Rich's Ramblings

By Rich Schinnell

I spent 3 days in New York City for PC-Expo during the last week of June. It was not as big a show as the last FOSE (In DC) that I attended. The promoters made it look more crowded by narrowing the isles and closing off part of the display area. There were still some very interesting vendors.

I picked up a few goodies as most of us do at trade shows. Several neat things, like the small (3" long and about 1" around) key chain USB hard disk. There were vendors claiming capacity up to 2 gigabytes, although I only saw sizes up to 512Megabytes. It is a small device attached to a key chain that is plugged into a USB port. My laptop Toshiba treated it as another removable disk. Writing to these devices is like writing to a floppy or Zip disk. Except, it fits easily into your pocket. Encryption software is most times included when you purchase one. The latest operating systems (XP) automatically recognizes the device. Windows 98 requires an USB driver.

AMD was giving out a 16 megabyte device with their press release written to it. Theirs was made by WWW.CYBERKEYCORP.COM. Additionally there was an M-Systems 512MB capacity DiskOnKey personal storage device at the "Show Stoppers" Press gathering. http://www.diskonkey.com Is a site where you can see all the different diskonkey things.

Prediction:

If 2 gigabyte devices in a keychain are just around the corner. The days of the physical hard disk are limited. Once the size of these devices get increased to 50-100 Gigabytes, then the power hungry massive hard disks are going the way of the 5 1/4" floppy diskette.

Commercial from Rich:

Before I went to NYC, I had already purchased a 128 Megabyte USB port device from my favorite computer store in Gaithersburg. The Computer Place, across from NTIS in the Diamond Square Shopping center in Gaithersburg. They have a web site http://www.tcponline.com/TCPOnline.htm and give a discount to CPCUG members if you ask. I did not know about the discount for the longest time but stumbled upon it on the cpcug.net web site. The staff are friendly and they participate in many of the local computer shows. They have been around for many years and I do not hesitate to recommend them for your computer needs. Phone them at 301-330-6016 for directions to their Gaithersburg store and 703-246-9188 for their Virginia store. (PS: I do not receive any more of a discount than you for recommending them)

I have a mobile phone and the one thing that I would like to be able to do, now that I have coverage in the lower 48 states without roaming charges, is to be able to use my laptop and log into my ISP (CPCUG.ORG) and retrieve my e-mail easily. I use Verizon for my mobile provider and when I was in NYC for PC-EXPO, the coverage was great, On the train ride up and everywhere I went in NYC I had good service. I spent a few days in Seattle a couple of months ago and my phone worked great there also. For $35 a month (USA wide plan) for 300 prime minutes and 3000 non prime minutes, it seems like a good deal for me. I digress, I ordered from Motorola a special USB-phone cable to try to use my phone as a modem. I went to the Motorola web site, ordered the cable and software. $80 and 3 days later, our friendly UPS delivery person arrived with the box. I was impressed on how easily it installed and connected to my mobile phone. It has a cable that plugs into the bottom of my phone, allowing for the battery charger to attach to it and a USB plug on the other end. I really did not want the PIM software that they provide as I really only wanted the drivers for the Mobile phone modem. After a few fits and starts, which required me to turn the phone off completely, plug the USB cable into the laptop, turn the phone on, then power up the laptop. I ended up resetting the phone by turning it off and then back on again. Seems to be the key to getting it to work properly.

I was able to dial my mobile phone (it is treated just like another Modem) via the dial-up-networking option on my PC. Although the connection via Verizon was only a 14.4KBS connection. I had no trouble in connecting to a couple of the local dial up numbers for CPCUG.ORG. I collected my E-Mail and visited a couple of web sites. It brought me back a few years to the 300-2400bps modems and such. Ahh!, those were the days <G>

As I travel on occasion to different areas of the country, I will report back on it's performance in places like Las Vegas and Seattle. It is a good thing that I have 3 USB ports on my laptop now that so many devices are USB only. Laptop manufacturers don't provide a Printer or Communications port on most of the newer laptop computers. USB is the weapon of choice..:)

