TECHNOLOGY TOOLS of theTRADE

Asus PadFone display. The Station is 10.7" ✕ produce the hydrogen Debuted at the Mobile World 7" ✕ 0.5", and it weighs a little needed for the conver- Congress in Barcelona, the Asus more than 1.5 pounds. The sion to electricity. A pack PadFone seems to be the com- phone, alone in your pocket, will recharge an iPhone puter for anyone who wants all weighs 4.5 ounces. It has a 4.3- in about an hour or hour the formats in a single, slim inch Super AMOLED, multi-touch and a half. One PowerTrekk case. It’s a 4.3-inch Android 4.0 screen made of Corning’s Gorilla Puck will produce four watt- , a tablet, and a lap- Glass with HCLR Film. The PowerTrekk hours. The device even has an top. The PadFone Station (the screen on the Station is 10.1 Fuel Cell internal battery that can be tablet part) has a covered slot in inches, WXGA 1,280 ✕ 800, Another innovative product fea- charged ahead of time as a sec- the back in which you insert and it also is scratch-resistant tured at Mobile World Congress ondary power source. Sales in your phone for a much larger Gorilla Glass. There are batteries was the PowerTrekk Fuel Cell the U.S. will begin in spring in the phone and the Station Charger. Developed by the 2012. www.powertrekk.com that provide up to 440 standby Swedish company, myFC, the hours and 8.5 hours of talk time device is a high-performance PlanOn on the phone. Cameras on the hydrogen fuel cell charger that’s SlimScan phone are 0.3 megapixel front designed to provide energy The PlanOn SlimScan SS100 is and 8 megapixel auto focus when you’re away from the an incredibly small, full-color with LED flash rear camera, and grid. myFC describes their fuel receipt scanner that also gives there’s a 1.3 megapixel front cell as an electrochemical device you a way to scan business camera on the Station. The Sta- that transforms the chemical cards, photos, notes, or any oth- tion has two-in-one audio jack energy of a fuel (hydrogen) and er printed materials. The stan- for headphones and a micro- an oxidant (air or oxygen) into dard credit card is about 2" ✕ phone, a Micro USB connection, electrical energy. The Pow- 3.375", and the SlimScan is phone and GPS antennas, and erTrekk provides current to 2" ✕ 3.1" ✕ 0.12". It’s a Sonic Master speakers. Release charge the rechargeable batter- scanner that fits in your wallet. in the U.S. is scheduled for ies in phones, digital cameras, Scans are very sharp, with later this year. and other small devices. It con- 300 dpi resolution in 24-bit www.asus.com nects via a standard USB, and color. Scan objects from 2.75 the device is reusable because inches to 36 inches wide. On- you load fresh power packs, board memory stores about 600 called Pucks, for each use. These images, which can be separated power packs, which contain into different directories. You sodium silicide, don’t degrade plug it into your computer via a over time, and when you add USB connection to download water (even sea water), they and process your information.

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TECH FORUM

Wintel Waning By Michael Castelluccio, Editor

Remember Wintel, the two megaliths that were so mas- sively installed that no competitive forces could budge them, not even the Internet? Well, that was then— Windows operating systems and processors hum- The PlanOn software lets you others support Printer Control ming inside bulky desktops that weighed 20 to 30 pounds. sort the receipts into monthly Language (PCL) and Postscript. Today’s computer weighs almost nothing, mere directories, and then you can The high-capacity cartridges ounces, and travels unnoticed in pockets, purses, and view, OCR, edit, create Excel provide up to 3,400 black and much smaller gear bags. The computer is now mobile, reports, and package Excel color page prints before replace- and even the mainframes have been liberated from the reports with all related images ment, and there’s a three-year corporate cellars to the clouds. It’s official—we are in a to send the information by limited warranty. The 25,000- post-PC world, and for those with any lingering doubts, e-mail. The battery is a recharge- page monthly maximum duty check out Ray Ozzie’s recent interview at the GeekWire able Lithium Polymer, and the cycle qualifies these printers for Summit in Seattle, Wash. case is made of stainless steel. high print volume workgroups. Ozzie served five years as ’s chief software Included with the scanner are Paper capacities include a architect. Bill Gates called him one of the top five pro- PlanOn RMS-Receipt Manage- 330-sheet feed tray, an 80- grammers on the planet. When asked in the GeekWire ment System software, a micro- sheet rear-feed tray for specialty interview about the current state of computing, Ozzie fiber case, lens brush, and USB media, and up to 580 sheets said, “People argue about are we in a post-PC world. Why cable. www.planon.com total with an optional second are we arguing? Of course we are in a post-PC world.” paper tray. Print quality is 4,800 He elaborated on the difference between then and Epson WorkForce ✕ 1,200 dpi. The printers can now, and he didn’t limit his comments to hardware. “The Pro C Series use EPSON Connect to print PC world was defined by documents. We are now enter- The Epson WorkForce Pro C from mobile devices directly and ing into a post-doc world.” What’s written today is more series is designed for small to also from e-mail. They are also likely to show up on Facebook or Twitter, he noted, medium-sized businesses with compatible with Apple AirPrint rather than in a directory of Word files. the express purpose of increas- and Google CloudPrint. Ozzie’s old company, Microsoft, seems to still be in ing productivity at lower total www.epson.com some kind of denial stage. It prefers the characterization cost of ownership. “PC-plus” for the current stage of digital evolution— The color printers Wintel still at the center, but a lot more choices in deliver up to 50% peripherals like phones and tablets. lower printing costs Although he didn’t come right out and say it, Ozzie compared to laser seems to think that particular model is now out some- color printers. The Pro where on a distant horizon. “We’re in a transition—more C Series has six new of an explosion of new form factors such as pads and models capable of tablets that we don’t really understand all the scenarios,” professional-quality he explained about the hardware. prints, Wi-Fi b/g/n is The interviewers asked about his thought process in available in two of continued on next page the models, and two

