A Special Report from Russell Kay
Friday, June 19, 1998
Russell Kay was one of my valued colleagues at the old BYTE. When he sent this email to the old BYTE gang I begged for the privilege of putting it up here.
PC EXPO 1998
Russell Kay
Tuesday I went
down from homebase in Worcester, MA, to New York for PC Expo -- partly to see
whatever there was to see, partly to see people and hand out business cards and
resumes, and partly to carry the BYTE flag one last time. Even though there is
no more BYTE.
When I woke up
the next morning, sore and stiff, I felt an almost (but not quite) overwhelming
urge to go and write up a report for the rest of the BYTE staff. Then reality
hit me over the head again. So please note that I'm posting this just because I
feel the need to write it out and share it with you guys.
BTW, I tried to
make as much trouble as I could, though it didn't really work. I wore my oldest
BYTE nametag, plus my BYTE Best of Show JUDGE button/ribbon ... which no one
seemed to notice if I didn't point it out. My official mag-stripe PCExpo press
badge said "With Byte until 5/29." I had my BYTE cap along, but it
was too hot to wear for long. It was actually significantly cooler and less
muggy outside the Javits Center than in.
Anyway, here
are a few things I found of interest. Flat panels were everywhere. Someone (I
believe it was NEC) had a Wall Street Special area, a workstation set up with
three 20-inch panels side by side. Wow! Also everywhere were little computers:
palm-sized, WinCE handhelds, sub-sub notebooks, of which the clear winner has
to be the Sony 505. Finally, a 3-pound laptop with a keyboard big enough for
non-Japanese fingers and a display big enough for those of us who wear
bifocals. The new palm-sized units that run Pen Windows CE 98 2.0 (or whatever
Microsoft is calling this particular operating system) from Casio, Everex, and
Philips were nice. It will be interesting to see how these play out against the
well-entrenched and newly turned out Palm III from 3Com. I recently got a Palm
III, and I have to say I love it. It's a truly wonderful little unit, and it's
small enough for any pocket. Synchs with my Lotus Organizer address book and
calendar, entering notes or memos with the Grafitti alphabet quickly becomes
second nature (except for those infrequent symbols), and it even comes with a
couple of decent games for those times when you really need one.
Lots more
digital cameras everywhere, plus new approaches to getting the images out of
the camera and into the computer. Adapters that would take various kinds of
flash memory cards, etc. Also an interesting panoramic device, using a convex
parabolic mirror to take a one-shot 360-degree panorama ... complete with
software to unravel that image into a normal perspective. With a 1280 x 960
camera, it made some pretty good pictures.
Saw a neat
software package called Enfish Tracker Pro, which they describe as an
"information tracker," not a finder. They tried to give us a demo at
BYTE in the last days before Black Friday, but it wasn't to be. Anyway, this
more-than-indexes everything on your computer, in the background, and lets you
find stuff fast. So what? It differs from the MS findfast in that you can
identify synonyms, misspellings, and aliases for particular terms, you can specify
dates (e.g., last two weeks), and it shows you. Right Now. No waiting. It's got
all the information already. Very slick, and I'm trying to get my hands on a
copy for my own use. (http://www.enfish.com)
For some reason,
carrying cases and luggage fascinate me. So I was really intrigued by a a
company called Porter Cases (http://www.portercase.com). They have what looks
like one of those standard carry-on sized bags with wheels and a pull-out
handle. Except it's hard-sided, has good-sized wheels, and the pull-out handle
also can be released wo the case folds down 90 degrees and becomes a luggage
cart that can support another 200 pounds of stuff. They make specially configured
models for computers, photo gear, LCD projectors, and stuff. In the $200+
range, about 12 pounds, and a very neat, patented design.
Talked to lots
of PR and vendor people, who all had the same question about BYTE: "Why
did they do it?" To which, of course, there is no reasonable answer.
I met with my
friends at Viewsonic, who showed me a digital
flat panel (takes digital signals directly, without having to put it through
D/A and A/D conversions; see http://www.dfp-group.org) and a new 21-inch CRT
they're working on (P817) that will do 2000xsomething ... it's not quite ready
for prime time, but they expect to be able to start manufacturing in July,
shipping in September. They're doing a joint project with Matrox to provide a graphics
card that can drive the sucker.
Also, Mark
Gersh at Viewsonic made this comment: "Whenever we did those east coast
press tours, we always had to prepare the hardest for BYTE. With the other
magazines, they'd look at a monitor and say, 'that looks good'; with BYTE you'd
start asking questions about how and why and what are you doing inside the
case." He also said, unprompted, that there was no other magazine that had
the technical credibility that we had. *sigh*
Well, it was
especially nice to be able to look at just whatever I felt like, without a
checklist and nominations and the like. Did I miss the long into-the-wee-hours
BYTE Best-of-Show Awards discussion? You bet I did -- those meetings were, in
fact, the highlights of most shows for me. I think I learned more in each of
those not-so-few hours than in a normal month otherwise.
But nine hours
of bus riding sandwiched around a day of show-going is not something I'd
particularly recommend. It's cheap, but wearing.
=============================================
RUSSELL KAY
Kay &;
Kaboodle, Technical Editing and Writing
8 Tupelo Road *
Worcester, MA 01606
russkay@charter.net
=============================================
Now you have some idea of the quality of inputs we got internally at BYTE, and what a task it would be to build a new team this good. And why I miss BYTE a lot. Thanks, Russ. Maybe we can start up a new BYTE discussion forum at BIX; it's where we used to hang out until McGraw Hill built us a new playground (and then we were locked out of it...)