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Sneak Peak: 3Com's New Audrey 73

Posted by CmdrTaco from the isn't-that-spiffy dept.
neildogg writes "I had a second while 3Com's new Ergo site was up to save some of the images and screenshots from their new Web pad, the Audrey. I have put them up as a mirror at my site with features and specs as well, straight from the horse's mouth. Enjoy." Apparently the pics were up for just a couple of minutes, and then replaced with some boring "Coming Soon" graphics. So screw waiting, check it out.
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Sneak Peak: 3Com's New Audrey More

Sneak Peak: 3Com's New Audrey

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  • And further, I can't think of ANY reason this wouldn't run PalmOS... y'know, their house handheld OS... Your fears of WinCE can stand abated, for now.
  • There seemed to be some Mac widgets [onebahamas.com] in there. They may all simply be mockups.
  • Sure does look strange, perhaps a few images from different angle? I notice it has a built in modem, rather than the ability to dial itself. I know this can bring down cost, but it sure does limit portability. Saying that though, if these sort of things become popular, phone sockets will start popping up everywhere.
  • this only has a 56k modem and USB. That really bothers me. I don't have a USB ethernet connection, and I don't use a modem. Why in the hell would I want to use something w/o an ethernet port? In fact, I would EXPECT it to be a 10/100 card, I don't even use 10mbit ethernet anymore. If you are a college student, you can walk up to almost any port and plug right in. Having a 10/100 card would be an absolute necessity :)

    - Bill
  • Handspring + 802.11. Bingo, the perfect "webpad". Sure it's monochromatic, but it's also dual-purpose.

  • This is true....Wireless is the way to go. =) Given the option between Ethernet and Modem, I'd pick Ethernet. Given the choice between wirless and tethered, I'd pick wireless hands down every time. =)
  • Go ahead, pay for a slow wireless modem connection and be forced to transfer files across the internet to communicate with other devices on your LAN. I prefer the option to connect to my home or office LAN. Many businesses will insist on it for connectivity to their intranets. It's safer, easier, more private, and you can get a lot more bandwidth for the same money.

    I still haven't been able to figure out why only Compaq is offering the general public wireless LAN connectivity from a handheld (mmm...iPaq), or why noone has produced an 802.11b CompactFlash ethernet card. I thought the idea was that all these wonderful appliances and gadgets were supposed to connect to one another. Are we really expected to maintain a separate wireless modem connection for every device in the home of the future? (Granted, it would simplify customer profiling;-))
  • Actually Wired ran a brief bit on p. 290 of the current (October 2000) issue. The pictures look about the same as well as the specs and suchforth so I'm willing to take them as real or if nothing else, very close to it.
  • Weird. I haven't found the jack for that on my PalmPilot yet. Hearing this, I know it has to be there, somewhere. ;^)
  • I for one am happy to see some nice (read: not these endless chiseled grey blocks) graphic design going into interfaces.

    They're using color coding to good effect, they're putting appropriate visual attention in the right places, they're using easy-to-read labels and typefaces...

    It's impressive looking. I wonder if it's real, or if it's some illustrator RIP...
  • I noticed a couple of similar looking pads when I was fortunate enough to roam around the Transmeta offices a few months back. Could it be a Crusoe? Of course as far as looks go, a webpad is a webpad is a webpad.

    digital dissonance: a guiltless state of awareness [digitaldissonance.com]

  • Perhaps the undesirable association with "Little Shop of Horrors" was why they delayed the launch of their product until October.

    "On the 23rd of September in a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a terrible threat to it's very existence."

    Audrey was a mousey young woman who tried to tart herself up to be appealing to men and would inevitably fall victim to their use and abuse.

    Audrey II was the name of the carnivorous plant from outer space with ambitions of world domination.

    In some ways, I see both of the traits of these characters in Ergo's product. At least it doesn't run a Windows based OS (then it would DEFINITELY be in the carnivorous, world domination category :-)

  • So, I got my email from 3Com telling me to take down the site, and a whole bunch of legal crap about copyright laws and the Bahamas (which no one is sure of), so I took down the site, as a nice guesture to 3Com (and I don't like legal stuff). Worst of all is that their "counsel" couldn't even spell Bahamian properly. Hope you enjoyed as much as I could show you though.

  • Keep in mind, that just because you get a nasty-gram from some dipshit in legal, that doesn't mean that you actually have to do it. You don't have to do a damned thing until a Judge tells you to.
  • I just told them that a polite friendly email would have been more appreciated, but I like 3Com, and I don't think there's a reason not to listen to them.

