Geoff Walker
January 5, 2004
When Key3Media went bankrupt last year, the conventional wisdom was, “Comdex is dead”. But in July 2003 the company emerged from Chapter 11 with a new name (MediaLive International), new funding, and a new focus for Comdex (or so they said) as a totally IT-centric trade show. “No more massage chairs”, they said, “just products that are relevant to IT, no consumer products”. Did it work? Not exactly – but maybe it’s too early to tell. MediaLive says there will be a Comdex 2004, but to make it happen they have to sign up more IT exhibitors. We’ll see.
Comdex 2003, with 550 exhibitors, 150K square feet of exhibits and 45K attendees was only a shadow of Comdex in its heyday, when the numbers were 2,000, 1.2M and 200K respectively. It still felt crowded, though, since the number of square feet of exhibits per attendee was lower (3.3 ft2/attendee vs 6 ft2/attendee) and the show was one day shorter. Or maybe it was the extra-narrow aisles, rumored to be designed by MediaLive to give the illusion of a crowd. As indicated by the numbers, the booths were noticeably smaller. All the really massive booths (remember HP, Toshiba, Sony and others?) were all gone. In fact, most of the name brand companies were missing from the show. Apart from Microsoft and the various Asian conglomerations, the four biggest booths were CMP and Ziff Davis (magazine publishers), Computer Associates and the US Postal Service.
Most of the main floor (occupying about two-thirds of the North Hall) was dominated by international pavilions filled with companies looking for OEMs or distributors for computer components such as power supplies, cooling fans, cables, etc. The list included Bangladesh, China, France, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and the UK. In addition, Armenia, Barbados, Hungary, Ireland and the Northeast Tennessee Valley (a foreign country to some) all had booths seeking local IT investment. And of course there were the usual unrecognizable companies selling consumer products such as CD cleaning kits. I estimate that less than 25% of the booths on the main floor were IT-related. For example, there was a Chinese company selling the “Dart King”, an electronic dart board game. Not a massage chair, but close enough. People were lining up to try it.
On the “upper floor” (the raised part of the North Hall where Microsoft is always located), the proportion of IT-related companies seemed higher, perhaps 50%. The Microsoft Partner Pavilion was full of well-known names, as always. It seemed as though at least one third of the exhibitors relevant to mobile computing were in the Pavilion. Dell was on the upper floor – the rumor was they were enticed to exhibit at the last minute by MediaLive with extremely low-cost space and permission to sell products directly on the show floor. Consequently, the Dell booth was filled with consumer-oriented hardware (the only literature was their consumer catalog), and an order-taking kiosk occupied each corner of the booth. The only nod to IT was a small display of servers at one end of the booth.
I talked with a few IT attendees, and they were all very disappointed with the exhibits. One attendee commented that (a) the conference (education) sessions were very strong, and (b) if you weren’t plugged into the 100+ companies that had hotel suites and no booths, there wasn’t much for an IT person to see. I attended one of the conference sessions (a panel on the “Wireless Last Mile”) and found it to be quite interesting.
Gates’ Sunday-night, show-opening keynote was a “catalog speech”. By that I mean he simply cataloged everything that Microsoft is currently doing in security, web services, servers, Tablet PCs, Office, Longhorn (the next version of Windows) and a few other areas. On an inspiration scale of one to 10, it was a three, maybe a four. It was disappointing. This year’s humorous video (a traditional part of many of Gates’ keynote speeches) was a spoof of the Matrix, in which Gates cast himself as Morpheus to Ballmer’s Neo, with both of them plotting against villainous agents of IBM/Linux. I found it heavy-handed and rather silly. Last year’s video about the history of the PC business was much better.
Probably the best Tablet PC-related news at Comdex was the announcement of “Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2004” (previously code-named “Lonestar”). This upgrade to the OS, available as a free download in summer 2004, includes the following enhancements:
· Improvements to the Tablet PC Input Panel (TIP), including in-place positioning and an integrated correction capability
· Enhanced contextual handwriting recognition for URLs, email addresses and ~50 other non-standard text formats
· Improved integration with Office 2003 and OneNote, allowing annotation anywhere in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and hand-written emails in Outlook
· An XML-based context-tagging tool for defining recognition context in existing applications
· Version 1.7 of the Tablet PC SDK, which supports forms and ink in web pages
Tablet PC vendors were out in force at Comdex, with many new and improved products. In the following list (and other lists in this report), the vendors are listed in alphabetical order.
