Comdex 2002 report Archives

The price of the new version remains the same -- $49.95 for the Workstation version and $249.95 for the Server version. The upgrade is free to customers who already have Diskeeper 7.0. Go to the Diskeeper Web site for more details.

E-mail is for the birds

By Suzanne Gaspar

Tired of reading your e-mail? Have it read to you instead. The talking PC Mascot Digital Assistant, a POP3 e-mail reader, can make your e-mail fun again.

The "titanium-feathered" e-mail assistant can read out specified messages, remind you of scheduled appointments, and can even tell you jokes, tongue twisters, up to 100 pre-registered message phrases. It checks the arrival of new messages automatically, periodically, or at a specified time.

PC Mascot can be purchased on line for about $50 and comes with software and a free POP3 e-mail account. It plugs into a USB port and runs on Windows 98, Me, 2000 and XP.

Not shagadelic

Seen at the show, part 2: The imagination well has run dry as far as companies coming up with unique ways to draw crowds. Walking around the show floor today, we saw three different "Austin Powers" spoofs. Two of the spoofs, in fact, were right across from each other.

At least Microsoft was a little bit more current in its creativity department, as their "show" included a spoof of "CSI" -- they called their version "Computer Scene Investigation."

And in another sign that the budgets are leaner for trade shows, I have yet to see a single magician.

Battery life always an issue

Handheld gadgets are everywhere here at the show, from cell phones to PDAs to digital cameras. But the one problem with all of these devices is battery life. Without a power cord, they cannot run forever - even if you're an executive for one of the companies offering such a device.

A Sprint exec was spied in her company's booth talking on her cellphone as it was sitting in the desktop charger, holding both items up to her ear. If she can't get a phone the has a week-long battery life, none of us can.

ServGate announces EdgeForce Plus

ServGate announced yesterday the EdgeForce Plus, a new addition to its family of security appliances that offer VPN and firewall capabilities.

EdgeForce Plus is geared to small to medium businesses and is expected to ship in December. It will offer up to 100M bit/sec VPN and 250M bit/sec firewall performance.

Like the ServGate EdgeForce and SG2000 models, high availability, Web caching and virus scanning modules are options for adding on to the base unit.

Power lounging

"Screw the cube" is the motto of Personal Computing Environments, whose ergonomic computer chairs were on display on the Comdex show floor. The chairs would make any Starfleet captain jealous, with an integrated Windows XP PC, multimedia keyboard and flat-panel monitor.

The PCE's laid-back seat is surrounded by curving metal poles that suspend the LCD at eye level and provide an ergonomic position for the keyboard and mouse. The reclining chairs, which range in price from $4,000 to $9,000, can be outfitted with surround sound speakers, PCs with up to 180G bytes of hard drive space, up to 22-inch monitors and massage chair features.

PCE executives say the placement of the monitor and keyboard is better suited for long hours in front of a PC than regular desks and chairs, which can cause strain on the back, neck and wrists. According to PCE, target customers for the chars include call center agents, software developers as well as technical writers and journalists. (Hmmm.)

One observer questioned whether employees using the PCE products would get any work done, or just spend the day napping. "Power lounging," is what it's called, answered one sales representative.

The face of spam

It's not every day you come face to face with one of your e-nemeses. This was the case on the Comdex show floor when I wandered into the booth of Universal Toner, makers of low-cost inkjet and laser printer refill products.

I've created countless spam filters, with such keywords as "toner," "inkjet," and "refill" to keep my inbox uncluttered, but the flood of e-mails from companies hawking inkjet refill kits (which incidentally, look like IV drug paraphernalia) just keep coming.

I own an inkjet printer, so I told a sales rep at the Universal booth that I would consider his products if he promised my name would be taken off his company's electronic mailing list. He assured me that his company was innocent of spamming.

"We don't do that,” I was assured. “That must be out competitor, TonerToGo." When asked if I'd like to be on the company’s mailing list, I declined.

