Are Your Tech Tools Tough Enough?

How tough is your cell phone? Can your notebook survive a trip to the sidewalk? Whether you work outdoors or just have a permanent case of fumblefingers, there are plenty of ruggedized devices that can survived being knocked around.

Take a look at my piece in today's New York Daily News ... and let me know what you think.

CES 2008: Simple Pleasures

The 2008 Consumer Electronics Show was jam-packed with sophisticated technology that could do everything except slice your bread every morning, but sometimes the best tech is the simple innovation which makes life easier without much fuss.

Luckily there were many examples of useful, but simple devices at CES and here are a handful that may be worth a glance:

Energizer Duo

The $14.99 Energizer Duo battery charger connects to either an AC outlet or to a computer's USB port and can charge two AAA or AA batteries in two to five hours, depending on size and power rating. Since many small devices, like some digital cameras, require only two batteries, the slim charger can help some mobile professionals travel a little lighter.

In addition to a set of LEDs on the outside that let you know the charging status of the batteries, you can also surf to the Duo's Web site and download a small utility which lets you see the charging status right on your computer screen. The utility is available in both Windows and Mac versions. The unit comes with two AAA batteries and an AC adapter.

Sonic Alert Portable Vibrating Alarm Clock

If you're a really deep sleeper, chances are good that you've met your match with the Sonic Alert Portable Vibrating Alarm Clock (Model SBP100ss) from Sonic Alert Inc. of Troy, Mich. When the alarm goes off, you get not only an audible alert but a surprisingly strong rattling mechanism kicks in and shakes the unit with enough force to send tremors throughout your mattress, thus bringing an abrupt end to your sleep cycle.

No the technology in the $29.95 unit is not particularly cutting edge, but anyone who has missed an important morning meeting because of a wimpy hotel alarm clock or a wake-up call that never came might appreciate the circular unit, which is just one in the company's line of Sonic Boom vibrating, flashing and/or extra-loud alarm clocks.

CES 2008: Sony's Silly Rockin' Robot: The Rolly

So what was the worst thing about the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas? The long lines? The thick crowds?

The answer: The press conferences. Many were very long on fluff and very short on substance. Minor technology advances and fair-to-middling products were trumpeted as if their introductions marked watershed moments in the history of high technology.

For example, Sony Electronics, in a glitzy press conference attended by hundreds of media representatives, literally rolled out a new digital music player which seems destined for some museum of tacky technology: The Rolly.

The best way to explain the Rolly, which will ship this spring at a price still to be determined, is to let you see the darn thing in action.



Yep, that's it: A small egg-shaped digital music player which rocks and rolls and spins with the music and has little clamshell caps at either end that pop open and snap close with the beat.

Somehow I don't foresee the day when many of these things will be scuttling across the floors of high school lunchrooms, college dorms or the platforms of commuter rail and bus stations. The target audience seem to be limited to computer geeks and audio nuts who love scaring their cats.

In Sony's press release, Steve Haber, the senior vice president of Sony Electronics' Digital Imaging and Audio Division, says that the spinning gizmo, "... isn’t just another gadget; the Rolly is a sophisticated piece of entertainment technology."

Yes, it's an interesting, er, spin on high tech, yes it has two gigabytes of flash memory, yes you can stream music to it via a Bluetooth wireless connection and, yes it can display about 700 colors as it spins around, but I still don't get it.

Do you?

Text and video Copyright 2008 Stadium Circle Features

Goodbye Netscape

You might as well tack this sign to New York's Time Warner building:

Netscape Navigator,
the browser that made the World Wide Web famous,
won't be brewed here anymore

(A rewrite of the lead from a 1981 Milwaukee Journal story the day The Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company announced that Schlitz, "the beer that made Milwaukee famous," would no longer be brewed there.)

Friday's announcement that America Online, a division of Time Warner, would end development of the Netscape Navigator Web browser on Feb. 1, 2008, comes as a punch in the stomach to those who grew up on it. Yes, most of us, including this writer, abandoned it long ago for Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox or even Opera Software's Opera browser.

However it was Netscape's valiant David-vs.-Goliath court battles with Microsoft that endeared us to the sometimes-troublesome Web browser. Netscape staggered, but didn't slay the software giant, but the court battles gave us all a lesson in not giving up even when the odds were against us.

I've always had a soft spot for also-rans. I was a New York Mets fan when finishing above last place was considered a major achievement. In the end, AOL's decision was a simple one, made like a baseball team owner gazing at a stadium full of empty seats.

According to the official Netscape blog:

"AOL's focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL's current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it's the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox."

