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PC Expo rides wireless wave
By Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY
NEW YORK It's not that you can't spot
personal computers at the annual PC Expo trade show being held
this week in Manhattan.
But the industry gabfest, now in its 19th
year and part of a new venture called TechXNY (Technology
Exchange Week, New York), is as much these days about handheld
gizmos, digital cameras, flat-screen monitors, set-top boxes
and all things wireless.
Some 500 companies put a variety of
products on display, from servers and other wares targeted at
businesses to offerings with more of a consumer bent. Despite
"official" show estimates of 50,000 registrants, the usually
bustling Jacob K. Javits Convention Center seemed far less
busy than in the past.
But not all was doom and gloom. A slew of
new notebooks, for example, are banking on the appeal of
wireless networking, incorporating the Wi-Fi (802.11b) scheme.
Sony introduced two new Cliι personal digital assistants using
Palm's operating system. Compaq showed a keyboard with a
built-in smart card reader, so you can slip in the new breed
of credit cards to purchase securely via the Net.
Here's a sampling of other intriguing
products showcased on the convention floor and at events
around town.
Panasonic raised the stakes in the
nascent market for stand-alone recordable DVD boxes.
Its new DMR-E20 arrives in October at around $1,000, less than
half what the year-old, first-generation DVD recorder
commanded.
Among new features is the ability to
record up to 12 hours of video on new two-sided 9.4-gigabyte
DVD-RAM disks, plus "Time Slip" playback that lets you watch a
recorded portion of a program from the start while continuing
to record the show in progress.
The device also allows you to digitally
record in the DVD-R format. But confusion abounds.
Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Pioneer, Sony and others back
competing and incompatible recordable DVD formats.
Ultra-light notebook computers
exact a series of compromises, not the least of which is
rather paltry battery life. But the sub-$2,000,
under-three-pound Compaq Evo N200, due this fall, promises to
last up to eight hours, thanks to a low-voltage Intel Pentium
III processor and a pair of lithium ion batteries. But the
second battery is an option (no price yet), and other
trade-offs remain heavy-duty typists will have to manage
with a slightly undersized keyboard.
Speaking of typing, you may know Targus
for its Stowaway full-size foldaway keyboard for handheld
PDAs. Now Targus has introduced a tiny PDA keyboard for
those who don't need to do a lot of touch-typing. The first
$40 Targus ThumbPad is compatible with the Palm V and is due
in late July or early August.
If you already require a crowbar to pry
your kid away from PlayStation 2, imagine how difficult
it will be when Junior literally gets his head in the game. A
new technology called PictureParadise from Sony, to be built
into several new games, makes it possible.
You snap the child's picture with any
Sony digital camera or camcorder, transfer the image via USB
to the console, and his mug is mapped onto the face of
characters in games that adhere to the new scheme. The first
compatible title in the USA, Monster Rancher 3 from
Tecmo, is scheduled to appear this summer.
Think of it as for your laptop.
A service called zTrace Technologies can help you recover a
stolen notebook. Its software sits invisibly on your
computer. When a thief uses the machine to dial out over the
Net, the laptop secretly calls zTrace servers, sending a
silent SOS. The company relies on caller ID and the machine's
IP address to determine the computer's whereabouts; zTrace
works closely with the police.
Through an add-on service, you'll soon be
able to surreptitiously recover files from the lifted machine
or delete those you don't want others to see, without the
crook ever knowing. Basic monitoring: $49.95 a year.
MP3 music files are not just for
your computer anymore. Hewlett-Packard unveiled a working
prototype of the HP Digital Entertainment Center, a set-top
box. Designed for living rooms, it will let you store and
catalog up to 750 discs or about 9,000 tracks on a
40-gigabyte hard drive, and view the titles and artists on
your TV screen.
After turning your tunes into MP3 files,
you can easily transfer music to portable digital music
players. Due out for the holiday season at less than $1,000,
the device also delivers Net radio stations and is similar to
a box that Compaq recently started selling.
Electric Fuel made its mark by
introducing a device that lets you charge your cell
phone without having to connect to an electrical outlet.
Now the company is extending its pocket-size Instant Power
Charger line for PDAs.
The $20 charger, which weighs less than
three ounces, snaps into your PDA's usual power connections
and you can continue to use the handheld computer even as the
thing is charging. Cartridges are good for three charges;
replacements cost $10 each. | 
