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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (6596)	3/9/2000 12:09:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 12823

Hello MikeM54321, > Scott- Your comment above was interesting/timely to me. > Which brings up another investment idea that is, no > doubt, high risk. But a company I've been following for > years called Citrix Systems(sym:CTXS) has a way to, for > lack of a better word, fool a wireless device into > thinking it has a full blown wired-LAN connection to a > server. There is some very good information on the Citrix > thread and the Citrix website so I won't go into details > other than the press release below. Citrix is a very interesting product. They offer a "remote control" capability, almost similar to X-Windows in the UNIX world. Once their software is installed on a workstation or server, it allows applications to be run from any machine which supports the "ICA" protocol. (This is operating on somewhat dated experience, but should still be pretty accurate. This is a very interesting angle on how to support "Windows" applications on a non-Windows platform ... and also over the Internet using a web browser. I think that there is value it it, since most people are running Windows and Windows-based applications. It is also a very good solution for "shared" computer where the price is shared among multiple users ... however with the prices of computers dropping, I don't see how you'll be able to buy a device that supports Citrix for much less than a full computer. In the "freeware" space, there is a similar product ... VNC ... AT&T acquired it from Olivetti. I know that many people will expound upon all the reasons that it's not the same, but I have been using it and it's close enough ... for free! ;-) orl.co.uk is where you can read about it and download it ... very cool ... > But I wanted to ask you if you can add some color to your > statement above. I know little about the handheld, > cell phone, PDA market. I am curious as to why, on the > one hand you say you think miniaturization of the PC > will allow full blown PC operating systems(ie Windows) to > exsist on handhelds, yet you sound as if another OS > devoted especially to handhelds is needed? Maybe you just > mean as a stop gap measure? I actually don't believe that another is "needed", but instead think that it is "inevitable" as two very different industries come together, collide, and merge into a single market. Both, IMHO are trying to provide the same solutions to end-users, but are coming from two very different perspectives. Very much like Bell-heads and Net-heads ... both trying to provide communications services to customers. The handheld OS market is just at an earlier stage and I believe that when forced to choose between a limited/specialized application platform and a general purpose application platform, eventually the general purpose will "win" in total units. So the cell phone and PDA folks will push from their side ... and the PC folks will push from theirs. We'll have two "spins" on the perspective of the future, and some common elements will emerge. > BTW I happen to believe that miniaturization will also > solve the handheld/palm OS dilemma too. Have you > ever seen/used the Sharp Mobilon w/built in camera...well > I went to their website and apparently they have > discontinued it so I can't link you to a photo. But it > was not much bigger than a cell phone but ran Win98 and > had a fantastic mini-screen. Anyway, so much for that > product. But it did show that it's almost possible to > miniaturize the computer today. If you really want to see what has influenced my thinking, here are a couple of companies that I met with at Comdex: The "Qbe" ... qbenet.com ... a very cool "tablet" computer ... evolved from the laptop. Xybernaut ... xybernaut.com ... they have their wearable and had it available for testing at the booth ... > If there wasn't such a general hatred for Microsoft, I > wonder how many competing handheld OS there would be out > there. I know that the market seems to be able to sustain a couple ... but the real issue is application developers. How many can you get to write applications for the paltform ... they of course want to know the potential sales market size ... quite a "chicken and egg" problem ... ;-) Scott C. Lemon