All about the Benjamins

Apparently, one Benjamin Franklin impersonator was not enough for Exact Software to promote its message ''See the Next Bright Idea'' here at Comdex. The company had two gentlemen dressed in full Ben regalia - three-cornered hat and all - handing out the company's leaflets bearing a light bulb logo.

''I was here by myself yesterday,'' said Ben Number One Stan Leibowitz. ''But the company hired another one, so they'd get more coverage,'' he added, pointing to his partner Louie Tadoni. The pair of New York City natives - with accents to prove it - are Nevada transplants who work for the same Las Vegas promotions company.

When asked if the second Franklin was crowding his style, Liebowitz said it didn't bother him much, except that ''now everybody’s coming up to us, saying 'hey! There was only one Ben Franklin!' So I tell them, he's my twin brother,'' Leibowtiz said. ''I tell them, I'm out here looking for the kite, he's looking for the key.''

Don't cry for me, Tablet PC

Have we run out of good names for new products? Taiwan-based Innolabs was showing off one of their new Tablet PC devices here at the show, but I think something got lost during the translation.

Their new device is called the EVITA 2000. Not sure whether Madonna or Andrew Lloyd Webber will be a spokesperson for the machine. Maybe Hillary Clinton will buy one.

Speaking of names, Nokia announced it had changed its product naming strategy. As anyone who has tried to learn about Nokia phones knows, the use of numbers for products is complicated.

Well, the numbers still exist (Nokia's latest phones are the 7250 and the 6800), but at least now there's some method to the number madness. A Nokia spokesman said that the first number in each of the new phone models will indicate what type of market they are in (5 for "active phones," consumer-type models, or 6 for an enterprise-type device, etc.).

When I asked the spokesman to write the new strategy down for me, he said, "As soon as we figure it out we'll write it down for you."

Smart Displays are really cool...

Every trade show has its share of oohs and ahs when you see the technology, but this year's Comdex hasn't really done anything for me yet, until I saw some of the Microsoft Smart Display technology on display (pardon the pun).

Different from the Tablet PC (also being shown at Comdex), a Smart Display is more like a "wireless monitor" for your computer. Instead of having all of the processing power on your lap like a tablet, you just carry around the display and all of the processing power stays at your computer.

ViewSonic said it will begin shipping two airPanel devices (one has a 15-inch display for $1,299, the other a 10.4-inch display for $999) in January 2003. Another manufacturer, Philips, said it expects to have Smart Displays in the first quarter of 2003.

Now if I can just scrape together a spare $999 for the device. There's always the blackjack tables...

A more focused Comdex?

It's my first trip to Comdex and I was expecting a very over-the-top show like nothing I'd seen before. Everyone that I've talked to over the last couple weeks said I would not believe my eyes and that Comdex was not a place for getting business done, but a fun show to attend.

Well, the 2002 edition seems to be a different animal. The show floor is abuzz with activities and demos, but nothing seems outrageous, overly loud or downright nutty. There's a distinct lack of vendor graft available to attendees and press alike. I fully expected to refresh my vendor t-shirt collection while here in Vegas, but I've only managed a cheap, yet reliable, pen so far.

And, I've actually gotten work done, both visiting vendor suites at neighboring hotels and on the show floor. As one PR person put it, "The show seems more focused."

Maybe this new found focus is a silver lining of the down economy?

New body fashion trend for the Digital Age

I watched a demonstration of high concept device yesterday. In handhelds, "high concept" usually means "small." Sometimes very, very small.

This device had something like a VGA resolution on a screen about the size of typical paperback book. That means, when you log into your corporate Outlook server, you see your email as really, really tiny letters.

I realized that the handheld-wireless industry has this all wrong: they're concentrating on the devices. We need to concentrate on the human interface to the machine, until evolution can catch up with the pace of technological change.

I predict a resurgence in the manicure industry, as men and women grow at least one finger nail very long, and have it sculpted into fanciful but ultimately functional shapes that will let then effortlessly point, tap, and click. Without having to fumble around with those awkward styli.

