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November 22, 1997
News
Guest: Tom Powledge, Product Mgr. For Symantec Norton Utilities 3.0
Giveaway: 3 copies of Norton Uninstall Deluxe
COMDEX News
As I suspected, it was the little stuff that really caught my (and many other
people’s) eye in Vegas this year. As a gadget guy I was particularly knocked out by
some of the new color handheld devices running the new Windows CE 2.0 OS. HP’s 620LX,
which is expected around the first quarter of ’98 at a price of around $900, offers a
very nice 256-color 640 x 240 pixel display, built-in voice-recording capability and a
whopping 16 MB of RAM. NEC and Compaq were both showing off color screens (all of which
are 640 x 240) in machines that are expected to be priced closer to $700. Coolest of all,
though, was the new Sharp Mobilon 4500, which also offers a 640 x 240 backlit color
display, 16 MB of RAM, voice-recording capability, a built-in, low power 33.6 modem, and
an optional color video camera. Yes, that’s right, a video camera in the form of a PC
card that plugs into the Mobilon and uses its screen as a monitor. You can use the $399
option to take digital photographs, as well as actually record video—though not very
much of it--onto this tiny handheld computer. You can also use it, in conjunction with the
modem as a portable video-conferencing system. Very cool. The Mobilon, which is expected
to be priced around $900 to $1,000, and optional camera are expected to be in stores in
time for the holidays. Sharp is also introducing a 16 gray-scale Mobilon 4100 with 8 MB of
memory for around $600.
In the notebook category, I saw the slimmest machine I’ve ever seen at the
Mitsubishi booth. The company’s pricey, but impressive new Pedion, which is due in
the first quarter of ’98 for around $6,000, is about ¾" thick—no thicker
than a spiral-bound paper notebook—and weighs about 3.1 pounds. It includes a
12.1" screen, 233 MHz MMX processor, 1 GB hard drive, 16 MB of RAM, two PC Card slots
and a USB port. If you add the included docking port, you only raise the weight to about
5.8 pounds, but you also get all the standard PC ports, as well as a floppy and CD-ROM
drive.
As far as cool technology is concerned, one of the neatest products I saw at the show
wasn’t even really a computer product—although thanks to its high-speed
FireWire, or IEE1394, connection, it can be used as a computer peripheral. I’m
referring to Canon’s new Digital Camcorders, which can function both as a digital
still camera and a digital video recorder. Both still images and video are recorded on the
new ½" DV tape standard and can be transferred directly to a PC via the FireWire
connector (though you’ll need a FireWire add-in card for your PC as well. The company
showed two models—the $2,600 Optura looks kind of like a combination of a still
camera and a camcorder, complete with a high-resolution 2" color LCD display. The
$4,600 XL1, which is an amazing model of industrial design, looks like a professional
video camera, complete with an eye-piece, a shoulder mount and interchangeable lenses. If
you know anyone interested in digital video on their PC—this is the camera for them.
Another big trend at this year’s show was lots of flat panel displays—Sharp,
Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Fujitsu and others were all showing very impressive-looking
flat-panel displays. At $2,700, Sharp’s new 15-inch model, which supports resolutions
up to 1,024 x 768, is still too expensive for most people, but by this time next year, we
may well start to see models included with high-end PCs.
Speaking of cool things we may not see for a while, Iomega’s tiny Clik drive looked
very impressive. Using tiny magnetic disks not much bigger than a quarter, this drive
mechanism will hold 40 Mbytes of data, which will be perfect for digital cameras, handheld
PCs and other small devices that would benefit from cheap storage—the disks are
expected to cost under $10 each. The company showed a larger external drive unit, as well
as a drive mechanism that was built into a normal Type II PC card. Pretty cool.
Not to be outdone, Iomega competitor Syquest announced their new SparQ 1.0 Gbyte
removable drive. Expected to be priced around $199, with disks in the $50 to $60 price
range, the new drive connects to any PC via a parallel port. It promises to give the more
expensive Jaz a good run for its money.
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