Gateway may have rushed the introduction; the sales rep in the Gateway booth had no idea what the product was, had never used the product, knew nothing about the features, and had no data sheets. Unbelievable…and sad.
HP/Compaq demoed their second-generation TPC, the TC1100. The housing is identical to the TC1000 first-generation TPC, but the insides (including the LCD) are all new. The 10.4” XGA LCD on Pentium M models, made by BOE-Hydis in Korea, has 160-degree viewing angles in all directions, which makes it excellent for portrait-mode applications such as reading an e-book. The CPU in the TC1100 can be either a Pentium M 1.0 GHz or a Mobile Intel Celeron at 800 MHz, either of which can run rings around the incredibly slow Transmeta Crusoe in the TC1000.
Sharp demonstrated their new Actius TN10W convertible Tablet PC. Notable in this product is a very nice 12.1” XGA wide-angle-view LCD. Not quite as wide as the BOE-Hydis LCD in the HP/Compaq TC1100, it’s still much better than the standard notebook LCD that most Tablet PC vendors are using. With a 1.1 GHz Pentium M, a thickness of 1.1” and a weight of 4.2 pounds, the system is otherwise quite similar to the other 12.1-inch “ultraportable” TPCs – with one exception. For some unknown reason, Sharp put a 95% keyboard (18 mm instead of 19 mm) into the product, which is a BIG mistake when there’s clearly room for a full-sized keyboard and all the competitors are using full-size keyboards. Look for a review of this product elsewhere in this issue.
Tatung, a $7B Taiwanese ODM, is expanding into the end user market with Tatung-branded products. Among many other things, they were showing both their new Tablet PC (the basis of the Electrovaya SC-2000 Scribbler) and their old Tablet PC (the basis of the ViewSonic V1100), as well as their wireless mobile thin client (available with a Geode, XScale or Transmeta CPU).
Toshiba launched their second-generation TPC, the Portege M200. This product’s most interesting feature is its 12.1” SXGA (1400 x 1050) LCD. This screen, made by Toshiba, is unique – it’s the first 12.1” screen with higher than XGA resolution. The CPU in the M200 is a Pentium M running at 1.5 to 1.7 GHz, which ties it with the Acer TM C300 for the fastest TPC.
ViewSonic demonstrated their second-generation convertible Tablet PC, the V1250. With a 1 GHz Pentium M, a 12.1” XGA screen, a thickness of 1” and a weight of 3.9 pounds, it’s quite similar to Fujitsu’s T3000 TPC. One difference is a half-inch-deep protrusion in front of the touchpad that contains several scrolling and navigation buttons. In portrait mode, the buttons are perfectly placed for PageUp/PageDown while reading – but they are also easy to hit accidentally.
ViewSonic also showed a compelling combination of their new V210 Wireless Display (formerly the AirPanel V110 Smart Display) and new AirSync Visual Management Software. The latter is an incredibly well-thought-out suite of software for over-the-air management of a fleet of mobile devices, including everything from Pocket PCs to Wireless Displays to Tablet PCs. The latter is definitely worth serious consideration!
Xybernaut, known for wearable computers such as the Mobile Assistant V, has discovered the “Wireless Display” (the wireless mobile thin client formerly known as a webpad). They showed two different versions of their Atigo tablet (one Transmeta-based, one Geode-based). A Xybernaut booth person told me that they’re seeing “tremendous movement” in the product line due to its 8.4-inch screen and light weight. At two pounds, it’s lighter than any Tablet PC, including even the NEC Versa LitePad.
The significant missing-in-action Tablet PC vendors were FIC, Itronix, NEC, Panasonic and WalkAbout. Basically none of these vendors had anything new to show, otherwise I think they would have exhibited. I found the absence of NEC and Panasonic to be the most surprising, since their products are well-differentiated by weight and durability. Perhaps their absence can be attributed to the cloud of uncertainty hanging over Comdex.
