Peter Wilson
Sun

It has a 17-centimetre screen, can be carried in the palm of your hand and weighs nearly a kilogram.

It allows you to watch videos, listen to music, upload and look at your photos, send e-mails, type with your thumbs on its screen, enter information with a stylus, attach a GPS device to aid you in navigation, use common software like Microsoft Word, connect to WiFi to make Internet phone calls and send instant messages.

As if that is not enough, it also has Bluetooth and Ethernet connectivity, and even lets you play most of your PC games.

Okay, so it doesn’t have a built-in camera yet, but that could be coming soon.

Microsoft — which came up with the concept — calls its device the UltraMobile PC, (UMPC) although it once was known by the much more memorable name, Origami.

In May, Samsung Canada will have its very own version, on the market, in about the $1,000 price range, hoping to catch technology enthusiasts with their tongues still hanging out.

Other manufacturers will follow, despite the fact that many techheads have been hugely underwhelmed by the UMPC because of its size (about that of a paperback), weight and battery life of under three hours.

And so here we go again into another move towards convergence — a field already filled with the likes of phones that play MP3s, take and show snapshots and download live video while you’re sending instant messages and transferring your photos to that pretty girl across the room who is playing a video game on her own phone.

Samsung itself just came up with a phone that has a whopping 10 megapixel camera built in.

Meanwhile there are companies like Apple that so far haven’t jumped into the game wholeheartedly.

Take the iPod — and 14 million did in the last quarter of 2005 — which has been shrinking in size and weight while doing little, until recently, in the way of adding bells and whistles.

Now, of course, upper end iPod models allow you to download and view your photos and download videos — which you can buy from the iTunes store — for viewing on its six-centimetre screen or showing on your TV set.

So far, however, the iPod doesn’t have a still camera, or allow you to play video games or let you send instant messages or listen to FM radio. Maybe that’s coming, but, if it is, usually tight-lipped Apple isn’t saying anything about it.

There are, however, always rumours predicting the imminent arrival of iPods with WiFi and Bluetooth connections. There are also whispers on the Net that iPods may soon have the ability to run small versions of Apple’s web browser Safari.

Another rumour is that Apple will soon unleash a true video iPod with a 10-centimetre-wide screen.

Right now, according to Vancouver’s Simply Computing the tiny iPod nano out-sells the full-size version by three to one.

Certainly, what the iPod has done, in its various incarnations, including the super-popular nano, is spawn a flourishing industry of independent companies that provide add-ons including clock radios, eye-popping cases, FM radio transmitters, headphones and cases (of which Simply Computing carries more than 130).

Apple itself has just started selling its own high-end (at $429) iPod Hi Fi, a speaker system — in addition to at least 14 by other manufacturers — for those who either have no stereo themselves or can’t figure out — even though it’s incredibly simple — how to connect their iPod to an existing system.

And it has joined with Motorola to issue phones that use the iTunes site to download music, but it hasn’t made any such devices of its own.

So, what we have here in gadget and gizmo land is a two-pronged approach, sometimes even within the same company.

First, there are products, like the iPod or upper-end digital cameras and laptops that do one or two things incredibly well.

Then there are others, like the UltraMobile PC and the latest in cellular phones that try to provide a little bit of everything for everybody.

Even Apple, with its Front Row computers (complete with a remote device) is constantly upping the ante on what it does with its desktop units.

Tony Barker, manager of administrative services at Simply Computing has his Mac Mini (one without Front Row capabilities) hooked up to his high definition TV set so he can use it as a DVD player. He also has an external drive plugged in for his 30 gigabytes of music.

“I converged my home stereo, my DVD player all into one,” said Barker.

But on the totable device front Apple appears to have left that field, for now, to the likes of Microsoft (which provides the software with an edition of its XP) and manufacturers such as Samsung.

As you might expect, Microsoft Canada’s senior product manager for Windows clients, Elliot Katz, is enthusiastic about the potential of the UMPC.

However, he does say that Microsoft has been surprised about the amount of media attention with which the first-generation product has been greeted.

“It’s actually generated a lot more interest than we anticipated,” said Katz. “We did a viral [Internet word-of-mouth] campaign and that campaign was very successful.”

