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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (60837)	2/21/2002 6:51:52 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

re: I have yet to see an application that convinces me that wireless web is better. What year will this be available (at a price that people who drive Subarus will pay); That's the year, IMO, that wireless data/internet get mass-adopted: I'm driving through Montana on a family vacation. A Country radio station is on, volume turned up to drown out the sound of the 6 and 8-old fighting over Legos in the back seat. I ask "where is the nearest pizza place?" The car answers, "12 miles up the road, in Livingston". The 10-year-old says, "I want pineapple and bacon pizza". The car says, "You'll have to go to Billings for that, and it'll cost you 7$ more. Want directions?"

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (60837)	2/21/2002 7:14:08 PM
From: Sam Citron	Respond to of 70976

for heavy duty web use, even a 56K landline is barely fast enough, and that's much faster than most of the wireless choices...I have yet to see an application that convinces me that wireless web is better [than Palm OS]. 802.11b has a maximum data rate of 11 Mbps and soon 802.11g promises 54 Mbps. Very useful for extending a broadband connection throughout the house or office. Some are even demanding 802.11 data clouds for their campuses or communities. Same thing with video. 5 years ago streaming video quality was simply awful. Today it's OK as long as you have broadband and are willing to put up with a small display and occasional glitches. Faster connections and better MPEG compression standards will gradually make it a richer experience, but it will not be the same as TV. Some will say it is better. For investors, one question is whether such advances will gain enough traction to justify substantial new infrastructure investments, as the automobile brought societal changes that demanded greater mobility and upgrades of the highway system. That is the essence of the Moore's Law investor argument that you need not predict what the next killer app is going to be, but you just know that the cost curves are going to gradually enable a plethora of new apps, some of which will probably gain enough traction to sell a lot of new chips. Sam

To: Katherine Derbyshire who wrote (60837)	2/21/2002 11:22:41 PM
From: Cary Salsberg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

RE: "real-time, full-motion, audio/video" I agree about information and entertainment. I was thinking more about communication. We have had expensive video conferencing for quite a while. I am thinking of inexpensive, portable (wireless) individual videoconferencing. Every communication device would have a digital video camera built in. Grand parents watching their grand kids piano recital in real time from another state, etc.