Wide-area wireless was in sharp focus at Comdex as WiFi edged closer to commoditization. While there was a moderate amount of WiFi hardware on display, little was new. Wide-area wireless networks and hardware seemed to be on everyone’s mind.
AT&T Wireless announced what they consider to be a “breakthrough” product, their GPRS EDGE network running at average speeds of 100 to 130 KBps (the name comes from “Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution”) . AT&T claimed that nationwide deployment of the EDGE network is effective immediately, covering 215 million people, 6,500 cities and 35,000 miles of highway. EDGE wireless PC cards (currently available only from Sony Ericsson) are backwards compatible with GPRS, so if you go into a geographic area where an AT&T Wireless roaming partner hasn’t enabled EDGE yet, the card still works on GPRS. EDGE does in fact seem to be the fastest wide-area network available today, but coverage is always an issue, regardless of what AT&T claims.
IPWireless gave an interesting demo of their high-speed (15 Mbps, 2.4 GHz) wide-area wireless technology in a van that was driving around Las Vegas, demonstrating that the technology worked even at 65 MPH. IP Wireless’ approach is to piggyback new hardware on cellphone towers, blanking an area with what from the user’s point of view is “802.11 everywhere”. This approach is very economical for a carrier to implement, but suffers from the usual “law of physics” problem that the further you get from the tower, the slower the data rate becomes.
Mesh Networks presented information about a different approach to high-speed wide-area wireless. Their technology uses “mesh networking”, which in simple terms means putting independent, wireless routers on top of light poles all throughout an area in order to provide what the user sees as “802.11 everywhere”. Any wireless router forwards packets to the least-loaded router that’s closer to a wired access point; eventually the packets end up at a wired access point. This peer-to-peer routing architecture is actually similar to the way the Internet works. It’s more expensive for a carrier to implement, but it (theoretically) results in every user seeing the full data rate all the time.
Motorola showed early samples of their Windows Mobile 2003-based MPx200 Smartphone. Look for more information on this product in a future issue.
Sprint announced their VoIP-based, push-to-talk service (PCS Ready Link) that will probably take even more business away from Nextel, who until recently had been the only network with push-to-talk capability (Verizon added it in August). Look for an interview with Sprint elsewhere in this issue.
One product ubiquitous throughout Comdex was the USB flash drive (“keychain” storage device). However, since the product has gone from innovative to commoditized in the space of barely one year (faster than Mach 1), vendors are struggling mightily to differentiate their products any way they can. The following USB drive “enhancement” capabilities were shown by a large flock of vendors:
· Security and/or access control
· Unique packaging (two different USB watches and an “executive pen”)
· Digital rights management
· Integrated MP3 player
· Data encryption
· Combination USB drive and Compact Flash card
· Partitioned drive with Secure and Normal zones
· Increased ruggedness (magnesium or waterproof housing)
· Integrated Memory Stick socket
· Bootable as USB HDD, FDD or Zip drive
· LCD to display the user name, file name, etc.
· Integrated CDMA or WiFi
· Increased performance
· Ultra-thin
· High-fashion styling
· Integrated fingerprint sensor
I found the integrated fingerprint sensor to be the most valuable enhancement. There were at least three vendors demonstrating this capability; the one that seemed to make the most sense was the ClipDrive Bio from Memory Experts International. The USB watches were very odd devices; one (from Xonix) had a USB cable integrated right into the watch band; the other (from Urtrend) required a separate USB cable. The vendor with the widest product line of differentiated USB drives was Netac with 10 different models.
