Praising the Worthy

January 2002
http://www.mobilecomputing.com/showarchives.cgi?186

Each year the future comes into sharper focus as the latest notebook, projector or handheld comes to market faster, lighter and smaller than last year’s model.

Technology is not static: Just when the average person thinks a computer can’t get smaller, lighter or faster, a forward-thinking designer proves that the seemingly impossible is in fact possible. The future comes to us one device or service at a time, its performance taken for granted as today’s technology quickly fades into obsolescence. So it goes with mobility.

The year has been devoid of a major breakthrough. Rather, this year’s crop of mobile-minded products stands at the end of a long line of steady, small improvements that, taken together, add up to huge progress. For example, this year’s best notebook is only a little lighter and more powerful than last year’s winner but light-years ahead of where the average notebook was 10 years ago.

Compaq Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. swept the best notebook categories. Those companies are now in the process of merging, and next year, will “Hew-Paq” do the same? Likewise, Handspring and Compaq produced the year’s best handheld computers. Minolta gave us a camera that was not the most expensive or feature-laden, but sensibly packed the right features to get the job done. Similarly, Siemens packed a trimode phone into a small package good for most parts of the world. And Proxima is not shy about jamming a full-function projector into a 4-pound package, with no overspill or loss of function.

Every product mentioned on these pages has an excellent reason for being here. It is only a matter of time before they find their way to the briefcases, pockets and desks of the most mobile among us.

Praising the Worthy: PERIPHERAL or ACCESSORY

BEST PERIPHERAL or ACCESSORY

SanDisk CompactFlash 512MB,
Toshiba 5.0GB Type II PC Card HDD

A Tale of Two Cards

Upon casual inspection, the Toshiba 5.0GB Type II PC Card HDD and SanDisk’s matchbook-size CompactFlash 512MB seem to have little in common. Take a close look, though, and one can see that each card fits easily into a pocket, both are as light as a feather, and together they lead the way in capacity and mobility.

The Toshiba hard-drive card has room for an entire system, while the more modest SanDisk CF card has capacity for about 18 hours of digital music. The flash card uses solid-state memory, so anything short of an encounter with a garbage disposal will only scratch the plastic case. On the other hand, the Toshiba hard card contains a spinning disk, actuator arm and heads inside, so it requires a gentle touch and needs to stay in its padded case when not in use.

Rarely the case, the best feature with these cards is the cost. SanDisk’s CompactFlash card costs $600, or about $1.25 per megabyte (less than a large cup of gourmet coffee these days), while the Toshiba hard drive costs $400, or about a dime per megabyte. So value and portability can be found hand in hand. Imagine that. — Brian Nadel