3com featured in SF Chronicle article about PC Expo
Tech Firms Gear Up for PC Expo in the Big Apple
Henry Norr, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, June 21, 1999
From wireless shopping to coin- size hard drives, the latest in computing gear will be on display this week in the Big Apple, where PC Expo, the East Coast's biggest computer trade show, opens its annual run tomorrow.
More than 100,000 showgoers -- mainly corporate computer users -- will get a chance to kick the tires on new products at some 500 vendor booths filling New York City's cavernous Javits Convention Center.
Many of the exhibits are the usual computer-show fare, from the fastest-ever Pentium chips to the latest in surge suppressors. But the show also reflects trends that are reshaping the high-tech world, including an increasing emphasis on mobility and wireless communications and the growing importance of the consumer market.
3Com will lead a parade of manufacturers touting new wireless products. In addition to highlighting OpenSky, the on-the-go Internet access service it announced last week, the Santa Clara company will unveil AirConnect, a new product family that will let businesses link their PCs into a local-area network without running wires.
Wireless LANs aren't new, and AirConnect won't ship until September. But 3Com says its technology will deliver data much faster than competing products and at little or no increase in price. It can transfer 11 megabits per second, which makes it a shade faster than the Ethernet wired networks currently installed in most offices -- and more than five times faster than a new wireless scheme Compaq Computer plans to demonstrate at this week's show.
3Com also will be giving heavy play to the Palm VII, its electronic organizer and wireless Internet device, which currently is sold only in the New York area. Meanwhile, smaller companies will be pushing add-on products that bring similar communications capabilities to other Palm models and competitors, in some case by connecting to pagers. Motorola also will introduce an improved version of the PageWriter, its two-way pager with a built-in keyboard.
GoAmerica Communications will show off a wireless comparison- shopping service for handheld devices. Subscribers will type in (or scan) the UPC bar code number of the product in which they're interested, and the service will respond with details about the item and prices from a variety of online outlets.
If you find a deal you like, you'll be able to order it with a few taps on the screen of your Palm or similar device. The service is in beta testing, with final release set for late this year. By then, GoAmerica said, it will have information on approximately 100 million products.
With laptop computers accounting for a growing share of overall PC sales and an even larger proportion of industry profits, numerous vendors will highlight new notebook models, many of them including the 400-MHz chips Intel announced just last week.
While some of the new models are 7- or 8-pound behemoths, more than ever will be aimed at travelers ready to sacrifice some features to ease the burden on arms and shoulders. IBM, for instance, will roll out a new ThinkPad model that weighs only 2.9 pounds, yet includes a keyboard only 5 percent smaller than standard.
In the desktop arena, one theme will be a new stress on styling, as PC-makers seek to duplicate the success of Apple's curvaceous iMac. Gateway will show off its new Profile line, in which the computer components are built right into the back of a flat-panel display that's only three inches thick.
Microsoft once again will demo a prerelease version of Windows 2000, the long-delayed successor to Windows NT, which now is slated to ship late this year. The Redmond, Wash., giant also will be touting the virtues of its recently released Office 2000 suite, while Corel tries to get showgoers to check out its competing suite, WordPerfect Office 2000.
Meanwhile, Adobe will overhaul its line of graphics applications. Along with a new, Web-oriented update to Photoshop, its $609 program for professional graphics, the San Jose company will show off a stripped-down $99 version called Photoshop LE, which it will begin selling retail for the first time.
For the growing ranks of novice users of scanners and digital cameras, Adobe will introduce a brand- new program called ActiveShare and a companion Web site, ActiveShare.com, where users will be able to create online albums and host chats for invited guests.
Intel and Kodak also will be touting Picture CD, a jointly developed plan that lets users of film cameras get digital versions of their snapshots, plus simple and fun software for editing and distributing them, along with their prints.
Set to ship August 1, ActiveShare will cost less than $20. Adobe said the software will be distributed free through a variety of promotional programs and bundling deals.
Hardware vendors also are targeting consumers whose hard drives are overflowing with images and music. IBM will show the MicroDrive, a newly released hard drive for cameras and handheld devices that's the size of a silver dollar but holds 340 megabytes of data. And a slew of vendors will introduce improved rewritable CD drives, which have gained popularity for backing up data and recording digital video and audio.
Iomega, maker of the popular Zip and Jaz drives, will jump into the CD arena for the first time with Zip CD, a rewritable model scheduled to ship in August with a street price of $299.95. |