  • I have put them up as a mirror at my site
    I get 404. Anyone else?

    Shaun

  • Re:Why oh why (Score:3)

    by killbill ( 10058 ) on Friday September 29, 2000 @04:32AM (#745081) Homepage
    I do this now. I have an older sharp Actius (looks like a sony VAIO, less than an inch thick) that sports 64MB of ram and a 266 mmx CPU. Street price for a device like this is probably around $800.

    I added a set of wireless ethernet cards (webgear aviator 2.4Ghz) for another $150, and dropped the second card in my basement Red Hat 6.2 server (a 233 AMD system with 64MB ram and 20 gigs or so of hard drive).

    Because both run X, I can export whatever graphical apps (including the whole display) across the wireless link whenever I want. It is (as you describe) very usefull.

    Here's the rub. Even though my laptop is reasonably modest in capabilities (you could not buy a machine today with this small a CPU), it still runs for $800 used, and still only displays 800x600 pixels. OK for a laptop, but embarrassing for a desktop. For an XGA laptop, we are talking some serious money. Even assuming you could drop some non-essentials (floppy drive, hard drive, etc), you are still looking at $300 or more just for LCD screen, not to mention keyboard, glidepad, cpu, memory, etc.

    That's why all these cheap internet appliances have a custom dedicated UI, to keep them cheap. Any kind of usable generalized access device for a desktop system is either going to be more expensive then your desktop (because of the more expensive portable components), or so inferior in capability as to be useless.

    The displays are really the rub right now... it is pretty darn cheap to produce a big glass tube, and pretty darn expensive to produce a small LCD. Maybe once the lighte emitting polymers hit the real world this will change, but don't expect it inside of the next two years.

    IMHO :)

  • It looks like a case that would carry birth control pills!

    You can

    check and send email
    surf the web
    filter out pornagraphy
    carry your pill where ever you go

    Plus it comes in 5 dull colors so no could ever tell you're a geek or a slut!

    Get you yours today!

    --MD

  • I have a friend who works for Citrix, he claims they are close to releasing a handheld that runs their ICA client over wireless IP. A version that can do the same over one of the cellular formats is supposedly in the works. The guy is a notorious liar but who knows.

    I realize that this does little for the Nix crowd but it would be interesting to see the thing. Particulalry since many of the clients I have to work with use NT for everything. If you've never used Citrix, you can get a desktop on an NT terminal server from anywhere on the network. I've used it quite a bit at work and it seems to suck less than I expected it to.

  • I can't think of any reason it would run PalmOS either. Look at the thing. A realtime OS would hardly be an ideal solution for this kind of device. PalmOS is made for *drumroll* the Palm! PalmOS is a very small, lightweight OS that requires next to nothing in terms of processing power. This little web pad of theirs seems a bit more than just a low power PDA. Given the fact that 3Com have sold part of their already damaged soul in an agreement where they aren't even allowed to provide software support for a product because M$ doesn't want them to make a Linux driver... well, that tells me something very negative about a company. Granted, 3Com's have had fine products, but more and more they seem to be going the way of a M$ proprietary solution and I won't trust them. If M$ can get 3Com to make an entire line of ethernet hardware that is Windows only, what makes you think they won't get their hands into this

    I apologize. Earlier I did not justify why I was so upset at this potential direction. The reason is very simple. 3Com is a big name, and they are about to release a larger integrated device. I think it's *very* important for Linux to secure places in the integrated market because that is where Microsoft are going next! M$ are gearing up for cell phones, PDA's, and this may only be the next instance of one - except it's being made by a company that is or at least used to be pro-Linux. Do you see my point?

  • I had the same reaction. My first thought was "Have mercy! That thing is butt-ugly". If the Jetsons had an Etch-a-sketch, this is what it would look like. And the colors! What marketroid thought of "Audrey-Meadow"? That yellow color (Audrey-Sunshine) is utterly hideous. Fortunately, none of them are available right now.

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Icebox ( 153775 )
    Does anyone know what an 'Actions Pallette' is?

    Is this just another marketing-esque way to describe something that has been around since the dawn of GUIs? (Like a menu bar)

  • You're passing only what changes.

    Even sending changes in terms of rectangles (or whatever) of pixels is quite expensive, mainly because you have to look at what the changes are in the first place (the graphic engine of the underlying platform may be of great help here).