For more information, zip over to the Netscape blog (blog.netscape.com).

World's oldest e-mail address? Nah!

Happy Birthday 72407,3343!

(Note: Mailing address on card is obsolete.)

Today my CompuServe e-mail address turns 22 years old. Think of how many online services, Web portals, e-mail services and other Internet-borne businesses have come and gone in that time.

I still remember that magic moment in 1985 when I dialed in and signed on and waited -- and waited -- and waited -- for that first CompuServe welcome message to crawl across the monochrome screen of my cutting-edge Tandy 100 laptop.

And I do mean crawled -- at 300 bits per second. That's 300 bits per second -- not kilobits or megabits! Yes, in 1985 most of us could type faster than our computers could transmit data.

At that time CompuServe was by far the top name in online services, offering more useful content and more access to important databases than any other service.

The fact that you could also use it to send e-mail to was almost an afterthought since at that time you could only send messages to other CompuServe members. Other online services of the time had the same limitation. That explains the many e-mail address at the bottom of my old business card (see above).

Of course things changed over time as CompuServe initially opened special gateways to MCI Mail and other select online services and later opened the gates wide open so that members could contact any e-mail address.

CompuServe, born in 1969, is still alive today, although it's hard to tell from its rather lame home page (www.compuserve.com). America Online, which acquired CompuServe in 1998, barely markets the service and seems intent on letting the venerable old name peter out through membership attrition.

Who would have thought in 1985, when cell phones were the size of milk cartons, that we would be checking e-mail on shirt-pocket-size handsets today.

No, my CompuServe address isn't the the oldest e-mail address in the world by a long shot, but... Do you have an older one?

This curious mind would like to know.

Text and image Copyright 2007 Stadium Circle Features

Smartphones for gift-giving

Looking for a new smartphone? Take a look at my latest piece in the New York Daily News for some guidance. And let me know what you think!

New Alienware Area-51 notebooks: The mother of all systems?

The most powerful 17-inch notebook ever?

The most powerful 15.4 notebook that's ever been thought of?

It was with that kind of unbridled enthusiasm that Alienware Corp., makers of musclebound gamers' notebook and desktop computers, rolled out its latest high-powered efforts at a New York press conference on Monday (Nov. 19).

According to Alienware, a subsidiary of PC giant Dell Corp., in addition to powerful processors and fast hard drives, the new Area-51 m17x 17-inch notebook (above) and Area-51 m15x 15.4-inch notebook (below) offer graphics performance far above that offered by any other current notebook.

"This is really the mother of all systems when you're talking about performance," said Bryan de Zayas, Alienware's associate director of product marketing, after he uncovered the m17x at the press conference.

He went on to describe the m17x as "the most powerful 17-inch notebook that has ever been created" and noted somewhat modestly that the m15x was the most powerful 15.4-inch notebook "that's ever been thought of and brought to market."

The specifications for the sleekly designed Area-51 units seem to bear out some of his enthusiasm. Both come with Intel Corp.'s Core 2 Extreme processors, Blu-Ray optical disk burners and up to to 4 gigabytes of system memory.

The Area-51 m17x offers a 17-inch, 1,080p widescreen display and can be had with dual nVidia GeoForce 8800M GTX or dual GeoForce 8700M GT graphics processors and up a gigabyte of dedicated graphics memory--an astounding amount video muscle for a notebook. The Area-51 m15x has a 15.4-inch, a 1,080p widescreen display, a single nVidia GeoForce 8800M GTX graphics processor and up to half a gigabyte (512 megabytes) of graphics memory.

De Zayas noted that the just-released nVidia 8800M GTX graphics chipset used in the new notebooks is two performance levels above the nVidia chipsets now in use by other notebook makers. This means, he said, that the Area-51 units can easily digest the most demanding PC games, including the recently released Crysis from Electronic Arts Inc.

However, nVidia noted that the 8800M series graphics chipset will soon be available in machines from other notebook makers, including Canada-based Eurocom, Gateway Inc., and Sager.

While the Area-51 units are obviously designed for the best possible games performance, they offer amenities that make them useful as high-end business units. For example, with the touch of a button above the keyboard, you can tune the units down to a low-power "stealth" mode, which reduces processing muscle, but extends battery life long enough time to perform mundane non-gaming tasks during a long flight. You can also tune down the graphics muscle in order to extend battery life a little further.

The units come with backlit keyboards which can change color and a touchpad that's invisible save for an lit outline that lets you know where it is on the palmrest area.

Both units will be available next year and pricing has not been set yet, according to Alienware representatives.

Photos courtesy of Alienware.

Lenovo's new ThinkStation: Slam dunk or technical foul?

