The high and low ends of personal computing are simultaneously stretching, as handheld personal assistants become a hot new platform while $3,000-class PCs approach workstation levels of performance and sophistication. Join Peter Coffee of PC Week for our annual overview of personal and technical computing and communications technologies, products, and infrastructures.

Peter Coffee is the Advanced Technologies Analyst for PC Week, the nation's information technology newsweekly with 400,000 subscribers and over a million readers. His in-print column, "PC At Work", covers technical and managerial issues of personal and departmental computing; he also contributes a biweekly news analysis as one of PC Week's ensemble of on-line "Off The Cuff" columnists at 'www.pcweek.com'. Peter reviews scientific and technical software, programming products of every kind, and other products based on emerging technologies. His latest book, "Peter Coffee Teaches PCs," was scheduled for release in September by Macmillan Computer Publishing.

"It's the only talk that I get to give without getting on a plane" said Peter Coffee, Advanced Technologies Analyst for PC Week. In this instance he got OFF a plane (returning from an Eastern trip) to give his update on computer technology at the October joint meeting of the Chapter with the Association of Information Technology Professionals. The meeting is becoming something of a tradition, and a very welcome one. For nearly two hours, Peter shared his comprehensive knowledge of the business with an attentive and engaged audience. His talk ranged over a wide variety of topics. This summary will cover only a few. (Don't miss the next one!)

New Information Technology Demands and Exposure -- After years of talk, reusability is starting to mean something. Object-oriented technologies and techniques are now common, and are promoting reusability which is a great boon to electronic commerce. A Web presence is now required if you want to deal with the public. The new information technology (IT) makes possible a quick implementation, but the first impression made must be positive (attractive and easy to understand) or the customer may never return. IT is also important in production and backlog control. Thus IT must be regarded as an important value-added factor in the return-on-investment, not just as a cost center. Peter foresees huge growths (4-5 times) in critical services and resource management in the next five years. More immediately, he sees large problems in the Y2K area. The costs -- about $2 per line-of-code just to FIND the problems -- are huge. The banks and financial services are in pretty good shape; VISA did have 25 people working on the problems, but are now down to three. He is particularly concerned about the electric power distribution system, and says that we will be lucky if we don't have two major metropolitan areas with major disturbances. The second big problem will be popular hysteria in the last month before 1/1/2000. (His own plans include celebrating his in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary in rural middle-America; they are getting -- but don't know it yet -- a 3 KW generator.) If you must buy a camp stove, do it now and avoid the rush. The problems will not occur on just that one big day; how many 'permanent' files have been given an expiration date of 9/9/99? Then there will be the weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports in early 2000 that must compare current and 1999 data. He called it "the death of a thousand cuts."

Everything Has An Interface -- The days of reading from one screen and typing onto another are gone. Palm Pilot has been a big success. And it has an operating system that runs in only kilo-bytes. There are hand-held digital voice note takers; the voice record can be downloaded and sent by email. (Maybe this is not such a good idea; people tend to think less carefully about what they say than write.) Similarly, Crosspad allows normal note-taking with a pen and paper, but the pen is also a radio transmitter that records the same image on base of the clipboard. Up to 50 pages may be saved and downloaded, and (with help from handwriting recognition software) converted to ASCII text. (This is harder than voice recognition because we tend to write only for ourselves, but we get immediate feedback if our speech is not clear.) A MIDI keyboard controller allows a musician to compose at the keyboard and the system prints out the score! Peter called it 'spooky'. You can now compile your own musical CD. And even Barbie has an interface, an IR amulet so that you can download new conversation into "Talk To Me Barbie". Digital cameras are now considered mainstream. Most use CCD sensors, and (with progressive scan) give true color. Cheap CMOS sensors are becoming more viable. The camera can be put on a single chip. They have lower resolution and sensitivity, but the they are CHEAP -- cheap enough for a kid's camera. Best may be a hybrid system, with a APS camera and scanner post processing. With this combination, both rapid shooting and high resolution are possible.

What's Worth Doing Faster? -- Peter noted that multimedia is a well known bottomless pit for performance. But sheer speed isn't everything. AMD and Centaur will have 3D extensions to the old x86 architecture that hasn't been changed in years. These will be great for game developers who have traditionally driven many computer advances. What about 64-bit architectures? Intel's IA-64 wont be out this year. Compaq is betting on Alpha chips. (Alpha is the proven, fastest single chip out there.) In the RISC vs CISC arena, RISC emulation requires more communications, and the requisite connections are limiting the chip developments. Meanwhile, core CPU rates continue to climb toward 1 GHz, with 450 MHz now considered mainstream. Bus speeds are now passing the 100 MHz threshold, but the next generation memories need a 200 MHz bus to keep up. The speeds of hand-held appliances may be misleading. In x86 codes, 60% of the instructions may be 'Load' instructions, and if it needs to go off chip to find the data -- lacking a large cache -- the speed is the system is governed by the bus, not the CPU. Perhaps a new approach is needed. Peter gave this analogy: If the phone system required that you pick up the phone every minute to see if someone wants to talk to you, a lot of time is wasted justed checking for a phone call. But this is the way that most computer systems work. The (real) phone system puts a bell on each instrument; you answer only when the bell rings. The analogous computer system would be asynchronous. These are beginning to be used in portable devices, because of the considerable savings in power consumption. For PCs, asynchronous processors would be more expensive, and MUCH harder to test.

Is Web Time Getting Warped? -- The Web is already mired in legacies -- old browsers, old telecom infrastructures, old skills and tools that are expensive to upgrade. What to do? Is cheaper more important than better? Present manufacturers know how to package and support a $2000 device, but the prospect of having to support something that can only be sold for $500 is terrifying. Peter suggests that a new support model is needed -- and is indeed already seen in the growth of Linux. At present, traditional users get (or at least expect) free support for their considerable money, and are infuriated by the long waits on the tech support line. In the case of Linux, the software is free, but installations understand the need to pay for support. And if they are unhappy with their present contractor, there are a half-dozen others competing for their business. One member of the audience observed that this approaches the old main frame model!

If You Liked The Talk, You'll Love The Book -- Peter Coffee's book, "Peter Coffee Teaches PCs", originally expected out in September, will appear as part of a five-title series from Macmillan Computer Publishing in late October. He hopes that it answers as many questions for the readers as it answered for him when he was writing it! He made extensive use of a digital camera for the illustrations, noting that it was very nice to know immediately that the picture desired was indeed captured. This was the second meeting of the year, attended by nearly 50 people.

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