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December 5, 1998
News
- Lots and lots of folks are doing online shopping this year. In fact, I think this
holiday season will be the first one where electronic commerce really starts to make an
impact on overall consumer spending. In recognition of that, more and more conventional
stores are adding online shopping features to their sites and many of them are finding
that they underestimated the demand. According to several reports I read, many online
shopping sites have been overwhelmed with traffic, in some cases even going down for a few
hours because of it. So, if you’re having trouble making online purchases, it may
just be because the systems are overtaxed. The reasons for choosing to do your shopping
online vary, but one of the most common reasons is because you think you’ll get a
better price online. While I admit that seems logical, it isn’t always true.
I’ve run into several situations where I was able to get the same or even better
prices from traditional stores. Even online travel can often be more expensive than buying
from a travel agent. Unless you’re using a comparative pricing service, such as
compare.net, and have also checked at other types of stores, don’t presume that the
online price is best. Sometimes it is, but other times it isn’t. Caveat emptor.
- The Palm Computing division of 3Com announced what will be a new member of their
immensely popular Pilot line of personal organizers. The Pilot VII, which isn’t
expected to be a real product until the last half of next year, takes the familiar form
factor of the current Palm III and adds a built-in wireless modem and antennae. Using it
with your Pilot will let you send and receive short e-mail messages, as well as do a
specialized form of web data access they call web clipping, instead of web browsing.
Unfortunately, as cool as that sounds, you’re going to pay a lot for the privilege.
In fact, the Palm VII is expected to retail for around $800 and the wireless service will
start at $10/month, depending on how much you use it, and go up from there. What the web
clipping feature will let you do is get quick access to information available on certain
web sites that have formatted it for viewing on the Pilot’s tiny, black-and-white
screen. For example, you’ll be able to get stock quote updates, look for and purchase
movie tickets, get access to news headlines and other similar types of applications. What
you won’t be able to do is full-fledged web browsing. Another thing you won’t be
able to do is upgrade your existing Pilot to Palm VII, the company says it isn’t
possible to offer an upgrade path.
- Speaking of the Pilot, Intuit and Landware this week announced Pocket Quicken for Pilot,
a portable version of Intuit’s popular personal finance program. Like other versions
of Pocket Quicken for other handheld platforms, you can use the $39 Pilot version to store
and track certain amounts of information, such as recent purchases, and then synchronize
that with your desktop PC using the Pilot’s built-in Hot Sync feature.
- Apple this week announced price cuts on their G3 Powerbooks. High-end systems based
around a 300 MHz G3, 14.1" screen, DVD-ROM drive and 64 MB of RAM, for example,
dropped $600 from about $4,900 to around $4,300. In addition, a system with a 233 MHz
processor, 14.1" screen, CD-ROM drive and 32 MB of memory dropped from $2,799 to
$2,499. In other Apple news, the company is apparently working on an upgrade to MacOS 8.5.
Version 8.5.1, which is expected later this month, will fix a number of problems including
some issues with hard disk partition tables being overwritten, problems with using the
Sherlock searching features in conjunction with a proxy server and more.
- As if you don’t already have enough computers in your life, you can now add one to
your car’s dash via the Clarion AutoPC, which is now shipping. The $1,299 AutoPC,
which was announced quite a while ago, is the first of what are expected to be several
car-based computers that uses the Windows CE operating system. The AutoPC combines a
standard AM/FM radio with a combination CD audio/CD-ROM drive, 8-color LCD display, and
the ability to respond to simple spoken commands. You can use the AutoPC to control your
stereo by voice and give you directions to where you want to go. If you add on the
optional cellular phone connection, you can do hands-free calling by just mentioning the
name of someone in the onboard address book (which you can also synchronize with a
handheld Windows CE device). Add the optional GPS and you can have the system tell you
where you are and provide directions where you want to go without having to tell it where
you are (as you would without the GPS). Finally, if you add the optional wireless
receiver, you can have your e-mail sent to you (and then read to you), as well as traffic
reports, news updates and what have you. Of course, I thought was what radio stations were
for….
- Speaking of devices you can talk to, Dragon Systems recently started shipping a very
nifty-looking product called NaturallySpeaking Mobile. The $349 package—currently
availalble for $299—combines the company’s Naturally Speaking Preferred voice
recognition software with a handheld digital recording device that you can use to dictate
ideas into and have the software automatically transcribe it. The standard recorder
includes enough memory for 40 minutes of recording and has room for flash memory cards
that can greatly increase that time. Recordings can be named and organized into up to 99
folders and the built-in speaker on the device lets you listen back to what you’ve
recorded. When you get back to your PC, you can simply plug in the recorder via a serial
port, launch the software and hit transcribe and that tedious task will be done
automatically. At COMDEX the company also announced an add-on package called
NaturallySpeaking Organized that will let you say things like send an e-mail to so-and-so,
or schedule an appointment at such-and-such a time and the program will convert that into
actions in a PIM program. The first version will work with Symantec’s ACT software,
but later versions are expected to work with Outlook, GoldMine, TimeSlips and other
popular time management programs.
- Cable modems were big news this week, particularly the capacity and speed problems that
many @Home cable modem customers were apparently experiencing. From what I’ve read,
most of the issues have been fixed—it turned out to be some misconfiguration problems
by TCI, as well as a single customer who managed to re-route much of the network’s
data, but there’s still the issue that I predicted would happen months ago. Like
standard Ethernet networks, cable modem networks are shared which means that as more users
are added to the network and more traffic goes across the network, each individual’s
connection rates will eventually go down. Unless, that is, the company increases the
bandwidth of the overall network. It’s not clear that this was the issue with @Home
in this instance, but you can be sure that you’ll be hearing more about these types
of issues in the future.
- Speaking of cable modems, both they and DSL modems are getting increasing amounts of
attention as more and more people start to realize that the speed of Internet connections
is becoming as important (if not more important) than the processing power inside your
CPU. For example, both Compaq and Dell plan to start offering these high-speed modems
bundled with their systems in the near future. When you order a system the companies will
find out where you live to see if a high-speed service is even available, and then make
sure you have both the equipment and the connections you need to take advantage of it. Of
course, unfortunately, many of us still live in areas where we can’t get affordable,
high-speed Internet access and I’m afraid that’s going to be the case for a
while to come.
- And that’s a real shame because according to a recent poll conducted for AOL, 67%
of online users across the US who, when asked what they would rather have if they were
stuck on a desert island—a phone, TV, or Internet connection, chose the ‘net.
Only 23% chose a phone and 9% selected the TV. Of course, 26% of these people also said
they check their e-mail when on vacation, and 45% of those who owned a laptop said they
brought it with them on vacation.
- Several interesting developments happened this week in the scanning world. First, in a
bit of sad news, Storm Technology, makers of some fairly popular low-cost scanners has
closed its doors, leaving existing customers looking for support in a lurch. In addition,
Visioneer has gotten out of the hardware scanning business and more into the scanning
software business, after purchasing the ScanSoft division of Xerox (makers of TextBridge,
Pagis Pro and other popular scanning-related products). Both of these developments are
apparently the result of the brutal price drops in the scanner business—that is, if
you’re trying to sell them. For consumers like us, the fact that you can now get
flatbed scanners for under $100 is, of course, great news.
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