New glasses, otherwise known as fashion eyewear, that will have flip up/down magnifiers so you can read the shrinking screens and fonts. The high-end ones will have power magnifiers, in high-fashion colors, and scratch resistant, hand-grown lens. ET! will have a piece on the Beautiful People who fearlessly, and cooly, wear eyeglasses that look like the bottom half of a Coca Cola bottle.

This will be a temporary workaround until the right eyeball can increase in size by about 25 percent to compensate for teeny screens.

The term "digital tone" will become fashionable, to denote the practice of talking into thin air, and giving your words a slightly high-pitched lilt to show that you're actually talking to a cell phone that consists of raisin-sized plug in your ear and something the size of a bandaid on your wrist.

Men and women will grow their hair much longer, down to their waists, cut and braided and festooned with elaborate combs and barrettes from which will hang their cell phones, MP3 players, PDAs and the like, all within easy reach.

Orthopedic surgeons will notice an marked increase in the so-called "Handheld Clutch Syndrome" -- a permanent curving of the fingers of the weaker hand from constantly using handheld devices that get smaller and smaller.

Ringtones and alerts will become hyper-personalized: intead of canned, tinny-sounding digital music, always tuned to ear-piercing or stupifying pitches, users will program their devices to reflect their deeply held committments.

You'll hear the introduction to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on corporate responsibility, or President Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, or an excerpt from Bill Gate's testimony during the Microsoft anti-trust trial.

This is the real digital future.

Signs of a depressed Comdex economy

During his keynote yesterday, Sun chief Scott McNealy gave the Top 10 signs that Comdex and its host city are suffering in this stinker of an economy. Among the signs: "High rollers are comped with a free night at the Y."

We've got #11: In the pressroom, one of the complimentary PCs has a two-button mouse circa 1988, when people thought the device was a novelty item and not a necessity. Instead of a brand name, the device was simply branded "Mouse".

Sightings at the show

Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey wandering around the press room. Spacey, here at Comdex to announce his new Web site, TriggerStreet.com, seemed to be eyeing the free food buffet set up for the press, but was stymied by pesky autograph seekers. ... If the Segway, now available via auction on eBay, is supposed to be the future of transportation, why did we see someone dragging one around the show floor?

A PDA that gets used

If you've been looking for a device for your field service workers that isn't as bloated as a Pocket PC, then Symbol has an answer.

The company today announced a new handheld that runs on the embedded Windows CE operating system (aka Windows CE.NET). The PPT 8800 Series offers a rugged PDA that has a smaller footprint than other devices.

The PPT 8800 includes an Intel xScale processor at 300 MHz, and 32M bytes of RAM and 32M bytes of ROM. While slower than devices that use a 400MHz xScale processor, Symbol officials said this gets them extended battery life, an issue with field service workers who need handheld devices that can last all day.

The ruggedness of the device also allows the PPT 8800 to survive a drop of four feet onto concrete in any temperature range, Symbol officials said.

Connectivity options include a cradle/synchronization method (batch process), embedded 802.11b wireless LAN or embedded Bluetooth. The device also has two different keypad options, one with a 15-key keypad that looks like a cell phone keypad, or a 4-button keypad with user-definable functions for those keys.

The goal of the device is to let companies
develop one application for the device (bar-code scanning, etc.) without the need for the extra applications and "baggage" of other PDAs.

Go to Symbol's Web site for more details.

Who's to blame?

It was Monday. It was cool in Las Vegas. I was working the daywatch out of traffic division. My name is Friday. I have a software question.

A Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer stood at the street corner directing traffic into and past the Convention Center, all the while keeping up a running commentary with one pedestrian on...e-mail attachments.

The pedestrian was a woman wearing a Microsoft black pullover, and the trooper, without arresting her, nevertheless explained that he was using a firewall with his Windows XP home computer, and his wife couldn't open e-mail attachments.