The initial product, said Katz — which still needs to lessen weight and up battery life — will likely catch on with two types of what he calls the “technology-enthused person.”

The first of these will be the executive who travels for work.

“The ones who want to take with them all the portability and all the capabilities of their notebook can do that with this device,” Katz said. “They can go to a hotel room, they can connect to the high-speed Internet in that room or to the WiFi in the airport.

“They can connect back to their office. They can sit in a customer’s office and show them Powerpoints on it. They can do e-mail and all those great things.”

Secondly, there are those tech enthusiasts who, while travelling for pleasure, don’t want to be hefting along a laptop or notebook.

They can download their photos at night, use the GPS capability to map where they are, surf the Net to find tourist attractions and e-mail and instant message back home.

As well, younger people might want to carry it with them in their backpacks, Katz said.

“The real key to the device is to get it lighter and get the battery life up,” said Katz. “And I think that will be the main focus of the second-generation devices we’ll see out there.”

As well, Katz said, emphasizing that this was his personal opinion and not that of Microsoft, that the device will also have to have GPS included in the UMPC itself, rather than as a capability through other devices.

Katz doesn’t believe, however, that there will ever be a universal converged device that does everything for everybody.

“As we move forward, it’s certainly the ultimate goal of the industry to have a single converged device, but I’m not sure we’ll ever get there,” Katz said. “But you may get down to two devices, both of which are converged and both of which give you the best of class in most areas.”

One of the problems is, said Katz, that once you take a device like an MP3 player down to a tiny size then the screen becomes too small for most people to want to view videos.

“If I want to look at pictures on my movie player a one-inch or one-and-a-half-inch screen is not going to cut it,” Katz said. “So those are the kinds of challenges we have, but I think we’re going to get better and better at it.”

Andrew Thompson, Samsung Canada’s product manager for audio and digital video system said that the consumer feedback his company gets is that devices have to be easy to use.

“So my feeling is that this ubiquitous device that combines your Palm Pilot, MP3 player, camera, cell phone, toaster, everything isn’t going to happen,” Thompson said. “I think the more gadgets you put into a device, the more complicated it becomes.

“Consumers generally want something that’s easy to use and that’s going to give them one or two functions.”

Simply Computing’s Barker –who, at 25, would seem to fit into the demographic of those who would be among the most adept at using converged devices — does find, however, having various elements of the digital life at his fingertips very appealing.

“One of our sales reps, who lives in Coquitlam, subscribes to a couple of podcasts that are based on video,” said Barker. “And when he takes the West Coast Express he just pulls out his iPod and watches that for 20 or 25 minutes.”

For himself, however, Barker would like to see Apple come out with a tablet PC, a device with handwriting recognition.

“It would be kind of like an iBook with a broken hinge,” said Barker. “I’d like to be able to take notes with that, the way that I did in school.”

If there’s one thing that consumers will likely want in whatever device they have in the near future, it’s video on the go, Thompson said.

“People might not even know they want that now, but that’s the future direction,” Thompson said. “I think that people are just starting to get it. They’re just starting to understand what that application will do for them.”

Thompson said that when he looks at Samsung’s future product roadmap he sees that the draw will be video, once the product is readily available, which he believes will be about next Christmas.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of very secure content sites that where you can go to fill up your video player. Within the next year, for sure, there will be a lot more content out there.”

Commuters will be among those most drawn to the video on the go technology.

“From a commuter standpoint I think it would be fantastic if I could get my Windows portable media player plugged into my computer at home, and then when I leave in the morning to take the train I’ll have the morning news. I think that’s golden.”

As well, Thompson sees a lot of the product being provided very cheaply by people who never before would have considered themselves television producers.

“A thousand bucks gets you a great video camera. You stick it on the web and all of a sudden you’ve got [your own program.]

For this to happen, said Thompson, screen sizes are going to have to increase in size.

“Come July, we’ll actually be introducing a 2.5-inch screen on a flash-based device, and that’s a fairly decent size. I wouldn’t sit on an airplane and watch Star Wars on it, but it’s still going to have much better uptake than a 1.8-inch screen.”

Despite all this enthusiasm Barker worries that perhaps we could all become just a little too connected.

“You’ve got to be careful when you’re wired all the time. You can be flooded with too much information.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

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