Rosie's Ramblings

By Sandra Rosenzweig
     
The last mile-I think that was a movie or four (one in 1932 starring Preston Foster, another in 1959 with Mickey Rooney)-has been a retail problem ever since Eve bit Adam. Manufacturers make products and sell them to distributors. Wholesalers sell
      them to retailers, but then the last-mile problem pops up: How do the retailers get the products into customers' hands? Marketing. And FedEx. (FedEx solved the last-mile problem for millions of businesses-that's why everyone used it as soon as it appeared.)
      For most computer-related technologies, that last mile is almost as insurmountable. Wireless is a good example. We have just about all the hardware we need. We can sit in a hotel room and, if we're on the right floors, pick up the hotel's wireless signal-sometimes (rarely) even for free. We can sit at home and cadge bandwidth off our neighbor's network. (I don't understand why people persist in such vulnerability when, for most Internet users, it's a breeze to protect against intruders.) We can log on in cafes. Sometimes we can even log on in cafes for free. For people with portable computers of whatever sort, wireless is no biggie.
      However, what if you're stuck in traffic and want to know what's causing the backup? That should be the place where you can log on and pick up statewide traffic reports. And weather reports. Yes, the information's just waiting for you to ask for it, but you're stuck. There are no signal repeaters on the Bay Bridge, for example. And if there were, I'd venture you'd have to pay some company for a subscription to the service.
      That's the second part of the problem. The government should be supplying this to us at no charge. I'm not sure that every city and county government can afford jurisdiction-wide wireless, but in some localities free wireless is as much an anathema as socialized medicine. I happen to spend a lot of time in a city that does have free wireless just about everywhere within its boundaries. But when I drive on a state or federal highway, fergeddit. I have to either wait for traffic-and-weather-together on the radio, or dial up the traffic channel on my cell phone to get information. Not good enough.
      I'm really looking for a device that delivers traffic and weather reports not only by voice but also by text and by a local map showing the flow of cars. We already have these devices-they're called either PDAs or cell phones, and
      as they merge like amoebae, we are getting bigger and bigger feature packages in smaller and smaller physical packages. And it's about time, too.
      However, in these converged PDAs/phones, the cell-phone hardware and software reserve most of the storage and program memory for themselves. Moreover, communicating by cell phone is still expensive, especially when compared with wireless. And, because just about every voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) provider supports mobile wireless, you can talk cheaply on wireless to anyone anywhere-except on California's highways.
      Ever since Dell canceled its Axim handhelds, I've been looking for a super PDA, one with at least a four-inch VGA screen (measured diagonally), top-speed processor (624MHz or better), at least 256MB of built-in storage memory, and no less than 128MB of program memory). Plus decent speakers, decent headphone jack, and two expansion flash cards, one of which must be Compact Flash (CF). Oh, and a fairly strong microphone for recording memos or your cat's last words, as well as talking to your daughter in London over Skype. The most difficult feature to find, you'll find, are the dual slots. I keep a 16GB CF card in my aging Axim X51v. It holds several hours of MP3-formatted music, six or seven complete medical references, two huge Chinese dictionary programs, and more than 600 Chinese language podcasts. Considering that lawyers need to carry with them work, clients' files, or various law references ... these folk need a PDA with the ability to accept 16GB or larger CF cards.
      So far, the PDA that comes closest to my needs is Hewlett- Packard's iPAQ 210-211 series. Unlike Dell, HP came early to the PDA concept and has stuck with it, putting out several new models every year. I don't have to enumerate the 211's specs because they match the features I listed in the previous paragraph (www.hp.com, $499).
      Now all we need is ubiquitous wireless. Or at least highway wireless. Should we start an office pool on when we'll see such a thing? Put me down for $5 by January 2017.
     
     

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