    Although VNC is a Good Thing(TM) when the server runs on a *NIX machine, there are more mature (in terms of performance) products to remotely display Windows applications (i.e. PCAnywhere). VNC people acknowledge this, saying that there is large space for improvements.

    But if you need only to run remote X applications and have an X server, a really good solution is compressed X protocol: see the LBX-HOWTO [paulandlesley.org] and DXPC [vigor.nu] in particular (the link in the HOWTO is outdated). With dxpc, 128kbps should be really more than enough for everyday's needs (unless you have to play Quake, of course, or watch a DVD...).

    Now, what I'd really like to see is something supporting both this and ICA (and perhaps some local apps in ROM/Flash, since the thing necessarily needs some processing power and RAM in any case).

    I also know an answer is "shut up, buy yourself a laptop with 802.11, install Linux on it and on your box in the basement", but a device having a only a compact flash slot (instead of hard disk/floppy/cdrom/etc.) and keyboardless (if you have to type extensively, better go to a desktop anyway) would be IMHO a better (and possibly cheaper?) solution.

  • C'mon, this thing's supposed to be the phone communication center. It has a modem in it. Make it answer the phone, too! I'd love for my answering machine to wav messages and send them to my main machine. (of course, they'd be mp3'd when they get there to save bandwidth, but that's a minor detail) Wav is cheap, especially if you're on a LAN and have the bandwidth for the file transfer.
  • After a bit too much testing here in the lab (huge company on West coast) - we've found 802.11 "11Mb/s" devices max out a bit above 5 Mb/s. You won't get better, you will get worse. Every obstruction and foot of distance counts. Most users will find 4 Mb/s until they venture more than 100 feet away. Also, that 5 Mb/s is SHARED. Keep these things in mind.
  • Is it just me... or do the fonts and widgets in one of those screenshots look decidedly MacOS-like? Particularly the third channels screenshot [onebahamas.com].

  • Ugh. I don't want to pay for this thing, which exists ONLY to push branded content at me, apparently. Lool at the brands visible in these images:

    http://www.onebahamas.com/audrey/ch_fullsize_01. gif
    http://www.onebahamas.com/audrey/ch_fullsize_03. gif
    http://www.onebahamas.com/audrey/ch_fullsize_02. gif

    If it's fully configurable, that's one thing... have to wait and see. Hopefully these are just pre-placed bookmarks, and not the complete infoscape for this device. But nothing would surprise me anymore, since they transfered me to Sales at work.
  • I'll wait for the Audrey II, since it will be a mean green mother from outerspace!
  • Well I got them from ergo.3com.com, that's a pretty definite url, and there a lot of other people that actually saw the site that I can get to attest to it.

  • Citrix Server + persistant internet connection (DSL in my case) + Compaq Aero 8000 + Citrix WinCE ICA Client + CPDP modem = A thing of beauty (If you like NT4)

    You see, Windows NT Terminal Server *IS* a multi-user, multi-processing, remote display-enabled system.

    But it's a heckuva lot more expensive than Linux!!!

    -Joe

  • Eeek, I didn't think of that.....you're probably right.
  • "Of course, given that only Linux (with it's multi-user, multi-processing, remote display-enabled X server) is well-placed to provide this need is just a plus..."

    Heh. Go look at this link, then.

    Be afraid. Be very afraid.
  • ::sigh:: Forgot to paste the link. Microsoft Airstream [microsoft.com]
  • I don't mean to be pedantic, but don't you mean "Sneak Peek"? 8{
  • There is something about this product that smells of Micro$oft. Considering 3Com's recent deals with MS to release Windows-only ethernet hardware (like the HomeConnect series [the 405's] that are identical in everyway to 905's, but are specifically designed to be incompatable with Linux in very much the same way that LoseModems are). Do we have any specs on the OS this puppy is supposed to run or am I just blowing anti-M$ smoke?
  • My God, what is that thing? I'm not exactly sure what it looks like, but it seems to be more of a wastebasket than a high-tech email terminal.