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2010 when he wrote in a memo, “The PC and its ecosystem On the software side of this glacial shift, there’s the con- is going to keep growing for a long time.” Asked if he still trast between the large, expensive, complicated legacy pro- stood by that, the world-class coder and software architect grams typically run on PCs and the apps buzzing on the simply answered, “Yes, except no one really knows what a handhelds. A program like Microsoft Word is composed of PC is.” millions of lines of code and has many features that many Sounds a little coy. Ray Ozzie, of all people, has a pretty users not only don’t use but have no idea of their presence good idea where hardware is headed—at least in the short in the program. How many keystroke shortcuts do you gen- term. And it didn’t go unnoted in the interview that when erally use in a program like Word? If you’d like, you can get he was hired by Microsoft, his mission for five years was in a copy of 247 keyboard shortcuts from Lifehacker. Or maybe “change management.” Apparently, corporate monoliths can you have better things to do than work toward advanced possess such massive inertia that they will resist the best degrees in the software programs you use. intellects no matter the times. On the other side of the room are the apps available for the iOS and Android mobile operating systems. These are TIPPING POINTS small, inexpensive, and dedicated to do just a few things At the recent launch of the latest iPad (March 7), Apple CEO very well. The growth of this area of software development Tim Cook provided some current events on the computing has been geometric and very democratic. Some people are landscape. He put up a slide that compared the units sold in writing these applications at home—Apple receives 26,000 the last quarter among iPad (15.4 million), HP (15.1 mil- submissions a week, and there are 143,240 unique app pub- lion), Lenovo (13 million), Dell (11.9 million), and Acer lishers. The resulting choice is nothing short of staggering. (9.8 million). The chart was titled “ Units There are more than 500,000 apps in Apple’s App Store Shipped,” and the HP bar included all HP PC sales, as did the (588,492 according to 148Apps.biz), and recently the num- other PC manufacturers, while the iPad total was one model. ber of downloads has passed 25 billion. One of the reasons Other “New Age” stats tossed out at the debut included for this success is the average price for a software program the fact that 76% of Apple’s revenue during the last quarter purchased on iTunes. The current average iOS app price is came from iPad, iPhone, and iPod sales. Not included were $2.05; the current average game price is $0.99; and the cur- the various models in the MacBook lines, desktops, rent average overall price is $1.90. A download of Microsoft apps/software, iTunes sales, and peripherals. For last year, Word 2010 is about $120. the total mobile sales of these three computers, iPad/iPod/ There have been other official and unofficial proclama- iPhone, was more than 172 million. When you combine all tions about the entry into this new age. In late February, the PC makers and add up their sales for the year, the total Brad Anderson, president of Dell’s enterprise group, is about 350 million PCs. announced, “We’re no longer a PC company, we’re an IT So when will the Apple mobiles along with the other company. Dell’s changing very quickly, and it’s no longer tablet makers and smartphone producers eclipse the tradi- about shiny boxes, it’s about IT solutions.” The emphasis for tional PC? In a press release from September 2011, the mar- one of America’s premier computer manufacturers will now ket research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) shift away from the personal computer going forward. This offered this prediction: “By 2015, more U.S. Internet users change echoed a similar, but more dramatic, move made by will access the Internet through mobile devices than through the preeminent computer maker, IBM, when that corpora- PCs or other wireline devices. As begin to tion sold off its very successful PC division to Lenovo in outsell simpler feature phones, and as media tablet sales 2004. The group was still profitable at the time, and there explode, the number of mobile Internet users will grow by a was internal dissent over CEO Palmisano’s decision. In a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.6% between recent New York Times article, Palmisano revisited the deci- 2010 and 2015.” sion, expressing no regrets over the sale. The largest com- And what effect will this growth have on PCs? In the lat- puter company, HP, recently made the same decision as Dell, est release of its Worldwide New Media Market Model,IDC but then backed off from it. forecasts first a stagnation of the numbers of those using As we move away from the appliance computing model PCs to access the Internet and then a slow decline. And that of the past, totable computing is inspiring ubiquitous decline will soon also be felt in Western Europe and Japan. computing. SF

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