DreamFree showed the Personal Electroencephalogram (PEEG), a “digital brain wave inducer that helps recharge the brain”. The device consists of a pair of opaque glasses and two earbuds, connected to a PDA or a mobile phone. There is an array of 5 flashing LEDs in front of each eye, although you keep your eyes closed during use, so you only faintly perceive the light pulses. During use you hear a series of pinging sounds in the earbuds. The device has a long list of claimed benefits, including enhancing concentration, inspiring desire for learning, activating brain functions (?), enlightening intelligence and understanding, increasing memory ability, recovering quickly from fatigue or jetlag, relieving stress, leading to deep sleep, etc. Each benefit requires a different setting on the PDA driving the device. I tried it for a few minutes on the “relaxation” setting and saw no effect whatsoever; the booth staff told me that I had to use it for more than 15 minutes in order to see any effect. The device, which isn’t FDA-approved for sale in the USA yet, will cost $300. DreamFree has been selling the device for three years in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China and Vietnam.
Finger System demonstrated the i-Pen, a pen-shaped, pressure-sensitive, optical mouse that writes on any surface except glass and white paper. You can think of it as being like a portable, more-capable Wacom tablet. Resolution is 800 dpi, not much different from Wacom’s 1,000 dpi. It can be used in mouse mode for pointing and clicking, and in pen mode for writing and drawing. It comes with Pen&Internet’s riteMail, for which it’s a good match. USB-corded and wireless (2.4 GHz & Bluetooth) versions are available, with a local-storage (memory) version under development.
FrogPad showed the Bluetooth FrogPad, a portable, one-handed, 20-key keyboard with all the functionality of a full-size keyboard. The $150, 3” x 5” device is designed around the 15 most-used letters in the English alphabet (they account for 86 percent of the average keyboard activity of English-language typists). Each of the 15 central keys is labeled with four letters or symbols. Around the margin of the device are 5 shift or modifier keys. In the “home” position, your thumb handles 2 keys, your pinky handles 3 keys, your middle finger handles 4 keys, your ring finger handles 5 keys, and your index finger handles 6 keys. According to FrogPad, students in studies at Rice University were able to type 40 words per minute after 8 to 10 hours of practice.
MBASIS demonstrated an incredibly tiny mobile color phone printer, the DAMO. Designed specifically to make 1.5” x 2.3” prints of mobile phone photos, the device is 3.4” x 2.8” x 1.1”, connects to the phone via a serial cable, weighs about 0.5 pounds and costs only $99 The flaw in this terrific device is that it’s not actually available. Like many Asian exhibitors at Comdex, the company is showing the product just to see what kind of reaction it gets. They haven’t even started looking for distribution yet – “We’ll do it later” is what they told me when I asked.
Psion Teklogix showed the latest version of their long-lived clamshell Windows CE device, the NetBook Pro. This nicely designed machine features an XScale CPU running at 400 MHz, an 8.5” SVGA TFT LCD with a touchscreen for navigation, a 58-key QWERTY keyboard and 8 hours of battery life. It’s targeted at sales force automation, field service management and field data-collection applications. If you find yourself straining to fit a mobile enterprise application on a PDA’s QVGA screen, this product may be the solution.
Twinhead announced their latest series of semi-rugged notebooks that may prove to be tough competition for Panasonic. Currently available with 14.1” and 15” LCDs (and 12.1” in the future), they include magnesium housings, spill-proof keyboards and shock-mounted hard disks. The N1400, for example, offers a Mobile Pentium 4 at 1.6 GHz and a 14.1” XGA LCD, weighs 5.6 pounds, is 1.3” thick, and (best of all) costs only $1,300. This is a very nice machine!
Zalman demonstrated their “Theatre 6” 5.1-channel, 6-speaker, “real surround sound” headphones. These earphones have eparate front, rear and center speakers in each headphone module. This is in contrast to “virtual surround sound” headphones that produce a virtual sound field through two speakers and a DSP. I tried the headphones with a game that made heavy use of surround sound, and unfortunately, I couldn’t tell any difference between these headphones and standard headphones.
Comdex is more of a hardware show than a software show, but a number of interesting applications were on display. A greater percentage of the software products shown were IT-oriented than the hardware products.
Anystream demonstrated Apreso for PowerPoint, an add-in that automatically captures a slide show as it is presented and instantly creates a web-based presentation with audio, video and a searchable index. This would be a terrific tool for Microsoft to use at their conferences, where the PowerPoint slides are typically so terse that they’re almost useless by themselves.
