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April 4, 1998
News
- Don’t forget about the time change tomorrow. You may
also need to spring forward your PC’s clock one hour (though Windows 95 usually does
it automatically).
- Well, it’s finally official. Intel has released a mobile
version of their Pentium II processor (actually two versions) at speeds of 233 and 266 MHz
and there are already tons of new notebooks available from all the big names and even some
from the smaller hardware vendors. Best of all, the new machines are coming in at pretty
reasonable prices—as low as $2,700 for a new Dell Inspiron that features a 233 MHz
version of the PII, along with a 13.3" active matrix display, 32 MB of memory, a 3.2
GB hard drive and a 24x Max CD-ROM. Systems from other vendors range in price from about
$2,800 to just over $5,000 and include a wide range of memory configurations, hard drive
sizes, screen sizes and more. In general the performance improvements over existing MMX
processors at the same MHz speed are about 20%, according to benchmark tests I’ve
seen. Those improvements do come at a cost of decreased battery time, however, because of
the increased power needs of the bigger, faster Pentium II processor.
- An even better development for those of you who can live
without the latest and greatest is that prices on all the existing notebooks, including
those with 233 and 266 MHz versions of the Pentium MMX processor, have gone down to make
room for these new machines. Toshiba, for example, announced price cuts of up to 30% on
many of their models earlier in the week. In fact, their tiny Toshiba Libretto 50 CT,
which features a 75 MHz Pentium 16 MB of RAM, and a 772 MB hard drive is now down to $999.
- If you’re looking for good information about the year
2000 problem, particularly if you’re a small business, you should check out a
valuable new resource from your federal government. The Small Business Administration at
www.sba.gov has added a new Year 2000, or Y2K section to their web site. The section has
lots of useful materials for small businesses as well as individual users, including a
step-by-step test for how to check if your computer system is Year 2000-ready. In
addition, the site also has links for even more information you can find elsewhere. I
highly recommend you check it out to help do whatever you can to avoid problems down the
road.
- Well, if you’re a customer of AOL, AT&T’s
WorldNet or the WebTV-dedicated ISP, you are already or will soon be paying higher rates
for your Internet access. Apparently too many people are taking advantage of a good
thing—the unlimited access for a fixed price—and so companies are having to
raise their rates to accommodate the higher traffic. AOL rates jump to $21.95 a month as
of April, WorldNet is adding hourly charges if you surf more than 150 hours a month, and
WebTV is going up to $24.95 in June. In other AOL news, the company announced they’ll
be doing a small field test of DSL technology, which offers rates similar to cable modems,
but over standard phone lines, in certain areas of the country, including here in the Bay
Area. Only a lucky few will get to try it, but if you do it’ll set you back $50/month
for speedy multi-megabit connections, which is not bad at all. You find out more on AOL by
using the keyword DSL.
- Long Macintosh modem make Global Village announced this week
that they’re getting out of the modem business to concentrate on remote access
products, primarily for Windows. Boca Research, which makes lots of PC modems, bought the
business and will continue to sell and support Global Village products and will even
continue using the name.
- Apple introduced some new all-in-one computers for the
education market this week. Appropriately called the Power Mac G3 All-in-One, the systems
incorporate a 15" monitor into the computer’s 60-pound case. Prices for a system
with a 233 MHz G3 with 32 MB of RAM, a 4 GB drive and a 24x CD-ROM are $1,499 and a 266
MHz version with video inputs and outputs is $1,799. Unfortunately, the company won’t
be selling these models to the general public.
- Two new twists on familiar products were announced this week.
The first one, electronic postage that you can "buy" over the Internet and print
out on your computer’s printer, was introduced by the US Postal Service and Silicon
Valley startup E-stamp. While the official version of the product that generates legal
tender postage is still a ways off, the USPS took the wraps off the new technology and
noted that it’s the first change in postage since the postage meter was introduced
nearly 80 years ago. E-stamp won’t be the only company offering products that
generate electronic stamps, but they will be the first. The way it works is, you’ll
buy a small box you attach to your PC and install some software that will control the
process of ordering and keeping track of how much postage you have. Then you’ll use
the special printing software to print envelopes with electronic postage already on them
on your own personal printer.
- The other is a digital notepad called Cross Pad, from the
Cross pen company. This product, which costs $399, looks and acts like a regular notepad,
but underneath there’s a sensor that transcribes all your scribbles into a digital
form and stores up to 50 pages of them in onboard memory. You then take the device over to
your computer, connect to a serial port and transfer the sketches onto your PC. Once
there, you can use the bundled character recognition software, which was developed by IBM,
to convert your printed characters into typed text, or keep it in digital sketch form.
- The build-up to Windows 98 may be slow, but it’s
starting. This week both Gateway and Dell announced that most notebook and desktop systems
bought from either of the two companies will come with a coupon for a free upgrade to
Windows 98 when the new OS ships. Look for other companies, particularly mail-order
vendors, to follow suit.
- If you’re interested in digital cameras, but waiting for
prices to come down, you might want to take a second look at Epson’s Photo PC digital
camera. This week the company announced that they’ve cut the price of the camera,
which features 1,024 x 768-pixel resolution, from $699 to $499.
- Netscape has announced a minor new upgrade to their
Communicator browser. Version 4.05, which is available now, offers faster Java performance
and some other minor refinements. Find out more at their web site, www.netscape.com.
- Finally, for those of you interested in online games, which
is growing into a very popular pastime, Yahoo announced that they are getting into the
business. Yahoo Games lets you play traditional games such as backgammon, chess, checkers
and more with lots of other folks on the Internet. Best of all, it’s free. Check it
out at Yahoo’s site or go straight to play.yahoo.com.
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