Psion Siena laptop
£169.95
WHAT'S as small as a slim asses case, weighs 183 grammes (more like an apple than an Apple), and has a friendly Windows or Mac style graphical interface?
It's a "palmtop" or "handheld" computer or "organiser" - you know, the kind of device which used to be seen as too dinky, clunky, gimmicky and pricy. But times have changed, and this particular palmtop, Psion's new entry level Siena range, packs a surprising number of features into its tiny space.
It has more computing power than the original IBM PC of 10 years ago, and costs just £170. But what turns the Psion into sublime machine is its ability to talk with other, more powerful computers, using its built in infra red "eye".
For example, you can spend a day moving around indoors or outside, making notes in its word processor or diary, or using its calculator or spreadsheet. Then at the end of the day, back at home base, you simply point the Psion's infra red eye at the infrared receiver on your PC and press the right button. It's the same technology as a TV zapper - only the Psion and PC are chatting at the rate of some 19,000 bits of information per second.
If your PC/Mac doesn't have infra red, cables are available. Psions can even talk to each other, though the Computimes office hasn't actually tried or witnessed this phenomenon (yet).
The Psion's programs are also highly compatible with many PC and Mac ones. Its word processor documents, for example, can be fed straight into Microsoft Word, and the spreadsheet is compatible with Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel.
But one key reason why Psions are great to use is rarely mentioned: its speed. You can switch it off in the middle of typing a document, then when you switch on later it goes directly to the same point in, the document. Instantly. So it's great for making short, quick notes. By comparison, most PCs and laptops take so long to "boot up" that you've enough time to shave and feed the cat, and ponder why the cat needed a shave in the first place.
Traditionally digital organisers seemed to run out of memory alter you had typed in half the family's birthdays, but the Siena can store up to 200 A4 pages of text.
Psion is pitching the Siena range at "people who have expressed interest in organisers in the past, but have dismissed them because they were too limited, too expensive or too big". Reading between the lines of their press releases, it sounds as if they want to appeal to filofaxtoting females in particular. The two Siena models (512K and LIMB of memory) cost £169.95 and £229.95 respectively.
If there are any quibbles, existing users of the Series 3 range might find the Siena's half size screen constraining, though newcomers won't notice. And as usual the keyboard is not made for touch typing your Great Irish Novel or filing news stories to Reuters. Then again it's not supposed to be. It's aimed more at two finger typists, for quick memos while on the move, or holding lecture notes, or short points from meetings.
The streamline design is classy, the way the lid splits open to reveal the infra red eye is clever, but it can be disconcerting (new users think they've just broken it!). And I've only ever looked up the local time and sunrise/sunset times of places from Afghanistan to Zaire while showing off the machine to colleagues.
That's another drawback - a social/cultural one. In my enthusiasm for how such a tiny machine manages to combine simplicity, power and compatibility, I probably come across like that boy with the first digital watch in the class.
At the other end of the scale (in terms of price/power), Psion has also just launched the Series 3c. It comes with one or two megabytes of memory, costing £339.95 and £399.95 respectively.
Basically it's a revamp of the old Series 3a, with plenty more built in features and improvements, such as a better file management program, a jotter, sound sampler, serial communications technology and Internet/Web capability, and a restyled case. Add its modem and plug it into a mobile, phone (and sure aren't they giving them away?), and it gives the Nokia Communicator a very serious run for its money. Given its weight, price, design and software, I'd go for the Psion...
Nokia 9000 Communicator,
£1,300(+VAT)
IS IT a phone? Is it an organiser? Is it a Web terminal? Actually the Communicator is all three - not to mention a fax - in a package the size of a plain old pocket mobile phone of a few years ago.
Add to this a text processor, mobile phone short messaging system (SMS), cable or infra red connection to a PC, plus Internet email and Telnet utilities and it is difficult to imagine a more tightly packed 397 grammes of technology. Not to mention the calculator, clock and a gizmo for creating new ringing tunes for the phone.
The fax and Internet access run over the GSM phone link, so its now feasible to be completely in touch and at work while travelling in any of the countries where GSM data services are available, or on a golf course or a trout lake at home. The idea of making work so portable is exhilarating or terrifying (depending on one's point of view) but it is definitely happening, and without the bulk of an ordinary laptop.
Very little manual thumbing is required to get started and the applications share enough common interface features to make learning quite easy. There is also quite a good help system built in.