Capio released version 2.1 of Open+, a file association manager for Windows. This very handy utility allows you to associate multiple applications with multiple file types (extensions), which lets you open files with the application you want rather than what Windows wants. It eliminates programs fighting over extensions (e.g., media players) and prevents newly installed programs from “hijacking” extensions.
Design Universe demonstrated the E-Pen&Forms Builder for Tablet PC. This tool allows creating standard (scanned or file-based) forms or custom forms that can be completed by hand, recognized (using the TPC’s standard handwriting recognition capability) and then exported to Outlook, Excel, CSV, XML or any database via ODBC. On-screen forms can be organized into “frames” corresponding to the sections of a paper form. There are very few complete forms programs available for the Tablet PC, and this seems to be one of the best.
HP announced a Forms Automation System based on the Logitech “io” digital pen (renamed the “HP Digital Pen 200”) combined with handwriting recognition software from Pen&Internet. The end-to-end solution is targeted at medium and large enterprises with more than 500 employees that have significant volumes of internal handwritten forms. The most creative element of the system is the “smart” forms with embedded pen control information that can be printed on HP LaserJet printers.
Immediate launched version 1.0 of the SlideManager for PowerPoint, a tool for automating and streamlining the creation of PowerPoint presentations in enterprise environments. The program aids in creating custom versions of presentations, sharing and ensuring consistency among multiple presenters, associating slides with contextual story elements, and eliminating slide formatting issues when adding new slides to a library.
Infommersion demonstrated Xcelsius, a standalone application designed to create easily deployable, interactive reports based on Excel spreadsheets. For example, you can create an interactive report and export it as a Macromedia Flash file, making it available to over 97% of web users. The Professional Edition also includes the ability to produce content that can be updated dynamically by connecting to a live database via Web services. This is a case where a picture is worth a thousand words; take a look at the sample reports on the Infommersion website and the value of Xcelsius should immediately be apparent.
Microsoft demonstrated VoiceCommand for Windows Mobile 2003, a speaker-independent, conversational-style voice recognition capability for Pocket PC and Pocket PC Phone Edition devices (only). The software makes use of the speech tools in Windows CE version 4.2. The total vocabulary is 50-60 words (currently English only), supporting 10-15 functions (e.g., dial by number or name, find a contact, play music, find the next appointment, launch an application, etc.). The software requires a minimum of 3 MB of RAM, growing to 7 MB with 500 contacts and 100 songs. Currently the software is completely closed; Microsoft plans to make it extensible in the future. While it seems to work quite well, this is definitely a “release 1.0” product – Microsoft readily acknowledged that it will probably take three releases to reach maturity.
MyTech demonstrated PC2Gether, a program that enables 2 to 5 users to share a single PC with peripherals and Internet connection. The program requires Windows 2000 Pro/Server or Windows XP Pro/Home on the single PC. The goal of the product is to save money by avoiding the purchase, upgrade and support of multiple PCs. When I asked the Korean booth staff to explain the product to me, their English was so poor that I was unable to grasp the concept of the product. The data sheet was almost valueless, and reading the website didn’t help much either. Ultimately the only way I was able to fully understand the product was by reading a downloaded copy of the User’s Manual. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon situation with products exhibited at Comdex…
Optimal Access launched the Mobile Desktop, a portable desktop manager designed for use on USB drives. The program provides a completely customizable, 3D-matrix tabbed interface that allows instant access to hundreds of shortcuts in three clicks or less. The portable aspect of the product allows you to carry all your desktop settings, Internet favorites and Internet passwords, along with built-in security protection, zip manager, pop-up blocker and alias manager (for automatically managing drive letter changes).
Visionarts showed a new product called Algebra. The product’s tagline is, “Beautiful tools, All comes from the net”. Showcased in a 20’ x 20’ booth with six large, overhead plasma screens and graphically beautiful sales literature, the product was almost totally unintelligible. It apparently turns a web page into a workgroup environment. The Algebra software runs on a central computer or Web server (Windows XP or Unix), while the user accesses Algebra via a browser. Applications include a text viewer and editor, email, chat, a music player, a calculator and a slideshow generator. A wide range of client operating systems are supported (Windows, Mac, Linux, PDA and even cellphone OSes). The company is a startup funded by Sony. Of the three Japanese staffing the booth, only one spoke any English. According to him, the target market is “many people, end users, whoever needs it”, and the product price hasn’t been set yet. Are they clueless, or what?