It's not often that a press conference takes technology journalists to a sporting goods store, but that's exactly what happened Nov. 6 as Lenovo staged a televised press event at the NBA Store on New York's Fifth Ave. to announce its entry into a workstation market now dominated by Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

According to Lenovo, the new ThinkStation line of workstations marks the first new workstation brand to be trotted out by a major PC maker in ten years and marks Lenovo's first addition to its Think-branded products in five years.

By definition, a workstation is a musclebound PC with extra processing and graphics power for high-octane applications such as computer-aided design and digital content creation -- such the nifty graphics and videos you see during televised National Basketball Association games.

Lenovo is already the official computer of the NBA; which explains the reason for the press conference site. Its units are at courtside at all 29 arenas of the 30 NBA teams (the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers share the Staples Center). Company executives said the China-based company aimed to get a modest slice of the U.S. workstation market but sought to succeed in emerging markets overseas as well.

The single-processor ThinkStation S10 (starting at $1,199) will come with an Intel Corp. Core 2 processor while the dual-processor ThinkStation D10 (pictured at top, starting at $1,739) will use Intel's Quad-Core Xeon processors. Both models will come with nVidia graphics adapters and will feature second-generation PCI Express expansion slots, which allow for far faster graphics-data speeds than the original PCI Express standard.

Inside the easy-to-service ThinkStations you'll find room for an array of hard disks and lots of RAM as well as extra fans and huge heat sinks to keep things cool.

While the ThinkStations will come in black, their interiors will be quite green, according to the company. More than 50 per cent of the plastics used will be recycled plastics, Lenovo said. Despite the additional hardware, the units will be no noisier than far less powerful PCs, according to Lenovo.

On hand for the press conference was former NBA star and Basketball Hall of Fame member Bill Walton (at right in photo), who seemed to genuinely appreciate the extra processing power of workstations and said he couldn't wait to get his own hands on a ThinkStation.

"Intel doesn't have the out-front name, but they're the ones that make it work from the inside," said the almost 7-foot-tall Walton, who was joined by executives from Lenovo, Intel and the NBA as well as sportscaster Ian Eagle.

ThinkStation D10 photo courtesy of Lenovo.
Press conference photo copyright 2007, Stadium Circle Features.

Congrats! You have a new PC! Now pay up!

So how much does it really cost to upgrade an office with new PCs?

Find out by reading my piece in today's (Nov. 5, 2007) edition of the New York Daily News.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Meridian Audio's F80: The million-dollar baby ... almost

Don't let the simple appearance of Meridian Audio Ltd.'s new F80 table radio fool you.

It looks like something you might run into at Target or WalMart, but turn it on and it leaves no doubt that it was designed for audiophiles, not bargain hunters.

Close your eyes and the rich, distortion-free bass and crisp high notes might impress you, but open your eyes and gaze at the price tag and then you'll really feel the air leave your lungs: $2,995.

Almost three grand for a table radio? Yes indeed.

"Yes it's expensive, but it's incredibly high quality," said company co-founder Bob Stuart at a recent Meridian Audio press conference in New York. Such stratospheric pricing is par for the course for Meridian Audio, which specializes in sophisticated, precisely engineered high-end audio products.

The F80 incorporates much of the company's home-grown digital-signal-processing technologies and makes an impressive statement in terms of internal and external engineering. The unit was designed in collaboration with automaker Ferrari SpA, another company known for top-notch performance at any price.

In addition to an AM/FM tuner and an alarm clock, the F80 has a trayless CD/DVD player and offers video outputs as well as audio and antenna connectors.

"It's very well-endowed in terms of connectivity," said Stuart.

Lift the F80 and you realize how much technology is packed inside. Thanks to a rather hefty shell, the 16-by-8-by-7-inch (H-W-D) radio comes in at more than 14 pounds. Stuart noted that the F80's mineral-injected composite casing was intentionally designed to be heavy and dense to eliminate rattle and to enhance the output from the speakers.

"The speakers have to have something against which to operate," he explained. "We couldn't make this out of wood. The shape wouldn't allow it.

"We've always been innovators, but innovators at the extreme end," he said.

He noted that while a conventional table radio offers about five watts of power, the F80 provides 80 watts of 2.1-channel, audiophile-quality output, a claim the unit backed up during a short demonstration. A single F80 filled the hotel conference room with clear, robust sound without the snapping one might expect from cheaper speakers.

Stuart said the "transportable home entertainment system" will not be sold directly by Meridian but through high-end audio dealers.

"We would encourage you to buy more than one ... but it's not necessary," he said to a burst of laughter.