Hello PJ,
> Lately I've taken to looking into learning more about developing
> products and actual programming. I'm attending a DeveloperNet
> Workshop next Monday in my area. I'm looking forward to learning
> more about what is actually going on and it's all your fault! :)
Great to hear! That makes me think ... it's too bad that Novell won't give me a kick-back for getting others to sign up as developers ... sort of the Amway Developer Program ... ;-)
> I'm keenly interested in working in the PDA area mostly because in
> the future, devices will become more dominate as the complexity of
> PCs limits end-user satisfaction.
I share your interest, but I'm not convinced that I agree with the second half of your sentence. Remember that portable devices (PDAs/Cell Phones) will be used for very different reasons than PCs ... don't expect one to eclipse the other. It's like the difference between trucks and cars ... there might be a lot of cars out there on the roads, but trucks are everywhere also ... and the popularity of SUVs shows that there is value there.
> (unless of course they begin teaching basic computer courses
> starting at the elementary level).
The local high-school here is cranking out students with Visual Basic programming skills ... C language skills ... and each year a dozen or more CNEs!! High-school ... so yes, I believe it is coming ... ;-)
> Thanks for the feedback - I didn't know NIMS was a true "ground-up"
> product. Nice to know that Novell can work something like NIMS up
> from nothing to something and it's a pure internet product.
Oh yes ... when people are allowed to do wonderful things, they can. It's too bad that people have to "fight" so violently for the opportunity to succeed inside ... ;-(
> I spoke with some Novell people last Monday and they explained
> NIMS as "email lite" and GroupWise as "email heavy".
> Interesting....
Yes ... I would have to say that NIMS is a fantastic product, which seems to be throttled by the legacy GroupWise product, which has become fairly "bloated" with features, and lacking on Internet standards support. I believe that for the last three or four years the GroupWise development has a focus in the wrong area ... it should have been opening up it's interfaces to be accessible via numerous clients and applications ... like the browser. It also needs significant work in the "supportability" of the product. A couple of ISPs that I worked with now understand just how "heavy" GroupWise is ...
> Peter J Strifas
>
> ps - what else can you tell us about COMDEX?
Comdex was really impressive in many ways. I only went down for two days, looking at specific areas of technology, and some specific companies.
Portable/Wearable Computers: There were several vendors demonstrating their products in this space. Xybernaut (I'm a shareholder) had a good booth, with constant traffic. They were allowing people to try-on the systems and check out the functionality. Via was also there, and there was another company offering "tablet" computers - I forget the name right now. The interesting thing is that these are all *full* PCs capable of running Windows, Linux, or other OSs ... with full peripheral support. And they are getting small, and light.
Storage: I was looking for large disk subsystems and found them! The specific area of technology I was interested in was the IDE-to-SCSI-RAID subsystems. I found 5 or 6 vendors in this space. These subsystems, IMHO, will change storage system designs. They allow a person to create a huge "virtual" SCSI disk drive out of cheap IDE drives which are protected by RAID 5. I can now create ~120GB SCSI disk drive, fully RAID 5 protected, for under $3000!
Cameras: Expect these things everywhere ... people were showing USB cameras that are the size of a book of matches ... and cheap.
USB: This is becoming more and more dominant at the peripheral interface. Although Firewire is still preferred in the video markets, USB devices were everywhere. The "biggest" introduction seemed to be USB Ethernet - a way to expand the home PC to Ethernet without opening the box.
MP3 Players: These were also everywhere, every-color, every-size, and cheap.
I'll try to think of more ... I'm still filing my literature ... ;-)
Scott C. Lemon |
