Just when I thought my pockets were safe from a creeping tendency to resemble Batman's utility belt, along comes another crop of computing gadgetry to test their seams.
New handheld and ultra-portable devices announced by Hewlett-Packard, IBM and others promise to pack the most features, storage, and processing power into the smallest form-factors yet.
You know the pocket computing market is hot when stodgy industry titans like IBM and HP throw their hats into the ring. With their byzantine corporate structures, they're often as quick to react to market trends as molasses can fill a milk carton.
But with 13 million handheld devices expected to be sold by 2001, even these old-line giants aren't going to risk what's likely to prove itself the next major evolution in personal computing.
Still, will any of these new offerings tempt me to retire my current favorite — the trusty PalmPilot Professional I lovingly call my "surrogate brain"? Or will Palm Computing remain the industry's 800-lb. gorilla in a 3-oz. package?
For Hewlett-Packard, it's partially a case of trying to recapture some of their original markets.
Long a mainstay of engineers and college students, HP's line of programmable pocket calculators can tackle extremely complex equations and graph the results — not to mention play a pretty good game of Space Invaders.
But by 21st century standards, the venerable HP calculator is beginning to show its age. Palm OS and Windows CE devices offer a wider range of applications, and they're not too shabby at math, either. A search of the software archives at PalmGear HQ reveals no less than 340 packages in the "Calculators" category.
Not to be outshone by newfangled pretenders, HP is readying an electronic abacus for the next millennium. They're still tight-lipped about the device's actual feature set, but if the rumors are true, this one will surely be the King of Calculators.
Dubbed the Xpander, it will pack a better grayscale screen than a Palm organizer, a processor as fast as the Intel 486 you had on your desktop six years ago, and — get this — it will play MP3s.
Doubtless HP had absentee math professors in mind when it added that last feature. How better to deliver lectures on those days you just can't make it to the classroom? Or, more likely, HP isn't about to pass up an opportunity to hype its new product by latching on to a hot computing trend.
Handspring, a maker of Palm compatible organizers, did the same when it launched its own product line last September. In a market that has all but canonized Palm's organizers as the only handhelds that matter, low price alone wasn't enough to guarantee success.
So when Handspring unveiled its unique hardware expansion feature, MP3 playback was among the first applications touted. (Other Palm OS products are capable of little more than a few beeps.)
Sadly, engineering delays plagued Innogear's MP3 module for the Handspring, and it's only now nearing readiness, a year after it was first marketed. Nonetheless, one could argue that Handspring got the kick-start it needed from HP's announcement.
By comparison, IBM's WorkPad, the very first Palm clone, received a much poorer showing in the marketplace. Now, with the WorkPad essentially retired, Big Blue is bucking for extra media attention as well.
Its engineers' shirts are a little too stiff for MP3, though. They reckon the buzzword to beat is Linux. And they weren't kidding when they said they'd get the free OS to run on every hardware platform IBM offers.
Their latest Linux-enabled device is a prototype wristwatch that boots to a Linux prompt, designed to communicate wirelessly with PCs and other devices.
Photos released to the media show the watch, somewhat reminiscent of Dick Tracy's wrist phone, executing common Unix shell commands on a small LCD screen.
Though IBM doesn't plan to release the Linux watch as a commercial product, some see it as a proof-of-concept for future Linux-based mini-devices. Says IBM engineer Takako Yamakura, "Some say Linux cannot be scaled down. This is just to show Linux is capable of doing this."
Yamakura needn't tell it to the legions of die-hard hackers around the world who have been working to get Linux running on every conceivable kind of hardware. Researchers and garage-tinkerers have already booted Linux kernels on devices designed both for the Palm OS and Windows CE platforms.
You can't really do much with them, for the most part. However, one recent port, for Compaq's iPaq handheld, is far enough along to run Unix's standard graphical X Windowing Environment.
But let's get serious for a moment. A calculator that plays MP3s? Linux running on a PocketPC, or even a wristwatch? Just because they can do these things, does that really mean they should?
Time and again, Palm Computing has greeted each new entry into the handheld marketplace with a confidence only an undisputed industry leader could have.
While competing devices have tried to woo customers with flashy menus and graphics, the simple Palm OS interface has remained largely unchanged since its first release.
Color screens, for example, have been virtually standard on Windows CE devices from the beginning. The Palm IIIc, on the other hand, is the only Palm offering with a color display, compared to at least five current black and white models.
Even more frustrating for the 3Com spinoff's competitors is that, despite this apparent lack of innovation, Palm's customers keep eating its products up.
The color Palm IIIc's sales figures have been strongest only when the other models are in short supply. And while Palm offers models with memory comparable to typically beefier Windows CE devices, the Palm III's 2MB base configuration seems to be plenty for most buyers.
The simplicity of Palm's designs is the very key to their success. With early releases of Windows CE, Microsoft sought to shoehorn a desktop OS into a handheld. The complexity of such a system was painfully obvious, and immediately frustrating to many users. A Linux-based device would likely prove ten times more harrowing.
Rather than trying to shrink an existing design to size, Palm instead chose to create a new OS targeted exclusively at handhelds. They started with a few engineering ideas borrowed from the Mac OS, then stripped away everything that might make the new platform clunky, slow, or difficult to use.
There's no multitasking, overlapping windows, or pull-down menus in the Palm OS. Clean and simple is the philosophy — and they've stuck to it ever since.
For instance, not a peep has come from Palm about a handheld that plays MP3s. Handspring and its partners are welcome to give it a try, as Windows CE devices already have done.
But storing MP3s would take many times the memory current Palm organizers ship with, increasing costs significantly. Besides, consumers can buy a Rio or Nomad player for that. Palm organizers stick to what they do best: organizing.
So how do you grow the market for a product that doesn't need improvement? Simple: through real innovation.
Palm Computing is the only handheld manufacturer so far that has committed to eventually providing wireless network access across its entire product line. That may put them in competition with cellular access providers like Sprint.
But consumers tend to like their phones ultra-small, resulting in screens that are difficult to read. And few current phones have an interface more sophisticated than Nintendo's.
By contrast, Palm organizer's touch screen allows for quick, easy full text input, with a little practice. And Palm OS developers are encouraged to design simply. A good Palm application has just a few forms for data entry, plus some program logic on the back end to handle processing.
The model bears comparison to existing Web-based applications for which the Palm OS could become the ideal wireless interface.
Today's handhelds have the best overall chance of becoming tomorrow's ubiquitous wireless appliances.
But so far, most manufacturers are just concentrating on cramming as many features, bells, and whistles as they can into a little box. With one exception: the industry leader, Palm Computing.
Kinda gives new meaning to "thinking outside the box," doesn't it?
