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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Spiers who wrote (5919)	6/4/1999 2:35:00 AM
From: NY Stew	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 60323

To: Gary Spiers who wrote (5919)	6/4/1999 7:13:00 AM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Gary, The post you were referencing was very self-serving and I simplified matters greatly so that they conformed to my argument. Having browsed some Windows CE message boards I am aware of the limitations that you mention and the frustration experienced by expert users like yourself who push the limits of these devices. It is sad that Microsoft "cripples" Win CE intentionally so that it does not bite into the full-featured Windows software market. Perhaps it would be best if they just gave users a license to both and included everything on a single CD ROM. Then you could use your home PC as a base and take advantage of a smaller, more portable version (not crippled as it currently is) that automatically recognized files created from Windows applications without first translating them to a scaled down version for the PDA. Then the Win CE devices could be like fully integrated, small rover modules that detached from the mother ship (the desktop) as a full-featured companion capable of supporting life outside the home. I take no offense to your rebuttal, Gary. I think that it is always difficult to find common ground on such matters when the users' interests, demands and tolerances are so variable. I do, however, find that my NEC handheld offers the functionality I would seek in a laptop. I also believe that color displays and a departure from the limited features offered by the current Palm OS (gray scale) devices could still create a viable market for SNDK. In fact, they may create an entirely new market for those interested in portable multimedia applications including gaming. Wish you were here more often to keep the discussion in line, Gary! The good news is that we probably agree on much more than you may think. Thanks for challenging the faulty logic in some of my long-winded and overly dramatic posts. Aus

To: Gary Spiers who wrote (5919)	6/4/1999 7:34:00 AM
From: Ausdauer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 60323

Gary and Thread, I wished to solicit some comments regarding the following. I was reading last night about the model for success that Intel created and enjoyed for so many years. Beginning with their 8088/8086 CPU line they continued to add functionality in their 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro, Pentium II and now Pentium III products. Each successive offspring gobbled up more and more chips from the motherboard. Sound, multimedia, communications and videoconferencing hardware may also fall victim to this so-called "black hole" in the motherboard. For SNDK to enjoy a similar string of successes there must be additional functionality. Being technologically challenged I will probably sound like a complete idiot. I am willing to take that risk. Would it be possible, for example, to create a CF module that housed the OS and could be upgraded at the users discretion with subsequent versions? The ease of upgrading would be phenomenal. Also, it would be great to be able to partition this module to include RAM memory and a cache. Clearly this would violate the standards of the CFA, but perhaps the final product would not be a CF card at all. It could eliminate such nuisances as the back-up lithium battery on the motherboard and the fear of losing all one's data should the device be left unattended for a period of time. I am also interested to know if anybody has any expertise in voice recognition. One of the biggest drawbacks (nuisances) of the technology is creating the personalized phonic library that the computer scours each time the application is launched. It would be great to be able to create a single library of .wav audio files that could be permanently recorded on a CF card and transported from device to device. Voice recognition will someday be a huge part of our lives and it would be helpful to have a defacto standard so that such considerations could be facilitated. It would be fantastic to be able to walk up to a PC stationed somewhere in the workplace or offsite, plug in your voice library and dictate away. Having used a voice recognition program (Dragon Systems) for over a year on my home PC I have found the technology to be absolutely fascinating. It is especially gratifying because a linguistics professor at Yale told me in 1981 that such technology would never come to fruition in my lifetime. It seems like this innovation is already bearing fruit. I guess Seagate sees some future in it as well. They own a big chunk of Dragon (soon to go public) in addition to their SanDisk interests. Could this be a match made in heaven? Ausdauer