    Hmmm...then again, perhaps I could create the world's first net ready trashcan. Yet another reason to postpone taking out the garbage.
  • Thats why they removed the specs. The 3Com CEO said - 'No device leaves 3Com without an ethernet connection'

  • Theres more pictures here (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    just visit www.furnitureporn.com [furnitureporn.com] WARNING! This article contains material some armchair-lovers may find offensive.... The quest for kinky online filth ends here - with www.furnitureporn.com [furnitureporn.com]. This site has everything sleazemeisters could ask for. What self-respecting porn offering would be without a ménage a trois, bondage scene and office bonking? Only difference is that the 'participants' in the antics are all chairs. Meet Lance the overstuffed armchair and his partner choice Debbi - a cheeky pink baroque specimen. Click on the pictures and spy on what they get up to, and what positions they get up to it in, when their owner's away. Or for the more adventurous there's the bondage seat - all trussed up and being told that "deep, deep down you WANT to be punished". Ahem. It's enough to make any self-respecting perv blush - even if it is only a black leather seat with a bit of rope tied round it. Viewers to the site first have to agree to a few conditions, including admitting to the fact that they are a "computer nerd over the legal adult lawful age of consent in my country, state, county, city and /or incorporated village and too scared to go inside a store and buy real pornography". Once through this stage it only takes one click of the "Yes! I want to see hot, triple XXX chair-on-chair action!" and they're inside this depraved soft furnishings cyberworld run by a Los Angeles comedy group. The top scenario has got to be the office interview, with wooden Miss White teasing leather swivel-chair Mr Brown with: "I want you to know Mr Brown, that I don't take off my antimacassar for just anyone." 'Nuff said, you can imagine the rest - this little vixen, sorry piece of furniture, manages to bag more than a new job by the end of session.

  • Why oh why (Score:3)

    by OlympicSponsor ( 236309 ) on Friday September 29, 2000 @04:04AM (#745103)
    Why can't someone create a webpad that isn't a User Experience? Why not just create a simple "remote display" pad? That way the user can use whatever programs (and processing power) they already have on their desktop (which they have already customized or at least gotten used to).

    The only answer I can think of is: distance. If it's just a remote display, you can't tote it around outside the house. I have two responses:

    1) So what? It would still be a useful product--wireless will get you pretty far (the yard and maybe even next door).

    2) Ubiquitous wireless: People say how great it would be if they could be "always on" but never mention the problems of synching up your palm with your car with your phone with your desktop. So why not integrate all these things: Your house has a "computer center" (a regular desktop would do) and all your remote devices are just displays from that center. Now synchronization in time (when I switch devies) AND in space (when I'm using device A and wifey is using device B) is automatic.

    Of course, given that only Linux (with it's multi-user, multi-processing, remote display-enabled X server) is well-placed to provide this need is just a plus...
    --

  • An ambivalent move by 3Com (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am glad to hear that 3Com has wisely chosen to integrate a hardware-based pornography blocking mechanism to the new pad. This will steer many Americans away fromn the devil and toward our LORD Jesus Christ [phillipmorris.com] .

    Sincerely,
    Bob Jones III [goatse.cx]
  • er, sorry, not phone communication center... HOME communication center. serves me right for not previewing :)
  • good thing Jobs doesn't run 3COM, or he'd have your ass.
  • Does it run PalmOS or CE? Any idea what processor is in it?
  • And to think I always belived it was impossible crossbreed a Palm, an iMac and a flowerpot.

    I really love the 'Meadows' color, too...Who'd have thought that avocado green would come back on a computer...

    --K
    ---
  • From The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/13558.html )

    The site, currently sitting on 3Com's public server, announces Audrey, 3Com's Palm-connectable appliance, aimed at women. According to the site, Audrey will ship in a range of pastel colours - shades of Apple's iMac here - and sport a 6.25in x 4.75in (the resolution is 640 x 480, judging by the site's HTML) touch-sensitive screen; built-in 56kbps modem, speakers and microphone; serial and USB ports; and a wireless keyboard. Audrey is based on National Semiconductor's Geode CPU.

    Audrey will ship with its own Web browser and personal information management features. 3Com is basing some Ergo products on the Palm OS, others on QNX's Neutrino realtime OS - we suspect the latter is being used for Audrey, though the site gives no clues.

  • > Now I'm paranoid. How many people actualy saw this momentary images?
    > Do they look obviously retouched?

    Well, while I can't give the definitive answer on that, the interface on this image [http://www.onebahamas.com/audrey/ch_fullsize_03.g if] [onebahamas.com] is absolutely identical to that of Mac OS. From the pull-down menu to the "Find" button to the text on the page, this looks exactly like a screen shot from a Mac web browser.

    This says something about either the underlying OS of Audrey or the veracity of this information. I'm just not quite sure which.

  • It looks like it runs neither PALM nor WINCE like everyone seems to be saying. Take a good look at the pictures. That looks like QNX
    (http://www.qnx.xom)(http://get.qnx.com)

    QNX is a unix clone and the company just released it into the 'free' domain, meaning the base OS is free, as well as some applications. If I recall, the netappliance i-opener that was released earlier this year also runs the qnx platform, and people managed to hack into it and use their own isp's, also people were able to install linux (the linux install required a hardware hack though).

