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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MileHigh who wrote (19941)	5/11/1999 5:21:00 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Mile, RMBS closing in on 50 DMA, close, but no cigar<g> timely.com

To: MileHigh who wrote (19941)	5/11/1999 6:00:00 PM
From: Dave B	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

OTOTOT MileHigh, I know the article you posted was for everyone, so these are general comments (not posted directly to you)... This Qualcomm Thin Phone mentioned in the article seems to have 4 benefits/target uses: -- A mailbox that can receive, display and store email. The mailbox will be able to receive and store faxes, allowing wireless customers to forward the data to any fax machine for easy printing. -- The U S WEST Dex online directory that gives customers instant access to Yellow Page as well as business and white pages listings. Users can scroll through key words to search for listings by geographic location or name. As numbers are located, users simply press "Send" to make the call. -- Internet sites offering business and financial news, sports headlines, weather information, local event information and travel tips. With the assistance of built-in technology, users later this year will be able to access text-based information ranging from Web sites such as Bloomberg business wire, ABC News, ESPN as well as other Internet sites. Customers using business or personal Web sites designed by U S WEST !NTERPRISE and U S WEST Dex will be able to use their wireless phones to access their own company intranet or personal Web sites -- a first in the industry. -- An online "Help" service offering answers to frequently asked questions. While I agree that these are all valid requirements for individuals, I personally believe that there are better answers than a web-surfing telephone for meeting these needs. With respect to the mailbox and fax capabilities, both Nortel (with Call Pilot) and Lucent (with Octel Messenger) have products available today that provide better solutions. Specifically, these products let you access a unified mailbox (e-mail, voice, fax) via voice commands. The Octel solution, I believe, can already read your e-mails to you, which the Qualcomm solution cannot do, and Nortel is probably less than a year away from providing this capability. Both let you forward faxes via voice commands. Voice commands and text-to-voice conversion is quite a bit safer when you're trying to access your mailbox while driving than the Qualcomm (and others) solution. With respect to the on-line directory, again I can already do that with voice (dial 411 or 1-area code-555-1212). Most of these systems will let you also dial automatically. There may be some small advantage to being able to look up places by function (e.g. plumbers) rather than by name, but for me that's a pretty minimal benefit. As for web access, I just can't imagine trying to read a web page on one of those tiny screens. I'd rather get my stock quotes from Schwab which also has a voice-activated quote system. Again, much safer while driving. If I'm in a hotel room, I'm going to have my laptop with me anyway, so I might as well use that so that the web pages look halfway decent. Finally, I have no idea what the on-line help system is going to do, so there's nothing to add there. These phones just seem to me to be a solution to a problem that should be solved in other ways -- specifically, through voice-access, and I can already use my current cell phone for that. I'd certainly take one of these Thin Phones if it was the same price as a non-web-surfing version, but wouldn't pay anything extra. JM2C, Dave