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PCExpo 2001 Coverage
Author: David Pitlyuk
Date Posted: June 27th, 2001
URL: http://www.slcentral.com/articles/01/6/pcexpo
Introduction
I just got back from PCExpo 2001 and I have a ton of great things to show you guys. PCExpo is known for covering a lot of new wireless technologies that deal with things like PDA's, cell phones, etc, as well as business products. It was definitely the same this year, but we still got a look at a fair share of other products. Before we start looking at anything or talking about any companies, let me show you a quick overview of what the conference was like.
Jacob Javits Conference Center |
A closer look |
Let's walk in, shall we? |
One corner of one side, we see Handspring who had quite a big booth at the event |
Another corner. Roxio had a big presentation that everybody seemed to like. |
The other side of the building, you can see Intel's presence. |
Walking into the event was all about Sony. They promoted their wireless products, especially the Clie PDA. |
TechTV Live was there. Notice on what's going on the set is on the screen. |
Another angle, this time with the camera guys. |
That should cover your general pictures of the event. Believe me, there's a lot more that you haven't seen!
For the rest of the article I will be splitting it up by companies to talk about their products and some of what we talked about with them.
PaceBlade Technology
This was one of my favorite products shown here at PCExpo this year. It's from a company called PaceBlade Technology. The product is called the PaceBook, which is really the first tablet notebook. Let me explain why. Take a look at these pictures:
The PaceBook as a tablet |
The PaceBook as a notebook |
The PaceBook as a desktop |
Desktop, but in portrait mode |
You can see from this that the PaceBook allows a lot of functionality. Since the keyboard is used wirelessly, you can set it apart from the actual tablet, I believe it will work up to 30 feet away. In comparison to an actual notebook, you can separate the monitor to make it more like a desktop rather than having it right in front of the keyboard.
On the actual tablet there are various features that allow for upgrade ability and compatibility with other products. First of all there is are on-board speakers as well as a microphone. There is a slot for a PC card, a 100MBps LAN/56K connector, VGA connector, and USB as well as firewire ports. I should mention that the unit supports the 802.11b wireless format, as well as an option for Bluetooth. The entire unit weighs about 1.7kg and is only 1" thick.
The units I saw looked very slick and the LCD seemed to be easy to see. The 12.1" XGA screen really doesn't seem that small, and PaceBlade demonstrated a few things including a full-screen MPEG which looked awesome.
Here are some of the inside specs:
- Transmeta Crusoe 600MHz processor
- 4MB SMI Lynx graphics controller
- 128MB SDRAM
- 20GB HDD
- 12.1" XGA TFT-LCD display
- Windows ME or Windows 2000 OS
- Optional accessories include CD-RW/DVD-ROM, wireless infrared remote control and CCD camera.
I've been showing you shots of the product from the press CD they provided to us, but here's a couple shots of the product at PCExpo:
Desktop mode |
Portrait mode |
I'll be trying to get a review unit here, and possibly a couple other products in the same arena for a comparison in the future.
Related Links:
Delphi Automotive Systems
Another cool product that is used in conjunction with your Palm V/Vx and Ericsson 280/1228D mobile phone, is the Communiport MPCpro. The unit is installed into your car and allows full voice recognition capabilities with your Palm, which can in turn interact with your cell phone (Note: It has to be an Ericsson 280/1228D phone). The MPCpro allows text-to-speech as well as speech recognition and is set on your dashboard or on your windshield. It can read to-do lists, date books, or e-mail messages, as well as dial a requested phone number. I asked how accurate the voice recognition was, and Delphi's representative told me that with a PDA that had over 400 names stored, it rarely got anything wrong.
This is a cool product, but personally I wouldn't spend my money on it, although I did not get a chance to demo the product to actually see if it really was capable of. Delphi showed the unit in a new Lexus:
Nice car |
A little hard to see |
Related Links:
Imation
I didn't even know Imation was making any new products other than storage media, but it looks they have quite a product lined targeted towards consumers and making use of our new digital age. They had 3 products that were just released that they are really pushing.
The first product we'll talk about is called the RipGO! The RipGO! plays mini CD-R disks in MP3 and WMA formats. It's basically an MP3 CD player, but in the mini CD-R format, so it allows the same sort of convenience in terms of size as a normal MP3 player. A mini CD-R will record about 3 hours of CD quality music. That's not all though, the actual unit is also the recorder, so there's no need for anything extra to make the CD's. Just in case any of you are wondering, mini CD's do play in your normal CD drive. The RipGO! should be available in September for a retail price of $399.99.