Holding up traffic, he listened intently as the woman crossed the street in front of him and explained, in passing, that the problem was due to a third-party application, so it wasn't actually a Windows issue at all.

Kinko's works out kinks in Web Services

Kinko's and Microsoft have created a prototype Web service that lets a Microsoft Office application, such as Word, print out to a system at any one of 1,100 Kinko's locations.

Programmers from Microsoft's .Net team, using MS Office .Net Toolkit, worked with Kinko's to create an MS Office add-in program. This program modifies the "print" dialog box: users see one printing option as "file print Kinko's."

SOAP messages carry the XML-encoded documents to the Kinko's systems, where the print job is processed. One Microsoft Web Service, MapPoint, lets the user select a location and find the nearby Kinko's locations. Another Web Service, .Net Alerts, pops up a box to tell the user that the print job has been accepted, and later that it's completed, giving a summary of what's been done.

Kinko's now gets about 20% of its business through digital documents submitted via hand-carried diskette or through its online Web site, says Daniel Connors, Kinko's senior vice president of corporate strategy. The prototype application lets anyone working with a standard application such as MS Word or Excel, do the same thing without logging into a separate Web site, or trudging to a Kinko's location at 6 A.M. on a rainy morning with diskette in hand.

Connors describe the prototype project as a "virtual printer cable for our customers."

Both Connors and Neil Charney, director of .Net platform strategy for Microsoft, said that no decisions had been made on how the service would actually be implemented. Kinko's plans to have it ready in mid-2003. Charney said initially it might require a small download to each client system, or an enterprise IT shop could choose to make use of the service as one corporate print option.

Eventually, some kind of online discovery mechanism, via a Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) directory, would let users "find" the Kinko's service and use it.

Payment options have not been decided either, but Connors pointed out that Kinko's already lets its Web site users either pay online, or submit the job and pay when it's picked up. Another option is to allow some 200,000 Kinko credit card users to input their card number.

The Good CD

Several Comdex pilgrims stopped by the booth of Ellis Enterprises, makers of the Ellis Bible Library Series -- 24 digitized versions of the Good Book on four CDs.

John Ellis, president of the company, says foot traffic to his booth is always good at Comdex, where he has exhibited for several years. This year, his modest space was not far from Microsoft's sprawling pavilion.

Ellis says that interest at the show comes mostly from IT professionals interested in a searchable version of the Bible for their PCs. Ellis’s firm also sells Bible reference dictionaries and Christian clip art CDs. He does not sell other digitized versions of religious scriptures.

Ellis says his company was the first transcribe the Bible onto ASCI text format – a project that cost him “several million dollars” and probably left a handful of typists in Jamaica -- where he outsourced the labor -- with sore fingers.

Even in a down economy, business is good, Ellis says, as his firm holds 48% market share for Bibles on CD. Ironically, the biggest threat to his bottom line is “Bible bootlegging” – individuals or companies who make illicit copies of Ellis Bible Library Series CDs and sell them over the Internet or on eBay.

“I could sue them, but what good would that do?” Ellis says. “I’d have the word ‘fool’ written on my tombstone if I did that.”

NETGEAR goes for G

NETGEAR jumped onto the band of companies announcing 802.11g wireless LAN products today. The company said they hoped to have shipping product of the 2.4GHz, up to 54M bit/sec. products out by early Q1 2003.

Any "official" 802.11g products, of course, have to wait until the IEEE ratifies the standard, expected later next year. But manufacturers are announcing products that follow most of the 802.11g standard, and just calling it "pre-G" or "pre-standard G".

Also see: Broadcom and Intersil add to wireless alphabet soup

NETGEAR officials said that once the standard is ratified, a quick firmware upgrade would be made available for customers who purchased the "pre-G" products.

NETGEAR said it planned on producing a PC Card, access point, and router with 802.11g capabilities. The product line would also support Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP).

Other products announced today by NETGEAR include:

Features of the CG814M include a DOCSIS 1.0-compliant (DOCSIS 1.1-upgradeable) cable modem, a NAT-based firewall, four-port 10/100M bit/sec. switch, and USB port. The CG814M will be available in December 2002 for a street price of around $279, NETGEAR says.