Venali announced that their Internet Fax Service is seamlessly integrated with Office 2003. Actually, the software to support the service has been in Office 2003 since the launch. The service, which is just now being promoted, allows you to send faxes directly from any Office 2003 application and receive faxes as images or text directly into your Outlook 2003 email inbox. The service includes special support for the Tablet PC, allowing ink annotation directly into a fax preview and the addition of a signature to a fax by signing on the screen and sending it instantly. Although the service is aimed at the Fortune 2000, it seems like a no-brainer for even a single user, since it costs only $4.95/month for outbound and $9.95/month for inbound – less than the typical monthly cost of a dedicated fax phone line. Using the service in enterprise production fax functions such as invoicing and purchasing increases the uptime to 99.99%; this is much better than the typical uptime of physical fax machines. Another benefit is the elimination of junk faxes. Venali currently processes 4.5M faxes per day through its system; 800K of these are junk faxes which are automatically removed. Faxing may seem obsolete in 2004, but did you know that fax traffic is still increasing?
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Company/Product |
URL |
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Acer TravelMate C300 Tablet PC |
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Amtek iTablet PC |
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Anystream Apreso for PowerPoint |
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AT&T Wireless EDGE Network |
http://www.attwireless.com/speed/;dsessionid=E4QCPZN5GE0PVB4R0H0CFFA |
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Capio Open+ File Association Manager |
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Design Universe E-Pen&Forms Builder for Tablet PC |
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DreamFree Personal Electroencephalogram |
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Electrovaya Scribbler SC-2000 Tablet PC |
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Finger Systems i-Pen |
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FrogPad Bluetooth Keyboard |
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Fujitsu T3000 Tablet PC |
http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com/www/products_pentablets.shtml |
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Gateway M275 Tablet PC |
http://products.gateway.com/products/GConfig/prodcompletespec.asp?system_id=m275x&seg=hm&GCsource= |
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HP Forms Automation System |
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HP TC1100 Tablet PC |
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11755_na/11755_na.pdf |
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Immediate SlideManager for PowerPoint |
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Infommersion Xcelsius for Excel |
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IPWireless high-speed wide-area wireless |
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MBASIS Color Phone Printer |
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Company/Product |
URL |
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Memory Experts International ClipDrive Bio |
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Mesh Networks high-speed wide-area wireless |
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Microsoft VoiceCommand for Windows Mobile 2003 |
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/products/voicecommand/default.mspx |
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Motion Computing M1300 Tablet PC |
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Motorola MPx200 Smartphone |
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MyTech PC2Gether Multi-User Software |
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Netac USB drives |
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Optimal Access Mobile Desktop |
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Pen&Internet Handwriting Recognition |
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Psion Teklogix NetBook Pro |
http://www.psionteklogix.com/public.aspx?s=com&p=Products&pCat=128&pID=988 |
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Sharp Actius TN10W Tablet PC |
http://www.sharpsystems.com/products/pc_notebooks/actius/tn/10w/ |
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Sprint PCS Ready Link |
http://www.sprint.com/pcsbusiness/products_services/voice/readylink/ |
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Tatung Tablet PC |
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Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC |
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/pc/pc_tabletPcDetail.jsp?comm=CS |
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Twinhead Semi-Rugged Notebooks |
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Urtrend USB Watch |
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Venali Internet Fax Service |
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ViewSonic V1250 Tablet PC |
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/tablet_pc_tabletpcv1250.htm |
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Visionarts Algebra |
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Xonix USB Watch |
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Xplore iX104 Tablet PC |
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Xybernaut Atigo Wireless Displays |
http://www.xybernaut.com/Solutions/product/listing_product.htm |
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Zalman Real Surround Sound Headphones |