The RipGO! |
Next on the lineup is FlashGO! I think this product is great and a definite best buy. Some of you have seen flash memory card readers, but they are actual drives, they are bulky, and who wants another big thing to take up precious room. Imation used the same idea, made a small USB flash memory card reader/writer that supports Compact Flash (Type I and II), Smart Media, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital, Memory Stick, and IBM's microdrive. That's pretty impressive considering it's just a little unit that sticks out of your USB port when you need to use it. This is also great if you have numerous products using various (or even the same kind) of flash memory, rather than installing drivers for each product, you only use this one. A representative told me that future formats would be supported as well.
The FlashGO! |
Last is a 20GB tape drive which you can use for backups. The special thing about this is that it uses the Firewire or 1394 format which is very very fast. Not much more to say about this, but here's a shot:
Travan Firewire |
I was also shown a new product called the DiscGO!, but it is not stated for release until Q4. First let me show you the picture:
The DiscGO! |
See how small the disk is? It stores 500MB! We can't wait for this to come out, especially to see other uses for the format. Will this be able to blow flash memory cards out of the water?
Related Links:
Eizo
I just wanted to show an awesome looking setup from the guys at Eizo, who sell some very amazing LCD and plasma monitors. I was very impressed by the quality. Just a quick note, Eizo targets corporate users and usually sells in bulk. The monitors used here are the Eizo FlexScan L675.
You wish you had this setup |
Related Links:
Panasonic
Panasonic was showing off their DVD-RAM/R drives. Of course that automatically appeals to our taste:
The drive |
The editing software |
The drive is called "DVDBurner" and will retail under $600 (That means $599.99 I suppose). The drive has the ability to write and read 4.7GB and 9.4GB DVD-RAM discs.
Related Links:
PC-EPhone
Another one of my favorite looking products was the PC-EPhone. This is a full internet access, cell phone, and PDA all in one.
The PC-EPhone |
I didn't get much of a chance to use this for a while but from what I used, it's very cool. The LCD screen is 4" and is actually very readable. Websites are compressed down, but you are actually looking at a 640x480 resolution, so you don't even need to view PDA enabled websites, you can actually browse the normal web. It has the Bluetooth chip. There is a built-in MIC and speakers, as well as a MIC jack and an out for headphones. The unt comes with a cradle which recharges the battery, so no need to keep buying batteries. It also has built-in voice recording capabilities. The PC-EPhone is based on Windows CE 3.0 currently.
When I used it, the one thing I did not like was the typing apparatus. It was very hard and took forever just for me to write systemlogic.net in IE. I didn't get a chance to ask if there was another method of writing text, but I'm sure there is.
A representative told me that you can use your cell phone minutes for the phone capabilities, and they are fully compatible with most of the companies out there. I find that very useful.
The product should be released officially around Comdex time (November), and I was told would retail at close to $1,000.
The PC-EPhone live |
Related Links:
Iomega
Iomega had 2 new products, including one that was announced at PCExpo. The first product is called the Iomega Peerless.
The Iomega Peerless |
The Peerless is a pocket sized 10GB or 20GB hard drive with speeds up to 15MB/sec (With the FireWire version). There is a FireWire and USB 1.1 version, and a USB 2.0 version is being looked into. You can buy the unit with the base station at first, and if you want more drives, you can buy the drives for cheaper. Apparently Iomega was using the Peerless in the car using an LCD screen to show that it can provide up to 45 hours of near DVD-quality video or 700 hours of near-CD quality music, but I missed it.
Next up is the 250MB Zip drive. What's so new about this, it's been out for a long time now? It's now USB! Which means that it doesn't need to be plugged in, it's faster, and it's 10 times more convenient.
The Iomega Zip 250 USB |
Related Links:
Acqis Technology, Inc.
Most likely you've never heard of Acquis but they make a great looking product. I haven't used it in the real-world, but from what they showed me, it looks very useful. What Acquis does is make this very small product that looks like a removable hard-drive. It is much more than that actually, it's an entire PC. It's only 1 pound yet fits a PIII 700, 128MB of RAM (Up to 256MB), a 20GB hard drive, and a 4MB video card. A representative showed me that motherboard that goes into this and it's amazing how they fit so much into such a small product.
Look how small this is |
They also told me about a new tablet computer that they are building, and they are planning to have it ready by Comdex time.
Related Links:
Intel
Intel was at the event with quite a large booth. All over the city and in their booth they are promoting what they call macroprocessing. Look at this big ad:
See the big macroprocessing banner? |
I was a bit curious to find out more about exactly what macroprocessing was in relation to microprocessing. It took me 3 different Intel reps there in that section to finally get a semi-answer. I found it kind of funny that the Intel reps didn't know what it was and they were working in the macroprocessing area.