Got wireless? You're out of luck

Apparently all those journalists covering this show decided to activate their wireless LAN cards in their notebook.

The wireless LAN in the press room was working, but the DHCP server that was supposed to assign out IP addresses apparently gave out all of its addresses.

The helpful guy at the wireless LAN help desk said that they were only given 400 IP addresses, and by 11 a.m. there were over 600 journalists who had received an IP address from the DHCP server. New requests were being denied until previous users released their address, so while we could connect to the access point easily, we couldn't get to the Internet at large. Trying to connect to the wireless LAN became a crap shoot, ironically in Vegas.

It's unclear whether this problem was also happening at other wireless LAN locations throughout the show.

Note: This entry posted from the regular computers provided by the press room and connected to a wired network.

RealOne Player now on Tungsten T

Live from Comdex: RealNetworks and Palm announced today that the RealOne Player is now available for the Tungsten T handheld. Users can now download and play their Real and MP3 files on the Palm device. The software, which is based on the open source Helix DNA released by RealNetworks, can be downloaded for free.

[Cross posted in The Multimedia Exchange]

The other spam

You know you've been there. You're waiting for an important fax, but each time you get up to check the machine, you're faced with a pile garbage, still warm off the press: Real Estate training course brochures; Caribbean vacation offers; that law office upstairs that keeps sending you lunch their orders.

Biscom this week announced tool aimed at squelching unwanted of spam faxes with its FAXCOM Fax Server 5.3 with a spam fax filter tool.

BISCOM contends that while spam on your PC is annoying, spams are easily deleted with the click of the mouse from the comfort of a cubicle chair. Repeatedly receiving unsolicited and mis-directed fax messages can be a bigger annoyance than electronic spam, not to mention a tree killer and waste of fax toner, the company says.

The FAXCOM product is a fax server that runs on a Windows or Linux box that can be used to filter out unwanted transmitting subscriber IDs (or TSIs, that information you see at the top of a fax that includes the sender's business name and fax number). The server can save the spam fax to a file, delete it, or simply hang up the connection when the spam TSI is detected.

Far, far away...

If Network World's reporters and editors here at the show look a little slimmer when they return from Las Vegas, they can thank the fine folks at Key3Media, who put the press room about 7.5 miles from the rest of the convention.

As one fellow reporter put it, "I guess we know what they think of the press."

Viva Las Vegas!

Las Vegas is the only place where you drive past neon proclaiming an exhibit of masterworks by painters like Gaughan and Cezzane, and two minutes later, neon proclaiming the Elvis-a-Rama Museum.

Dell to shake things up; PalmSource to make you go "ho hum"

Dell is expected to shake up the handheld industry with low-priced Windows PocketPC devices today: the low end device at $200. Microsoft is giving the low-end a boost by unveiling a joint effort with Samsung to create a reference design for building inexpensive PocketPC devices. The design can be used as a starting point for other hardware vendors to drive down PocketPC costs, even as they cram in still more features.

By contrast, PalmSource may win again the GoshSoWhat Award at Comdex. The company that brought us such pathbreaking news as designer casual-wear clothes wired for PalmOS handhelds, and that, unforgettably, introduced the Claudia Schiffer brand PalmOS device (who knew she was really a technology entrepreneur?), this year at Comdex brings us the "incredibly useful, yet lightweight, small and powerful" wrist PDA.

The latest PalmOS licensee is Fossil, which describes itself as specializing in "consumer products predicated on fashion and value" -- watches, belts, handbags and sunglasses among other stuff.

Fossil is a design, development, marketing and distribution company that specializes in consumer products predicated on fashion and value. The company's principle offerings include an extensive line of fashion watches sold under the FOSSIL and RELIC brands as well as complementary lines of small leather goods, belts, handbags, sunglasses, jewelry and FOSSIL brand apparel.

