Friday, July 19, 2002
An overview of Comdex Canada
Posted by Jason Dunn in "ARTICLE" @ 10:30 AM
Thoughts reader James Bodiam went to Comdex Canada and came back with a great report - I have yet to attend a Comdex Canada, and even though the Pocket PC presence in Canada is sadly lacking (we're a "Palm country" if there ever was one), James found some things to get excited about.
"Hi Jason, [I] just wanted to drop you a quick note about this year's Comdex Canada. Although a great deal smaller than previous year's shows there were a few highlights for myself and a former co-worker who took today off to tour the show with me.<!>"
"[I] Had a chance to compare my Jornada 568 to the new ipaq 3970. With my Jornada set at full brightness, I compared it to the 3970 which was set at half brightness... the difference was mind-blowing! The screen was a great deal sharper and a picture beamed over looked amazing for colours and sharpness. I asked about a number of reported issues with Xscale processors that I have seen mentioned on Pocket PC sites... couldn't duplicate any of the issues with button presses, etc. and the Windows Media played a 100 Mb movie file without any difficulties from a compact flash card. At another booth, a 3970 connected to a cellphone with GPRS via Bluetooth without issue and a great deal faster than my GPRS PCMCIA card.
[I] Did manage to meet up with a representative from Novatel Wireless and mentioned some issues I was having with my card - he tried it with his ipaq and it connected in seconds... we compared settings, and one minor change and performance is greatly improved! (note: don't always follow the manual that the signal provider includes with their card.)
We had a chance to watch a presentation on Tablet PC being launched on November 7, 2002. The demo was using a prototype Acer notebook/tablet PC, and it took a minute to scrape our jaws off the floor! Considering this was running on a Pentium III 750MHz processor we were truly impressed with what we saw. [I] Had a chance to play with a couple of demonstration units, and walked away wiping up drool and saying to each other, gotta getta tablet!
When I think back, as we were discussing over lunch later in the afternoon, looking at "science fiction" shows like the original Star Trek, and thinking, that's a dream world regarding the "technology" used on the show, and then look where we are now, seems that Gene Roddenberry wasn't that far off. Talking about applications for tablet PCs, we could come up with numerous scenarios besides usage in the workplace.
[There] Wasn't much else of mention there, we passed by the Palm pavilion seeing as we have both switched to Pocket PCs this year and find them a great deal more useful in our daily work and personal lives, and wonder how we managed with so much paper and a Palm, compared to all the uses we have for our Pocket PCs now.
And as for the 3970 ipaq units...I'm saving my pennies, not only am I buying myself one, but all the family are going to get one for Christmas this year! No more buying planners and refills and calendars, we're going Pocket PC all the way! I even sent a note to my favourite folks at Time/Design suggesting that they port their desktop PC application which duplicates the paper planning system I have used for 13 years with a portable technology solution.
I had tried the Avaya IP softphone software on my Jornada and was impressed to see what could be done with it... considering where I have seen telecom grow to since I first started programming and managing PBX systems over the past 10 years...all I can say is WOW! Avaya and one of their channel partners had a display with their IP telephony solution up and running...we tried one of the 4620 touch screen IP phone sets (very impressive technology...like a really big Pocket PC), and they demonstrated the softphone running on a Compaq ipaq 3870, along with an 802.11b PC card in an expansion sleeve, and the rep was able to walk away from the booth, call one of the phones there and we were able to carry on a conversation with very clear sound, not the scratchy, static laden signals that wireless phones used to have. I can now finally see my way clear to recommend IP telephony for business use.
I was talking to Jay at lunch today about how to use Pocket PC in the IT world...imagine your technicians being out on a service call, and checking their open tickets from their Pocket PC to see if any other work was needed in the area they were working in...being able to have a voice conversation with a technician, or doing other dispatch work, or checking e-mails while working away from your workstation. Being able to reference technical documents on a server, using something like Adobe Acrobat Reader instead of lugging manuals around. Or using the new wiring patch panels that can talk to a computer in IT, downloading required jobs to the display panel on the rack, or tracing cables by pushing a button, connecting voice and data instantly. I'd say that the kind of work and speed of completion is about to improve greatly over the coming few years, allowing someone like myself to schedule work for technicians better, and to get more accomplished in less time, and allowing people to have a life outside the office!