Related Links:
AMD
AMD had a nice booth with various manufacturers computers running Athlon's and Duron's for people to try out.
Nice booth |
And of course Athlon 4 was there!
Mobile Athlon 4 on an HP laptop |
Nothing really new from either Intel or AMD.
Related Links:
Compaq
I went over to Compaq's booth to see if there was anything new and exciting there. They had a new MP3 CD player and a new MP3 player which I cannot remember the name of. Here's a picture of it though:
You can see the new MP3 CD player sticking out in the corner |
This player stores 20GB of data in it and retails for something like $799. Pretty hefty price if you ask me.
Related Links:
IBM
IBM had a product called the TransNote digital notepad that caught my attention. It's basically a laptop with a notepad to the side, but anything you write on the paper, comes up on the computer.
Would you every use this? |
IBM promoted a lot of their e-business products like servers and applications.
Related Links:
Xybernaut
You've probably never heard of this company either, but I'm sure you will be in the near future. We've all heard about wearable computing, well lets take it to the next level and actual bring it to reality. That's just what this company is doing. With IBM on its side to help manufacture the product, it's sure to go places. This was definitely in the top 3 coolest products at PCExpo in my opinion. The unit consists of 3 pieces, a headset, a tablet, and a PC basically. The computer hangs on one side of your pants and you can hold the tablet in your hand. With the tablet on it basically runs Windows like any normal computer does. With the headset it gives the effect of a large monitor that is always in front of you. The rep that is in the pictures below told me about a next generation product coming out, and that the company was working on voice recognition. This definitely looks like they can go somewhere with it.
The computer |
The headset |
The tablet |
Related Links:
Toshiba
Toshiba had a big booth featuring a good amount of products, including some of their future line, which looks very promising. One thing that hasn't been released yet is their home networking solutions. The solution offers the ability to network a house or office wirelessly (Using 802.11b) when it is being built. The solution will cost generally around $4,000, and they are currently doing testing right now. It will offer broadband sharing to the whole house, security, cameras which can be controller through a VPN (Virtual Private Network) through the web, and much much more.
I offered to have them test at my house, but they said no :( |
The insides |
This product also hasn't been released yet, but it's an ADSL gateway/router which uses WiFi or Bluetooth technology.
To be released soon |
Now onto the good stuff, the future products. These are some very cool looking products which shows much work is really being put into PDA's and cell phones. On the left are bluetooth headphones.
When do these come out! |
I thought this next product was great. It's a future projector that is sooo small compared to current projectors. There's no word yet on how good the quality on something like this would be, but I can't imagine it would be anything but perfect.
This must weigh nothing |
These are very small hard-drives. They make not look like it from the picture, but they are about a quarter of the size or smaller of a normal 3.5" hard-drive.
Ok future, hurry up |
Related Links:
Minolta
I had to show this digital camera from Minolta. It's the DiMage 7 5.2 MegaPixel digital cam. That's not a joke, 5.2 MegaPixels. I took a look at a few of the shots taken with the camera and the quality is unreal. The camera goes for $1,499, which in my opinion is a great price (In terms of current market trends).
Beautiful |
Live and in person |
Related Links:
FrontPath
Here's another tablet featuring the Transmeta Crusoe processor. It's from a company called FrontPath. Currently it's marketed towards healthcare, but a consumer version may be in the works.
I love these things |
Related Links:
Asus
Not many of our hardware guys came out to PCExpo, but the ones that did, we got to talk to. We got to take a look at the Asus GeForce3 card featured below:
Is that a TV-Tuner? |
They also had the A7A266 which is the first motherboard to have capabilities for both DDR and PC133 SDRAM.
Notice the separate DIMMS for each type of memory |
Related Links:
Transcend
Transcend was also at the event. They showed us their new line of Rambus memory which comes with heat spacers:
Will Rambus ever become a standard? |
They also showed us a pre-production model of the TS-DRC3 which is a dual Intel Tualatin motherboard. It also has an on-board ATI Rage chip, 2 on-board SCSI ports, and 2 on-board Ethernet jacks.
Dual rules |
Related Links:
Conclusion
That's it for this year's PCExpo 2001, I hope to go again next year. Our next event coverage should be Comdex 2001 if we can get there so look for that. We covered an array of products from various companies. If you have any questions or would like more information on any of the products we've talked about, feel free to post a reply in the comments for this article. Until next year.
Re-Printed From SLCentral
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