Ultra-portable terminals

[Laura Brody]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:08:03 -0400, John Esak <john at valar.com> wrote:

> As for the all-in-one issue. This thing is not a cell-ponne-camera-mp3
> player, etc. It is nothing more than a computer... very small.  If your
> computer crashes... it *all* goes down now anyway. If it is a little smaller
> and it goes down... there isn't a big difference. Down is down. :-)

	And most computer users don't have a backup....

> Mashing lots of functionality into a "cell-phone" is onething... Using a computer to emulate a phone, a camera, anmp3 player... is another. I'm all for miniaturizationuntil the damn things are in my writst watch (likeDick Tracy's communicator). Once they are thatsamll and they can tie into any nearby display... withvoice input and output... we will be in a new
> world... I give it about 5 years. :-)

	At this point, the two biggest obstacles are battery
size/power and user interface. The guts of a portable unit
can be quite tiny, but the battery is more than half the
size and weight of the entire unit. Then you have to deal
with the super tiny keys to press or just a couple of
reasonable-sized keys coupled with a crappy user
interface (some users have thick fingers, poor eyesight
and/or a short temper -- which can result in the unit
becoming airborne out the nearest open window). Voice
recognition is much better than it used to be, but still
not good enough. Additionally, when the unit gets
that small, you need a new kind of speaker, don't
you?

Sidebar:
I had to validate a Windows XP box after a repair. It
insisted that I had to do it over the internet or call
a human. Since it no longer saw the USB ethernet connection,
I dialed the number. After wading through the menus, I
had to tell the voice recognition software a string
of some 50 numbers. After all of this, a recording
tells me that I have to call back later because they
are updating their systems. And Bill Gates wonders
why so many people hate him and his company...

-- 
Laura Brody
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