piano through playing that tune. The other product is a new version of Midisoft Studio for Windows '95. In addition to its traditional recording, playing and editing of MIDI performances, the new version supports integrating wave files into the performance. Midisoft Studio includes a wave form editor to edit your singing and sound effects. Put it all together with the integrated mixer and you will have your dazzling demo tape done in a trice. Also think about the sound effects for your presentation, game or other programming project. Internet was definitely the dominant, but not the only, theme to this year's Fall COMDEX. IR and 3-D are coming on strong. Expect more developments in those areas next year. There are no signs of the innovation in the industry slowing down.
Fred Thorlin, a HAL-PC member, is president of Personal Instruments, Inc. The Houston, Texas based company does Visual Basic development, consulting and training. © 1995 Personal Instruments, Inc. All rights reserved.
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