One of the perks of writing an occasional column (check out my web site for past columns: http://www.schinnell.org ) for the Monitor, is being invited to the press-only events at trades shows. In NYC, I had a good/great time. On Monday evening the 24^th, I attended the event called "DigitalFocus/MobileFocus" , The evening of the 26^th, I attended "Show Stoppers". These are both Press-Only events where you have to be pre approved to attend. The food was great, plenty of different selections for any taste from carnivors to vegans:). One nice thing are the vendors who have small booths at these two events were very willing to part with schotskies and free products (for review of course). It seems that I learn more at these types of events than on the show floor as you get to interact on a more personal level with their technical people.

Many of the vendors who participate in these "press only events" do not exhibit on the show floors. It is cheaper for them to participate in these organized press events than to pay big bucks to put up with the tire kickers on the show floor. I have attended these kinds of events in Las Vegas for years, COMDEX Fall is the big November trade show and there are several companies that put on these types of events for vendors who wish to interact directly with the press.

I always go to the press room at trade shows in order to pick up the show vendors literature (most now provide their press materials on CD-ROM which saves in having to lug all that heavy paper around.). The press room normally has great food (which means it's free :)) And you meet some of the people who we read about in national trade magazines. Bill Machrone from PC-Magazine/E-Week is one guy that I have seen for almost 15 or so years. Walter Mossberg (who lives in Potomac MD.) and writes for the Wall Street Journal is another one. His technology columns in the WSJ are read by millions of people and as you would think, vendors clamor for his attention to their products. Others that I run into are familiar names to those who subscribe to PC-World, PC-Magazine, E-Week, Info-World and such. Enough name dropping:)!

BACKUP-BACKUP-BACKUP:

I would like to take this time to remind each of you to Backup your critical data. It is even more critical to have backups now that you can buy a 100 Giga Byte hard disk for less than $100. Of course with CD-R drives less than $50, you should consider this option. Remembering that there is a difference between CD-R and CD-RW. The RW means Re-Writable. If you ever have to restore this data, then some of the older cd-rom drives will not read these re-writable disks. The CD-R which means Write Once are better as they are readable on most of the cd rom drives installed. There was an advertisement from CompUSA for 50 CD-R media for less than $15. An 40X 12X 48X CD-RW/R drive for less than $60. ( I do not own stock in CompUSA) so there is no excuse for not doing a good backup of your system. DVD-R & R/W is just around the corner but the standards are not yet set. It is still in the Beta/VHS time frame for DVD. Recordable DVD's are in the $500 range as of now but they are coming down in price and then 4.7 (or more) gigabytes of backup storage will be possible.

Pet Peeve of the month:

The prices that are listed in ads for everything from computer stuff to furniture are jumping on the Mail In Rebate train. This makes their products appears cheaper than their competitors. It started with the computer stores and required you to submit Bar codes from the packaging, sales receipts and a rebate coupon. Good luck. I have received a few but sometimes (too often) they just get lost in the rebate cycle. I am not sure that the fulfillment firms (they are hired by companies to process all rebates) receive a commission based on how many they throw in the trash. I always make copies of my submissions but the original is sent off. Sometimes it takes over 3 months to finally receive the $20 I was promised. Personally, I feel that this is just a sales gimmick. I know of people who spend a lot of time keeping track of their rebates and I commend them for that. I would much prefer that I get it up front. The vendors know that many of the people who buy things based only on price will never send in the "correct" parts of the refund request, so they make more money in the long run.

End of Rant.

Rich Schinnell has written columns for the Monitor since way back in the early 1990's. He can be reached via email at schinnel@cpcug.org. He is not on the cpcug helpline anymore as he is semi-retired from User Group activities. That means it is someone else's turn in the barrel :) (that's a smile) His home phone is (301) 949-9292 if you just want to talk about his columns, calling him to complain won't get you very far. Ain't CallerID great? He still does a bit of professional consulting to a select group of small business's. His personal web page is located at HTTP://WWW.SCHINNELL.ORG