Electronic wizardry
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from December 1998.
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Now that dizzying array of portable gear is getting pared. After whetting people's appetite for single-function, go-anywhere devices, manufacturers are moving in the opposite direction, pulling together a stunning range of features into the digital equivalents of Swiss Army knives. For example, Motorola Corp. is selling an all-in-one mobile phone that's also a sophisticated pager and a speakerphone and includes a multilanguage operation that displays prompts in one of four languages. Sony Electronics Inc. has a laptop computer that's a digital camera. Nintendo Co.'s Game Boy is sporting a camera too, a swiveling lens that captures digital images on the screen.
These devices may not be as simple as their predecessors. But they promise to cut computing costs and reduce the number of gadgets people lug around. "Some business users are carrying around a pager, cell phone, a laptop, and in some cases, a printer and an alarm clock," said Alison Crawford, a spokeswoman with Nokia, a Finland-based maker of mobile phones that handle a range of functions. "It becomes quite heavy... especially for a woman, trying to carry a purse."
The trend, in abundant evidence at the recent Comdex computer show, is enabled by improvements in technology as well as joint alliances between manufacturers and providers of a range of services.
In early November, software maker Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm Inc., which makes mobile phones, partnered with nine telecommunications companies and digital phone service vendors in a deal that will let users of digital phones, pagers and other gear connect to the Internet, exchange e-mail and maintain calendars, contact lists and other basic information services.
The new products are "tremendous bargains," said Richard Doherty, of The Envisioneering Group, a Seaford, New York consulting firm. "These all-in-one devices are doing well with first-time buyers."
Motorola exhibited its new IDEN I1000 mobile phone, which does much more than make phone calls. At $300 and weighing just 5 ounces (150 grams), it's also a radio and alphanumeric pager, features one-touch call-back and enables users to hold voice conferences with up to 30 groups of people.
For its part, Nokia's 6100 mobile-phone series, ranging from $150-250, includes an alarm clock, four computer games, a calendar, calculator and currency converter. Nokia also is selling its 9000 series of phones, which at $700 includes a large screen and flips open like a small laptop computer to reveal a full keyboard for composing messages, exchanging e-mail of up to 160 characters, sending and receiving faxes and accessing the Internet.
Portable computer makers also are getting into the game. Sony Electronics, the San Jose, California-based unit of the Japanese electronics giant, is exhibiting a small laptop computer that doubles as a digital camera.
The Sony Vaio PCG-C1 "sub-notebook" machine features a built-in rotating camera and an unusually wide screen for viewing images. Users simply touch a special button on the computer to snap a photo, and touch another button to e-mail it to co-workers, friends and relatives. The computer's casing is made of magnesium alloy, so at 2 1/2 pounds (1.1 kilos) it's not too heavy to point and click. Using software Sony developed itself, people can stitch together photos taken with the computer to create a panoramic picture. The computer is mainly aimed at people with a need to rapidly transmit photos, such as insurance appraisers and real estate brokers, said Sony spokeswoman Gina Aumiller.
Sharp Electronics Corp. sells a combined computer-camera using Microsoft's more-basic Windows CE operating system, while Sony's product runs on Windows 98. Sony's hybrid product is the best-selling subnotebook in Japan and retails for $2,200. The company plans to start selling it in the United States sometime next year.
Likewise, Nintendo is selling its $50 Game Boy Camera, a swiveling lens that plugs in to any make or model of Nintendo's popular but aging electronic toy. The lenses enable users to change images and even stick a face on to characters in four different games.
