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January 30, 1999
News
- So, I got my Pac Bell ADSL line installed this week and I
have to say, it’s great, although not quite as fast as I was hoping for. Working with
it over the last few days has made me remember all over again that there’s still a
lot to be done in terms of solving the congestion problems on the Internet itself. If you
can get a dedicated 1.5 Mbps line into your home and you still have to wait much more than
an instant for anything, well, I think that’s a problem. But I don’t mean to
complain because it is considerably faster than any other option I, or most anyone else in
the Bay Area, has available to them and, most importantly, it’s both faster and
cheaper than the ISDN line it replaced.
- In case, you haven’t heard about it, what I’m
referring to is the new Pac Bell ADSL high-speed Internet access service that now costs
only $49/month, including unlimited, unmetered access. There’s a $200 installation
charge, but that includes an Alcatel 1000 ADSL modem, an ADSL splitter and Kingston PCI
Ethernet card, as well as the installation of all these devices and, if necessary, another
phone line. Frankly, it’s hard to beat. Because of the way ADSL works, you’re
always connected to the Internet at a minimum of 384 Kbps, but up to 1.5 Mbps (and you can
go even higher if you’re willing to pay more). Best of all, it works on regular phone
lines and doesn’t interfere with the line, so you can take and receive calls on the
same line that’s accessing the net. For those who are technically inclined, the
service gives you a dedicated IP address and for an extra $50 a year you can get up to 7
more IP addresses for a single line. To find out more about the service and to see if
it’s available in your area, check out PacBell’s site at www.pacbell.com or head
over to my This Week’s Links page for a direct link.
- As I mentioned last week, the new mobile Pentium IIs and
Celerons were introduced this week, along with tons of new notebooks that include the new
chips. Both the Pentium II PEs, as the new Performance-Enhanced notebook models are
called, as well as the Celerons include L2 cache in the processor itself—256K in the
PII and 128K in the Celeron—which does, in fact, translate into some nice performance
increases. As an example, I read some reports that the 266 MHz Celeron processor was
faster than some 300 MHz Pentium II processors. That’s particularly impressive given
that not only is the speed higher on the 300 MHz chip, but it has four times the amount of
L2 cache as the Celeron. However, that cache runs at half the speed of the processor in
the older PIIs, but at the full speed of the processor in the Celerons and new mobile
Pentium IIs and the speed is clearly more important than the size. As you would expect,
systems with the new 333 and 366 MHz Pentium II PEs are priced pretty high, but deliver
the best performance. If you’re looking for a good value, however, I’d take a
good look at systems that feature the new mobile Celerons. Currently Dell and Gateway have
systems with this new processor, the $1,999 Inspiron 3500 C300XT and the $1,875 Solo
2500SE respectively, but I expect to see lots more from other companies as well.
- Intel was in a lot of hot water this week regarding the
serial number in their upcoming PIII processor and potential privacy issues. In fact,
several consumer groups are advocating a boycott of all Intel products until they remove
the serial number. In response to the negative publicity it received, Intel announced that
they would offer software with the chip that would let you turn the serial number on and
off and that the default setting would be off (originally the default was going to be on),
but that still hasn’t placated everyone. While I agree that privacy concerns need to
be considered, I don’t think the serial number is really a bad thing. This one is
going to be interesting to watch.
- In more mundane product news, this week HP announced HP5200c
scanner, a $300 scanner that features both USB and parallel ports. In addition, the 5200C
offers optional support of an automatic document feeder, which can be handy for doing big
OCR (optical character recognition) jobs, or a slide scanner. The 5200C features 600 dpi
optical resolution, 36-bit color and is bundled with lots of software, including some that
will automatically straighten and crop scanned images.
- Gateway has recently introduced what they’re claiming to
be the ultimate gaming machine: the GX-450XL. What’s interesting about this $3,700
system is that it’s based around the Pentium II Xeon processor, which is typically
only used for workstations and servers. The primary difference between the Pentium II and
the Pentium Xeon is that the Xeon features more and faster L2 cache (often 1 or 2 MB),
although this model has 512K. In addition to the Xeon, the system includes 128 MB of RAM,
14 GB drive, DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives, 19" monitor, nVidia 3D video card with 16 MB
of RAM, SoundBlaster PCI sound card and a five-piece surround sound system. In addition,
it’s bundled with a ton of games both for kids and adults.
- Microsoft will be apparently announcing an update to their
Windows CE operating system on Monday that will let handheld devices that use the OS
support color screens and lithium ion batteries. In conjunction with the announcement, HP,
Philips, Everex, Compaq and others are expected to announce new color versions of
palm-sized Windows CE devices. The new HP Jornada 420, for example, which lists for $499,
includes a color screen as well as a voice recorder and all the Pocket Office applications
found in Windows CE machines.
- Speaking of HP, the company has a nifty new free program for
Windows users called Instant Delivery that can automatically deliver and print a
mini-newspaper from several different web-based news sites. While it’s optimized to
work specifically with HP printers and certain partner sites, the program will work with
any printer and any web site. What you can do is have the program grab the most recent
headlines from one of its partner sites, including USA Today, CBS SportsLine, National
Geographic, and Time, and have it instantly print out a nicely formatted little newspaper.
Of course, they want to get you to print more stuff (and therefore buy more ink
cartridges), but it’s still a nice idea.
- Here’s an interesting Y2K tidbit: Apparently
there’s a bill in the works that would change the official New Year’s holiday
for next year to be Monday Jan. 3 instead of Friday Dec. 31. Because of the anticipation
that a lot of people are still going to be working that day to prepare for any potential
Y2K-related issues—not to mention the fact that there could be an extra day to fix
any problems that may occur—US Reps. David Dreier (R-California) and John Linder
(R-Georgia) are proposing a bill that would make Monday the official government holiday.
Interesting.
- Speaking of Y2K, if anyone is still using the old Prodigy
Classic service, you’re going to have to move over to the Prodigy Internet service
come the middle of the year or so supposedly due to a Y2K-related issue. Prodigy is
claiming that the old mainframes running the company’s classic service can’t be
upgraded to Y2K compatibility for a reasonable price, so they’re just going to drop
it. Existing customers will get a pretty sweet deal, however, including several months of
free service with Prodigy Internet.
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