Microscopy: Thief of time

By Mark Gibbs
Network World, 10/23/00

Ho, ho, ho. Santa Gearhead has been on the lookout for cool stuff for the upcoming holiday season. Yes, we know it is arguably a little early, but as Mrs. Gearhead is, as usual, almost done with the Christmas shopping, we feel there is no time to spare.

There's also no time to spare in trying to solve John Becker's Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol conundrum. We've received some great suggestions, and Becker is seeing if any work.

Gearhead promised an unspecified cool prize for the first correct solution and we now have the prize in hand: Some lucky reader will receive a LinkSys EtherFast 4-Port Router thanks to the nice folks at LinkSys. But as my good twin would say, we digress. . . .

While we hold the prize in one hand, in the other we have a cool device that's for kids, but Gearhead suspects adults will want one, too. The gadget is the Intel QX3 Computer Microscope (why the QX3 is called the QX3 is anybody's guess, but Gearhead expects that marketing is at the heart of the choice).

The QX3 is unusual in that it has no built-in eyepiece - all images are displayed on your PC. The microscope itself is a symphony of clear blue plastic, which, with the internal green LED that lights when the device is on, gives a very futuristic look indeed.

The QX3 interfaces to your PC through a Universal Serial Bus port and after a very simple installation you can load the user interface. The interface is designed to accommodate young users, and the QX3 comes with a parent's guide and an activity guide for kids.

When the user interface loads it changes the screen resolution to 800 by 600 with 16-bit color and restores the original resolution when it exits. Unfortunately, this resolution change can have unpleasant side effects when you alt-tab to another application. After a couple of page faults, the QX3 software interface vanished and could not be restarted without rebooting.

But when you don't do ridiculous things like assuming that Windows can reliably multitask, the QX3 software is great. It displays what is on the microscope's stage and you can capture the images as stills or a movie and edit and modify the picture.

The QX3 offers magnifications of 10, 60 and 200 times, has built-in lighting above and below the specimen stage, and can be detached from its stand so that you can magnify, for example, your eye (this feature should not be mixed with adults and alcoholic beverages).

Gearhead found the QX3 image to be a little red-shifted and, at 200X, a little less crisp than one would want. But then, at a price of around $90 (www.techstore.com) who can complain? This is a cool toy that you might find yourself playing with long after the kids are finished. We give the QX3 10 gear teeth out of 10.

Tell Gearhead, er, Santa what you want for Christmas at gh@gibbs.com.