So, for the small amount of vendors there, I was very impressed with the few areas we examined closely."
"Hi Jason, [I] just wanted to drop you a quick note about this year's Comdex Canada. Although a great deal smaller than previous year's shows there were a few highlights for myself and a former co-worker who took today off to tour the show with me.<!>"
"[I] Had a chance to compare my Jornada 568 to the new ipaq 3970. With my Jornada set at full brightness, I compared it to the 3970 which was set at half brightness... the difference was mind-blowing! The screen was a great deal sharper and a picture beamed over looked amazing for colours and sharpness. I asked about a number of reported issues with Xscale processors that I have seen mentioned on Pocket PC sites... couldn't duplicate any of the issues with button presses, etc. and the Windows Media played a 100 Mb movie file without any difficulties from a compact flash card. At another booth, a 3970 connected to a cellphone with GPRS via Bluetooth without issue and a great deal faster than my GPRS PCMCIA card.
[I] Did manage to meet up with a representative from Novatel Wireless and mentioned some issues I was having with my card - he tried it with his ipaq and it connected in seconds... we compared settings, and one minor change and performance is greatly improved! (note: don't always follow the manual that the signal provider includes with their card.)
We had a chance to watch a presentation on Tablet PC being launched on November 7, 2002. The demo was using a prototype Acer notebook/tablet PC, and it took a minute to scrape our jaws off the floor! Considering this was running on a Pentium III 750MHz processor we were truly impressed with what we saw. [I] Had a chance to play with a couple of demonstration units, and walked away wiping up drool and saying to each other, gotta getta tablet!
When I think back, as we were discussing over lunch later in the afternoon, looking at "science fiction" shows like the original Star Trek, and thinking, that's a dream world regarding the "technology" used on the show, and then look where we are now, seems that Gene Roddenberry wasn't that far off. Talking about applications for tablet PCs, we could come up with numerous scenarios besides usage in the workplace.
[There] Wasn't much else of mention there, we passed by the Palm pavilion seeing as we have both switched to Pocket PCs this year and find them a great deal more useful in our daily work and personal lives, and wonder how we managed with so much paper and a Palm, compared to all the uses we have for our Pocket PCs now.
And as for the 3970 ipaq units...I'm saving my pennies, not only am I buying myself one, but all the family are going to get one for Christmas this year! No more buying planners and refills and calendars, we're going Pocket PC all the way! I even sent a note to my favourite folks at Time/Design suggesting that they port their desktop PC application which duplicates the paper planning system I have used for 13 years with a portable technology solution.
I had tried the Avaya IP softphone software on my Jornada and was impressed to see what could be done with it... considering where I have seen telecom grow to since I first started programming and managing PBX systems over the past 10 years...all I can say is WOW! Avaya and one of their channel partners had a display with their IP telephony solution up and running...we tried one of the 4620 touch screen IP phone sets (very impressive technology...like a really big Pocket PC), and they demonstrated the softphone running on a Compaq ipaq 3870, along with an 802.11b PC card in an expansion sleeve, and the rep was able to walk away from the booth, call one of the phones there and we were able to carry on a conversation with very clear sound, not the scratchy, static laden signals that wireless phones used to have. I can now finally see my way clear to recommend IP telephony for business use.
I was talking to Jay at lunch today about how to use Pocket PC in the IT world...imagine your technicians being out on a service call, and checking their open tickets from their Pocket PC to see if any other work was needed in the area they were working in...being able to have a voice conversation with a technician, or doing other dispatch work, or checking e-mails while working away from your workstation. Being able to reference technical documents on a server, using something like Adobe Acrobat Reader instead of lugging manuals around. Or using the new wiring patch panels that can talk to a computer in IT, downloading required jobs to the display panel on the rack, or tracing cables by pushing a button, connecting voice and data instantly. I'd say that the kind of work and speed of completion is about to improve greatly over the coming few years, allowing someone like myself to schedule work for technicians better, and to get more accomplished in less time, and allowing people to have a life outside the office!
So, for the small amount of vendors there, I was very impressed with the few areas we examined closely."
