OPINION: There were some interesting products at the recent N+I show in Sydney, but are they really ready for prime time?
A couple of simple incidents started my train of thought for this month's column. The first was the Networld+Interop show in Sydney and the other was idle banter in the Lab.
First to the show, which as an aside was a bit better than I had imagined. Of course, I can play catch-up with many of our product contacts, which is always a good thing, but there were actually some interesting items at the show.
Security was a pervasive theme, with all manner of hardware and software vying to thwart Internet thieves and vandals.
Two items (both based on the same concept) grabbed my attention, at least subliminally, at the show: both were Pocket PCs with integrated PDA and mobile phone functions.
Now many of you have probably heard me lament in the past that I want the seemingly impossible: a mobile phone, PDA, and PC all rolled into one small pocketable item. Let's face it, it would make carrying your office around with you less like carrying your whole blasted office around.
At the N+I show there was a PC EPhone at the Ingram Micro stand and another Pocket PC from Siemens wandering around in the pocket of a Casio rep (Casio actually produces the unit for Siemens). I looked at the brochures on both and they looked promising--there were all the features I thought I needed and (through the wonders of advertising photos) the units looked enticingly small.
Alas, both were largish and weighed in at about 300 grams. About the only pockets they would fit comfortably in are those low-slung bum-revealing cargo shorts with the multitude of cavernous Velcro sealed pockets.
To put size into perspective the Siemens unit, for example, was roughly the footprint of an HP Jornada but a good deal thicker. I will grudgingly carry my Jornada in my pants pocket but it leads most people to believe that I'm reasonably pleased to see them.
And, the other thought-provoking product? As we were coming into work over a long weekend (I must have been seriously wicked in a former life--damn shame I can't remember any of it) we were discussing the annoyance of keys.
Just to get to work I have to have my house keys, car keys, alarm remote, RMIT gate keys, main door security card, Lab keys, Lab alarm password, and finally login passwords! So we started talking about Bluetooth and everything it was supposed to be, and it did not take long to marry this with pocket PC phones and come up with the thought that has crossed everyone else's mind: the universal pocket appliance.
Are we all that far from a pocket PC/mobile phone with some derivative of Bluetooth? One that automatically unlocks or locks our doors when we enter and leave, disarms and starts our car without the need of a remote and key, identifies us to our local ATM so we just need to punch in a password, or stick an eyeball to a scanner, but no need to fumble for a access card. The building blocks all appear to be available but there are quite a few hurdles.
Let's ignore some of them, not because they are trivial but because there's just not enough space in a single-page column. The one real sticking point is that the appliance by its very nature has to be large enough to be useful which apparently nonsensically renders it too large to be portable.
The phone and access functions can be tiny and pocketable and still usable. It's when we want the PC functionality or even decent PDA functions that it's not the technology that necessarily constrains the size, but our dexterity and eyesight.
I guess even with these parameters you can reduce the whole shebang to Journada size or even perhaps Palm 105 size, which is getting awfully close. But then I look at my tiny Nokia 8210 mobile phone and couple of keys and think: maybe I'll never be satisfied.
Steve Turvey is Lab Manager of the RMIT IT Test Labs, and can be reached at stevet@ rmit.edu.au.
3%
2%