    That would mean that this handheld would run a client similar to xwindows. This is a dream come true. Perhaps it is an easily hackable unit also?

    Oh, if anyone wants to see QNX, look here QNX website [qnx.com]

    QNX is a realtime OS also by the way, and I believe is posix compliant....

  • ARGH! Comes with a 56K modem and 2 phone jacks. How.....analog. Ok. TIVO I can understand, but you would think a company like 3Com would recognize that there is a growing market of Cable/xDSL/OC-x ;) users out there who REALLY want net appliances with an ETHERNET jack...It is truly ironic that those who have more (in this case, bandwidth) are being treated like second class citizens in the digital world, because we are enthusiastic about technology, and don't fit the mold of the lowest common denomiator.

    Ah well, enough whining...ErgoAudrey, meet Mr.Soldering Iron. I believe the two of you have a date for the voiding of your waranty this evening. (evil grin).

  • Voice email lets you leave a voice message with someone without having to wait for it. People talk faster than they type, so it's all about convenience.
    --
  • It's one solution to an interface problem. Say you've got an Internet-enabled cell phone, PDA, or other small computer-like-thingie. How do you compose email on the stupid thing without a keyboard?

    The problem is solved on the Palm PDAs with Graffiti, FITALY and similar, but not on cell phones. Voice is the most compact and intuitive interface for entering information, so it's one obvious solution for small consumber devices. Time will tell if it's a good solution.

  • this device is yucky. icky. eww.

    it's not small enough to put in my pocket like a palm and yet it's not really a computer like i'm used to. What's so hard about making a laptop-sized machine with a flip-out keyboard (or attachable via cable) and a pen-sensitive screen (flipped over from the normal laptop orientiation, so that the device can be rested on a forearm and held by one hand and "written" on with the other) that runs on either x86 or ppc chips and natively supports either win9x/2k/nt/linux/mac os-- depending on architecture. Why does this have to look so dang ugly, and how many more of these vaporware announcements can I stand?

  • Ugly (Score:1)

    by clinko ( 232501 )
    Is It Just Me Or Are These Rediculously Ugly?

    The tops are way to thick, and the colors are horrible too.

    Just My Opinion
  • ...will it work with my CueCat?
    ---
  • Dang! Beat me to it! :-P Yes, kids, I remember a time when not all colors were named after fruit. There were words called purple and green that were used to describe your grape and meadow colored bits of plastic...
  • When is 3Com going to announce it's name change to 3.NET?

  • More info at palmstation (Score:3)

    by killbill ( 10058 ) on Friday September 29, 2000 @04:17AM (#745120) Homepage
    You can go to palmstation ( http://www.palmstation.com [palmstation.com]) for more information, including more links to complete pages.

    There has been discussion there about these links all week.

  • Mac Cube. Before it's announced, super-secret, fake looking pictures appear on websites. They all look obviously fake, then bam. They're all true.

    Now I'm paranoid. How many people actualy saw this momentary images? Do they look obviously retouched? Whats the source? But wait, i thought the mac cube was fictional and was wrong, so then i start questioning my questioning...

    The only way from here is down...

  • I just hope, for 3Com's sake, that they never release an "Audrey II".
    I think that if 3Com entered the flesh-eating plant business, their image would suffer immensly.
  • I notice it has a built in modem, rather than the ability to dial itself.

    Why would you want it to dial itself? Try it on your own phone, it won't work. All you'll get is a busy signal. You might think to yourself "gee, why do I get a busy signal - I'm not talking to anyone on the phone", but think about it for a minute and you'll understand why it doesn't work.

    Oh, you meant that it should have a built-in cellphone modem or some fancy crap. Well, for that you have the USB sockets I guess...

    Doesn't really matter, these things are still too ugly and expensive to be of any use for any person with half a brain. Come to think of it, that goes for any PDA.

    As for your .signature, may I please have a Spectrum Java runtime platform instead?
    --

  • I don't understand why people keep talking about voice email. This is about the most useless thing I can think of.

    First, a voice email is always much larger than an ordinary one with the same content. That doesn't just affect the transmission time (that Audrey thing only has a 56k modem, so that does make a difference), but also the amount of space it needs when stored. My email archive is already in the thens of megabytes, and I store attachments separately.

