Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

Read my rant then discuss it here.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 153

Still undecided

I really, really want to adopt personal wireless technology but am reluctant to because intuitively I feel that this transition period we are in won't last long. The GSM/CDMA 3G wars will more or less get sorted out and all of the current, SLOW and spotty, solutions will be obsolete and new devices or springboards will appear - and be competitively priced. The current hardware solutions/contracts give me visions of deep buyer remorse.

Registered: Apr 2000
Location: Urbana, IL
Posts: 99

I love my Minstrel S. When it's working, it's the coolest thing ever. Everyone around me would love to use it when I use it. There's a want factor. I can see it. However, things are just a liitle too expensive right now. It looks to me like mass wireless data is whare mass cell phones were 5-10 years ago. 5-10 years from now, wireless data will be everyware. Data transfer rates will be up, pings will be down. Wireless data will rock, and every guy around will have access to it. The early adopters will get hosed, but that always happens,

Registered: Jun 2000
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posts: 216

You mean Powerbook G4

James,

In your main article you state that the Visor screen is a "Powerbook 64" compared to a cell phone.

The "64" is a typo. It should read "Powerbook G4".

Also, the whole world will be slowly shifting to WCDMA, or Wideband CDMA, as the future wireless standard. This is also known as 3G, or third generation, cellular. So GSM, even in Europe is on the way out.

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: NJ
Posts: 517

Hopefully not for another year, I just got myself a Nokia 8290 (GSM) and Voicestream service so I could surf wirelessly! Can't wait for it to come...

Once devices like the Palm M100 or low end Visor start coming with wireless access (like those cheap Motorola pagers marketed at teens) the number of users will jump, and hopefully bring the price down.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 1

I want a powerbook G4. or how about a little palm thing that looks like some sort of map thing and you fold it out and you get a huge unbreakable color screen thing
you could just distribute the visor components throughout the screen thing so it would all be paper (or at least cloth) thin and it would be like a electronic handkerchief or something

Registered: Apr 2000
Location:
Posts: 73

I'm still trying to understand the appeal of add-on springboards (such as the minstrel, etc.) for wireless internet access. Ive been connected wirelessly with my Sprint PCS cellphone and my Visor now for close to a year. The benefits are numerous:

1) I already had a cellphone. It was cheap and phones are getting cheaper if you want or need to upgrade. I'm not stuck with an expensive springboard as phone technology changes.

2) Low up front cost. Some of the data cables can be made for as low as $30.00 (and this is all that is required - if you already have a phone or intend to get one!)

3) battery weight and battery life are a function of the phone, not the Visor.

4) cheap service (low wireless web service - basically the same as your voice service minutes)

5) I can connect to any ISP (and/or connect with Sprint - but I don't have to) and get my e-mail and surf the web.

6) national coverage - same as digital voice (doesn't work in analog roam, but still the best national footprint and getting better)

7) SprintPCS will evolve soon to WCDMA (more than a magnitude increase in bandwidth)

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

Re: You mean Powerbook G4

quote:

---

Originally posted by MPM
The "64" is a typo. It should read "Powerbook G4".

---

Fixed. I guess my Nintendo 64 was on the brain for a moment.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Midwest
Posts: 232

My prediction?

Once wireless technology is focused (array antennas) and the signal is strong and wide enough to deliver private HDTV quality A/V we will discover it actually fries pets, and it will be outlawed.

I've watched too much Star Trek to NOT want to see the day when all we need to communicate is a chest pin. If a portable device arrives that makes everyone PREFER to surf the www with it, I'm betting it looks nothing like anything we have today. Probably a laser projector built into your eyeglass frames (or that chest pin) that "paints" your web page on whatever surface you have in front of you. Watch the WWW on a napkin, or the wall of your livingroom, all from your chest pin. Motion tracking technology will allow you to touch the links in the image and have that touch register as a mouse click does today. It will also track your slight or gross movement, and reproject the image in the same place, regardless.

Right now, too many devices share the same frequencies. I can't use my microwave without scambling the 2.4GHz phone signal.

Some day it will work perfect, be standardized, free, and harmless. That's a long way off, I'm afraid.

Dave

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Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 434

Wireless not even close to ready for prime time

I think that wireless is still years away from distancing itself from the "bleeding edge." Communication standards are still not settled, and there is no hope for resolution anytime in the next 4 years (at least in the USA). Pricing won't get better until sometime after the standards issue is solved. Then we have the form-factor and integration problems.

BTW, I think that integrating voice, paging/messaging and wireless Internet is essential. Does anyone really want separate devices for each function; and, even if some do, can we really afford all these service contracts?!?

As important as integration is, no one really wants voice on anything as large as a PDA (absent workable Bluetooth), and no one really wants wireless Internet on even the largest screens that are available on cell phones (i.e. the semi-clam shell ones). Also, in the case of the Palm PDA (and the Visor specifically), wireless voice or paging is never going to be accecpted if it can't operate independent of the PDA. It defeats the whole purpose of the SB slot if you can never put anything else in there for fear of missing a call or an alert for a waiting page or message.

As much as I like Trek's CommBadges, Bluetooth is the tech that will fix the form factor problem in the next year or two (or three). Once Bluetooth gets going, it won't matter how many devices we carry as long as they are wearable and inconspicuous. The watch with Bluetooth microphone is a good start, and it would be even better if it did the beeping/flashing when an alarm goes off in your PDA or a call, page or e-mail comes in. All we'd need to complete the package is a small discreet Bluetooth earpiece, a PDA with integrated Bluetooth and Bluetooth enabled wireless access device (e.g. cell phone).

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

I think SMS will be the sleeper hit of wireless connectivity, not the web, and certainly not CRAP (Wireless Application Protocol). It's already critical massed in the Phillipines (where text messaging is a more economical way to use cell phones) and Europe (where SMS use grew 900% between 1/99 and 1/00).

The one thing that keeps it from taking off in the US is our fractured cellular infrastructure. Qualcomm is integrating SMS capability into CDMA by this summer (we can only hope), which will help bridge the GSM/CDMA chasm that keeps VisorPhone users from being able to send text messages to anyone's cell phone (SMS is currently GSM-only AFAIK. Does anyone know differently?). Messaging has numerous advantages:

• Messages can be replied to at the recipient's convenience, and is therefore less obtrusive than voice communications on a cell phone
  
• Although messaging is asynchronous, you're more likely to get a faster response when people receive your messages on their cell phones than on their PCs
  
• You have the option of sending your message directly to a cell phone or directly to PC as an email (through a gateway)
  
• Because most people in urban areas have cell phones, your receivers don't have to have some special technology -- like a VisorPhone, Palm VII or RIM Blackberry -- to get your communiqu�s when they're not at their PCs
  
• It cuts down on your cell phone use: not only because transmissions take a split second, but also because you don't get mired in smalltalk and other digressions that are often inapproprate in pubic
  
• We Visor users have the luxury of choosing out prefered method of entering text: Graffiti, Stowaway, FitalyStamp, etc. You're not forced to use a tiny keyboard like the Blackberry, or a numeric keypad like a standard cell phone.
  

Registered: Jan 2001
Location:
Posts: 125

I don't know about the visor phone, but I do have SMS capabilities on my TDMA Nokia 8260 with AT&T service. I can also send SMS messages to any cellphone that supports SMS, including ones on the GSM network.