Minutes after turning it on I had sent my first cellular fax and shortly after I had opened a terminal session on Ireland OnLine's text only Web server. Since then Eunet has announced that its Internet servers have been adjusted to work fully with the Communicator, giving full Web access in Ireland and at 200 dial in points in 41 countries. I have some problems with email, but Eunet says this works well also.
The main limitations on the Communicator are the obvious ones: a miniature screen and a tiny keyboard which is a step down from that on the Psion 3a. Also, the built in applications are less sophisticated than those on the Psion. The price is daunting, but not unrealistic if the prices of a high spec GSM phone, personal organiser and PC Card interface are added together - plus a premium for miniaturisation.
A further limitation, although temporary, is the availability of mobile data services from Eircell, the only network operator for GSM in the country at the moment.
Fiachra O Marcaigh
Core! Web Designer, £40
THIS CD-Rom is a useful I resource for anyone putting together Web pages. It won't solve every problem, but then no single tool will. In fact, there are three tools on the disk: an editor for the Web's HTML markup language, a utility to convert existing files to HTML and the WebGallery collection of thousands of clip art images, buttons, bars, backgrounds and icons.
The first and last of these are the most useful. The editor (Web Designer) is clear and easy to use. It gives a near WYSIWYG view of the page as it is being put together. Over 100 sample pages help to get the visually tongue tied started. The button bar tools for creating forms and imagemaps remove two of the most tedious parts of writing a page "longhand" in a text editor.
Not all of the new, non standard features (marquees, background sounds) are catered for. Some of these are so irritating in use that their omission is no harm at all. (Who wants to see more blinking text?) But others, like Netscape's frames, are more useful. For those who know how to put them in longhand, there is easy access to a text editor.
Web Transit offers conversion from a limited number of file formats to HTML - useful for anyone who has a lot of these files ion convert. WebGallery has enough images to liven up any Web site. It's a pity it can't be accessed directly from within the editor. Using a handful of the available images will justify the purchase of the disk. Using a lot more in a limited size site will make for visual spaghetti, but we'll have to wait a long time for a CD Rom that builds in a sense of style.
Cyber Jokes edited by Doug Mayer
Harper Collins, £5.99
IN a joint press conference in St Peter's Square this morning, Microsoft Corp. and the Vatican announced that the Redmond software giant will acquire the Roman Catholic Church...
Yes, yet another spoof about Bill Gates's company - the Net is full of them. And this collection, subtitled "The funniest stuff on the Internet", is actually far better than the usual, Great Computer Joke Anthologies.
Personal favourites include its Best Net Signatures (sigs or signatures are the short phrases people stick at the end of their email messages). These range from "Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine" to "Very funny Scotty. Now beam down my clothes."
There is a heavy reliance on parodies and lists ("Fun things to do in an elevator"), and the brother has a theory on this: the Net is speeding up the circulation, natural selection and evolution of the kind of list/parody jokes people used to circulate in offices - the ones which always seemed to come as a heavily folded sixth generation photocopy.
Now, though, in their digital environment, they have a much more robust DNA - and the copies are actually legible.
Inside the Windows 95 Registry, by Ron Petrusha O'Reilly & Associates, 575pp
THE Windows 95 (W95) registry is the glue that holds Windows together. It attempts to end the anarchy introduced by Windows 3.x which used endless system and private initialisation files for holding configuration information. In Windows 95 we now have, in theory at least, a central database which controls the system.
Ron Petrusha, in this learned and elegantly written account, explains the registry. He understands why it's feared and misunderstood but argues convincingly for its use by developers on grounds of consistency and performance.
He shows how to use regedit to change registry settings and he outlines at formidable length the various backup strategies which are crucial if you wish to recover your registry when, like all good databases, it eventually becomes corrupt.
Most of the book is for W95 developers writing C or Visual Basic code to access the registry directly - many examples are provided. For the rest of us, it's a salutary insight into the complex workings of the W95 operating system.
Bandits on the Information
Superhighway
O'Reilly & Associates, 229pp
THIS author argues that most people who use the Net behave honestly, but what about the bad apples? He argues that the moral panic about hackers and paedophiles has been totally overblown, and concentrates more on other, less intrigue filled risks that don't make the news.
So this guide is about the more realistic, everyday risks on the Net such as junk mail (or "spamming"), or how to trade money for goods safely with complete strangers online. Its practical tips on "Get rich quick" scams, pyramid schemes and other hoaxes are peppered with first person anecdotes and the advice of various experts, making it a very useful, accessible and sensible book.