    And why do I need voice, anyway? What do we have writing for? And if I want you to listen to me talk, why don't I just leave a message on your answering machine?

    I don't get it. Is this just so that people will not have such problem with the stylus input, or are they serious about this?

  • Seen on The Register [theregister.co.uk]

    Sony launches wireless home Net access device By: Tony Smith Posted: 28/09/2000 at 16:18 GMT Sony has unveiled a product to bring the Net to the Net-less - a home-oriented mobile device that gives users access to the Net without the need for a PC. Based on home wireless networking, Sony's Airboard is an LCD screen tablet and base-station combo. The base-station hooks straight into the Net and beams requested Web pages and downloaded media files across the ether to the Airboard. "Without using a PC, users can access information from anywhere, effectively solving the so-called 'digital divide' problem," Sony Electronics' Shizuo Takashino told a press conference held this morning in Japan, referring to the gap between the Net-connected PC-owning elite and... er... everyone else. for rest of article click here [theregister.co.uk]

    Interesting that both devices are being released at the same time.... anyone know what the price tag on the audrey is going to be? Or have pics of the sony device? If anyone remembers the last big 'sony pda' (the MagicLink) it was launched to rival the Apple Newton, and was a nice unit, but i don't think they sold to well. It used the magic cap OS, had a built in phone that could be used with a headset, a modem, AOL, and alot of other programs. Anyone know how the 3com and the new Sony device compare to each other?.




  • Wouldn't it require a lot of wireless bandwidth to send 800x600x24bits 70 times a second?

    -Erik
  • So what if every company in the work has announced that they are going to have a webpad on the market next year? I found this nifty webpad [honeywell.com], well ok it runs CE, (but linux and qnx will run on the processor), but it does have some cool features like wireless connection with a broadband base. The best thing is you can buy it today. Dsscube
  • Citrix has already announced [citrix.com] wireless LAN support for Psion EPOC32 machines including Series5, Series7, and NetBook. The product [citrix.com] is available already. Too bad Psion doesn't have any marketing or someone might already know this.

    Steve "Disgruntled Psion user: Love the machines, too bad they don't know how to publicize or distribute them." Rapaport
  • First of all, you'd probably run it over 802.11 which runs at something like 11Mbps, so you'd certainly have a good chunk of bandwidth to play with. Secondly, if you used a protocol like VNC, you're not pumping every pixel for every refresh cycle. You're passing only what changes. This works remarkably well and I use it frequently across the net from home to work and vice versa (where the bottleneck is my cable modem's 128Kbps upstream speed). No, this thing across an 11Mbps wireless link would really rock. I think I'm going to have to build one.
  • I agree with you that modem-only connectivity is a loser, but I don't agree that Ethernet is necessarily the right way to go.

    You have this ultra-portable pad thing, and you want to wire it to the net? That's insane. These things cry for wireless. And it's not even an option.

    Count me out of this one. (And that's too bad, 'cause the first company that gets it right will have me stampeding for the checkout counter.)

    jim frost
  • Be was famously able to port their OS to the GeoDE in 3 days to enable NatSemi to present their hardware actually running at Comdex.

    NatSemi had been working on their Linux version for 7 months but it didn't make it in time. They may have gotten their Linux version completed, but I suspect the speed to port BeOS and produce a plausible IA interface might have killed Linux's chances.

  • Why can't someone create a webpad that isn't a User Experience?

    Come on, which sounds better in the brochure?

    a. "Audrey can be a family's nerve center in no time. She handles schedules, phone books, and notes. Every Palm handheld in your home can Hotsync to Audrey so everybody knows where everybody's going."
    b. "Run your old software on a remote display."

    Ok, you as a Slashdot reader might choose (b), but I can guarantee you that (as usual - see the XFce article for more details from just about anyone) most people want something that you just turn on and use, and doesn't involve old software or anything fiddly like that. The old software may very well actually BE easier, but it doesn't really sound that way. Stating the Audrey's capabilities and leaving the details out of the way paints a far more appealing picture.

    Bruce

  • Maybe they include drivers to talk to a USB Ethernet device.
  • but it seems to be more of a wastebasket than a high-tech email terminal.

    Hey, Apple's sold plenty of notebooks that look like toilet seats.

    Bruce

  • Could it reek of Microsoft because it sounds geared toward being used by the average person? I'll give you 10 to one you're blowing anti-M$ smoke.
  • I hope the discussion has chided them for putting text in a JPEG image. I hate it when graphic artists think they're web designers...

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