Posted on 06/12/2004 9:29:58 AM PDT by solicitor77
A weekly series by United Press International examining emerging wireless technologies.
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CHICAGO, June 11 (UPI) -- A moniker given to business travelers who lug a lot of computer gear with them through major airports from New York to Los Angeles and beyond -- road warriors -- is fast fading away.
Advances in technology for personal digital assistants, made by Sony and other manufacturers, and for other wireless devices, such as the Blackberry, are making the notebook computer seem as dated as a manual typewriter. Faster processing power, in a package nearly as small as a mobile phone, with a keyboard for typing e-mail messages, enables travelers to stay linked with their business colleagues and families, and to continue to be productive, even on the road, without the need for a PC.
"The idea of being 'always on' is spreading," said Roger Hibbert, associate editor of Mobile PC magazine in San Francisco. "People always want to be available," he told United Press International. "With a Blackberry, or a PDA, you don't have to pop it open to get a message by e-mail. It's more convenient."
The market for these mobile technologies really has changed -- during just the last three years.
Research by a firm called LetsTalk.com, conducted in 2001, showed Americans at that time did not mind carrying more than one computing device.
No more.
Now, business travelers are "looking for ways to combine all the necessary applications into just one small gadget," Jannie Luong, a spokeswoman for Verizon SuperPages, a unit of the phone company, told UPI.
Developers, such as Nokia, are changing the way their products are designed to accommodate the trend.
The Scandinavian company's latest mobile phone -- the Series 60 devices -- are phones with PDA functionality, "and a whole lot more, built into them," Erik Schmollinger, a spokesman for Nokia, told UPI.
This trend is even causing e-commerce sites -- like Verizon's -- to change the way they present information. The information provided online is being streamlined, so customers can see white and yellow pages, travel guides, hotel reviews, and movie information, "all in the palm of your hand," Luong said.
Others are changing the way they do business as well, due to the growth of the technology, and keep the devices with them all the time, even in the office.
"I've used several PDAs," said William M. "Marty" Kotis, III, president and chief executive officer of Kotis Properties Inc., a real estate firm in Greensboro, N.C. "The latest ... is the Handspring Treo 600 that I carry," he told UPI.
At DePauw University, a leading liberal arts college in Greencastle, Ind., the administration is discussing whether it should go to a completely Blackberry-based network, replacing the notebook computer, on campus.
"We just had a conversation this morning discussing whether our university ought to go down the Blackberry path," Dennis Trinkle, chief information officer at DePauw, and a faculty member who teaches history of new media courses, told UPI. "It's part of our planning for a new computing initiative."
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
No they don't.
I agree
No kidding. Just smile and wave, sorry, can't hear you over the sound of my helicopter.
What does this have to do with Washington State?
Computers are great tools, but they're just that--tools. Don't be a Toolman Tim and let them take over your life.
Electronic leashes. At least with beepers, when you got a few miles offshore they didn't work, but there's no place on earth where these damn cell phones can't jerk you back to your mundane prison, (except my own house where they never get good reception.)
I try to be unavailable as often as my schedule allows.
Remember the days before pagers, cell phones, faxes and email? How did we survive?
(I long for days of old sometimes!)
I'm leaving Weds. for two months in Northern Canada with no telephone, no internet.
I've got the shakes already.
Absolutely. I'm setting up my network at work so I move away and go to graduate school while being in contact with the office.
I'd rather die :)
Actually, notebooks are proving to be more popular than PDAs. The problem is input: nobody has igured out a better way than a full-size keyboard to get informaton into a computer. Meanwhile, you can now get noteboks that have all the functions of a full-size PC, for not much more money, and with WiFi and Bluetooth built in. If you have two homes like I do, it's a lot easier to use one of these than to keep swapping information between two PCs.
Some people do, and some people do not.
PDAs are a dying breed. They will ultimately be replaced by multi-function devices such as smartphones.
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