Wireless devices are bringing more
efficiency to business — enjoyably
In the 1850s, Horace Greeley advised, "go West young man". In the 1990s Bill Gates asked "where do you want to go today?" We have a pattern of migration and change in America. But how much mobility do we need in corporate and personal computing?
Wireless connections and handheld computing are two of the leading trends in information technology today. Comdex, that mammoth gathering of computer nerds and billionaires in Las Vegas, tries to highlight new computing trends. Notice some of the categories for the winners of 2001 "Best of Comdex": Best E-business Product, Best Notebook, Best Wireless. The "Best of Show" award went to a new, powerful laptop computer, the Fujitsu Series P.
Why this fascination with mobility in computing? Is it more productive? Is it cheaper? Is it more fun?
In an effort to better understand this mad rush to mobility, I recently visited two of my favorite Web sites: www.pcconnection.com and www.cdw.com. Both of the sites are leaders in supplying the toys and tools of computer lovers around the world.
There were more than 145 things you could buy to make yourself more computerly mobile. I’m sure there are thousands of things you could get, but following are descriptions of some of the mobility tools I found at those sites.
Laptops
You can get laptops in any flavor and color you desire these days. Some of you may remember your fathers and mothers talking about the first laptops. They were from a new company called Compaq. Those portable computers were about the size of a portable sewing machine.
If you actually put one of those early Compaq portable computers on your laptop, you would have done some serious damage to your lap. The computer had a screen with green or yellow letters and about 10 megabytes of storage, weighed about 25 pounds, and had to be plugged in to run. Oh yes, it cost about $10,000.
But now, the Best of Show laptop weighs 3.4 pounds, has a crisp color screen, includes a read-write DVD, has a battery life of 2-5 hours, and has about 1,000 times the storage of the original laptop. Oh yes, it costs about $1,500. One nice thing a recent reviewer noted about this new laptop is that you can easily watch or create your own DVD movies on it.
Handhelds
These little beauties are for serious mobility junkies. The newest handhelds from the laptop pioneer, Compaq, are called IPaq 3800s. They weigh 6.7 ounces. They have a crisp color screen, a battery life of 1-2 days. They have 500 times the storage of the original laptop (with the optional IBM microdrive) and can be used to make color sales presentations. It cannot be used to play DVD movies (yet). Oh, yes, it costs about $950 with the microdrive.
Some other items the serious mobility junkie might need are:
Pocket cameras to connect to your laptop so you can send pictures of a new milling machine to the office back home. To do this you would also need the PCS wireless Internet connection card. You can attach barcode scanners to your laptop or handheld to keep track of inventory. You can plug in Global Positioning System cards into your laptop to help you find your way back home.
In an attempt to test the practical limits of mobility today, I took along a couple of mobile devices on my last trip West. I took a HP Omnibook XE3 laptop ($2,200), and a Sprint Kyocera palm-phone ($400). These units were light enough that I could carry them in my briefcase. I had to show them to people at several airport check points, but that seems to be normal these days.
I used the Omnibook to type up notes from my meetings, and to play a full DVD movie while I was waiting two hours in the airport. Note, however, the battery was getting pretty low after that movie.
I was also able to easily call back to the office on the Sprint palm phone and, via that phone, make appointment changes. I like the Sprint Kyocera palm phone. It combines a good cell phone with the Palm Pilot organizer. So instead of carrying two things, I only carry one.
When I am back in the office, I easily synchronized my Kyocera palm phone with my official calendar, address book and e-mail. One nifty feature of this phone is that after you have synchronized your palm phone with your office email system, you can dial any phone number in the address book with three "taps" on the phone’s screen.
Did my mobility devices make my trip more productive? Yes, since I could do correspondence, stay in touch with office issues, and update plans while I was gone. Are they cheaper? Well, they are cheaper than the original Compaq portable units, but I’d be hard-pressed to say the mobility devices are cheaper than paper and pencil. Are they more fun? No question, yes. I have been bored stiff in airports before, not this time.
If you want to learn more about computer mobility concepts, you might consider taking the Marketing 191 course at MATC (www.matc.edu). This course covers how to maintain good customer relationships using the Web we live in.
Mark Trask is associate vice president for information technology at Milwaukee Area Technical College. He can be contacted at traskweb@matc.edu.
Jan. 4, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