At Comdex booth #5242, Fossil is showing prototypes of a wrist device somewhat larger than a standard wristwatch with an illuminated touch screen. A stylus is integrated into the watchband for Graffiti input, It has 2MB internal memory, Rocker switch user interface, infrared port, and rechargeable battery. It comes loaded with Address Book, Date Book, Memo Pad, Calculator and To Do List applications.

Flextronics was Fossil's partner in the device design, especially the turnkey embedded hardware and software. Two Fossil brands will be shipping by mid-2003. No word on price, but it seems unlikely they'll be as cheap a thrill as penny slot machines in Vegas.
Does anyone think there's a market for something like this? I think its more likely to start a run on fake wrist PDAs: a plastic knockoff that looks just like the real thing, lets you flaunt your wrist in public, and doesn't require you either to a)pay for the real thing or b) use the real thing.

Broadcom and Intersil add to wireless alphabet soup

Broadcom and Intersil today complicate the wireless LAN cost/benefit calculations of network executives everywhere.

Both chipmakers are introducing chipsets that support the not-yet-ratified IEEE 802.11g standard, which promises a wireless LAN data rate of 54M bit/sec, the same as 802.11a, but at much longer distances because its uses the 2.4Ghz band used by today's 11M bit/sec 802.11b products.

Netgear and Linksys are unveiling prototype WLAN gear that uses the Broadcom silicon, and Buffalo will announce its intent to use the same chipset in a future line of 11g products. Some of these are likely to have dual-mode cards -- a single adapter card that can make use of either 2.4 GHz for 11b or 11g, or 5 GHz for lla. Previously, Cisco had announced it was working closely with Intersil to create similar products, due out once the IEEE has finalized ratification of the 11g standard. Final ratification is expected in December.

Most network executives with whom I talk insist that 11M bit/sec has proven to be more than enough bandwidth for all current applications. Some of these are hospitals moving around x-ray and other images wirelessly to handhelds.

Most vendors with whom I talk say that 802.11a is the direction everyone will go … eventually. It's in how you define "eventually" that makes cost-benefit analysis trickly.

With 11g access points, your 11b clients can still operate: 11g has been designed to drop down to 11M bit/sec when it senses an 11b client card or access point. So, the argument goes, you can replace the 11b cards in your access points with 11g, and then as your slowly phase in 11g client cards, each client gets to connect at the higher data rate.

But, the 2.4 GHz band has a lot of activity in it, especially in some industries like healthcare, where baby monitors and other equipment can use the same frequency. That's being worsened by the slowly rising tide of Bluetooth devices. During demonstration recently with Mobilian, which is unveiling this week a chipset that can broadcast Bluetooth and 802.11b radio signals at the same, the impact of a Bluetooth transmission on a WLAN signal is devastating. Mobilian's chipset insulates the two signals from each other.

And until 11g is ratified, none of the vendors can say "we've got an 11g product." They have to dance around the fact that however closely their product hews to the draft standard, it's still only a draft. The Wi-Fi Alliance is announcing this week a plan for starting 11g tests and certifying interoperability of wireless LAN products.

So, what do YOU make of this alphabet soup of wireless LAN options? Have you made any decisions? What are the issues you see in figuring out which option is right for your compahy?

Apply for your free subscription to Network World. Click here. Or get Network World delivered in PDF each week.

Request a reprint or permission to use this article.

NWFusion offers more than 40 FREE technology-specific email newsletters in key network technology areas such as NSM, VPNs, Convergence, Security and more. Click here to sign up!		New Event - WANs: Optimizing Your Network Now. Hear from the experts about the innovations that are already starting to shake up the WAN world. Free Network World Technology Tour and Expo in Dallas, San Francisco, Washington DC, and New York. Attend FREE		Your FREE Network World subscription will also include breaking news and information on wireless, storage, infrastructure, carriers and SPs, enterprise applications, videoconferencing, plus product reviews, technology insiders, management surveys and technology updates - GET IT NOW.