[Rooftops] Given ubiquitous 802.11, what comes next?

[Jim Youll]

// Here's a thought problem for you:
// John Mello writes in today's Globe about ultraportable laptops, and casts them in
// light of "wireless hot spots popping up like toadstools after a downpour"
// (I am happy to elaborate on the toadstool thing for those of you who grew up in
// and have always lived in the city)...
//
// Below is a decent review of a decent small computer, the Sharp Actius AV18P
// See it at http://www.sharpsystems.com/products/pc_notebooks/actius/av/18p/
// Sharp are selling it with 2,000 free minutes of T-Mobile hotspot time
//
// My big question is:
// Given ubiquitous 802.11 via a mix of free and paid hotspots
// (assume that all the for-pay operators will get their acts together and allow customer roaming)
// what next?
// what classes of consumer devices will exist? How close are we to those devices now?
// how much in software, how much in hardware? Does anything change at all?
// Will IP phones catch on bigtime given that conventional cellular is now very cheap
// especially with the coming of number portability on Nov 24, and the emphasis on 
// new services and new handsets as business drivers?
//
// the floor is open! 


Appealing to the new mobile users 
Sharp Actius combines features with bold price 
By John P. Mello Jr.,  11/10/2003 

This year may be known as the year of the lugtop, those desktop computers masquerading as laptops that have become le dernier cri among many consumers. But now that wireless hot spots are popping up like toadstools after a downpour, we may start to see lighter, trimmer byteboxes garnering greater favor in the coming months. 

These ultraportable laptops feature processors designed for the demands of mobile computing, such as low power consumption, and include wireless networking as part of their overall package. 

A new entry into this ultraportable category is the Sharp Actius AV18P notebook, which sells for between $1,389 and $1,499 on the Internet. That's a good price for a svelte unit like this one. At around 3.7 pounds, this Actius is a bit heavier than some of its rivals in the market, like the Dell Latitude X300 and Sony Vaio PCG-TR1A, but this silver-and-black beauty is still plenty portable. Not only will it not prompt any unscheduled trips to the chiropractor, but its compact size -- slightly shorter and a little wider than a letter-size notepad -- will fit conveniently in a briefcase, with space to spare. 

The unit sports a bright and sharp 12.1-inch XGA low-reflection display with a native resolution of 1024-by-768 dots and maximum video RAM of 32 megabytes. Many ultraportable models are being built around Intel Centrino technology, but Sharp has equipped this Actius with a mobile chip from AMD, its Athlon XP-M. Running at 1.53 gigahertz, the processor offers a higher clock speed than found in base models of some of its rivals. The Actius base models have 256 megabytes of memory, expandable to 768 megabytes. That's low compared to Centrino machines, which can be expanded to more than a gigabyte of memory. 

If you plan to have long keyboard sessions with your laptop, you may want to think twice about the Actius. The keyboard action is stiff, and the keys have a shallow stroke. Although the alphanumeric keys are a good size -- as are the left-shift, backspace, and enter keys -- the cursor keys and left shift key are on the small side. 

The lithium ion battery is rated at 2.7 hours, but it can be extended with an optional extra battery to more than five hours. That optional battery pack, though, will boost the weight of the unit over 4 pounds, which is exiting ultraportable range and entering traditional laptop territory. Battery life, of course, is dependent on what you're doing with the machine. If you try to watch a DVD movie on battery power, you won't make it to the end of the flick before running out of juice, unless you're watching a short subject. 

The unit has a 40-gigabyte hard drive and no floppy drive, not a significant omission these days, although an optional, external USB one can be purchased. Its optical drive will read and write CDs at a peppy 24x, as well as play DVDs. 

Actius has a full complement of input and output ports: two USB 2.0 ports, a four-pin FireWire (IEEE 1394) port, microphone and audio-out jacks, S-video output, external monitor socket, PC Card slot, 56K modem, 100/10 Ethernet port, and a volume control dial. Antennas for the unit's 802.11b wireless networking capabilities are built into the sides of the display. The software package included with the Actius is skimpy. There's Adobe Acrobat reader for viewing PDF files, the ubiquitous InterVideo WinDVD for displaying DVD content, Outlook Express for e-mail applications, and the usual Microsoft freebies. The assumption is that the Actius will supplement a desktop machine with ample software that can be installed on the Sharp notebook. That assumption, from my experience, isn't far-fetched. One of the first things I do when I buy a new laptop is to purge most of the software packaged with it and install the more robust programs that I'm used to working with. 

In the past, ultraportables were seen as a tool for mobile professionals and were priced that way. That profile may change significantly in the coming months, largely due to the proliferation of wireless networking. With this Actius, Sharp can satisfy the old profile of the ultraportable user, but with its bold pricing and incorporation of entertainment features like a CD burner and DVD viewer, it has positioned this unit to appeal to the new breed of mobile notebook user, too. 

John P. Mello Jr. is a freelance writer. He can be reached at jpmello at cox.net. 


// THE ABOVE WAS THE FULL TEXT OF 
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2003/11/10/appealing_to_the_new_mobile_users?mode=PF