I spent a hot, muggy summer day wandering about the show floor at this year's PC EXPO, held June 16-18 at the Javitts Center in New York City. Trudging back to Penn Station for the long ride home, I reflected on what I seen...

As expected, massive crowds spilled into the aisles around the Microsoft pavilion, clamoring for a preview of the yet-to-be-released Windows '98. Ho-hum, I say - wake me up when NT 5.0 is ready to ship. If you're otherwise inclined, I recommend first checking out V Communications' System Commander Special Edition for Windows '98. This inexpensive utility enables coexistence of Windows '95 and '98 on the same PC, without having to create separate disk partitions or understand system file impacts. Don't leave home without it...

At the other end of the floor, far from the Microsoft fray, 3COM's Palm Computing booth was packing 'em in for a continuous standing-room-only presentation on Palm III. Perhaps it had something to do with the Palm III given away at the end of each session? But 3COM filled their pavilion with partner exhibits, and every station was surrounded by Palm Pilot devotees looking for useful add-ons. Tired of carrying both a Palm Pilot and a pager? Try PageMart's Synapse card, a hardware upgrade that packs an integrated pager with the Palm OS 3.0 and 2 MB of memory. This alphanumeric pager is nicely integrated - it replaces the memory door, links to the Palm's address book to identify page sender, and transfers vCalendar appointments to the Palm's schedule app with a single tap. If you're willing sacrifice IR for pager capability, this product is for you.

3COM's PDA may have pulled in the biggest crowd, but HPCs and PDAs were drawing attention all over the show floor. Who could miss the scantily-clad gymnast, scaling a rock wall, Philips Nino in hand, accompanied by a jump-suited vocalist singing an ode to HPCs - in French? Most HPCs are now running Windows CE, with the newest entries adopting the Palm form-factor: Everex Freestyle, Philips Nino, Casio Cassiopeia E-10, and the Uniden UniPro PC 100. Are these PDAs or HPCs? How can you tell?

If you're interested in electronic note taking, but frustrated by chicklet-size keys and rigid character recognition, you might consider the CrossPad. Developed by IBM and Cross Pen, this 2 lb. pad allows you to take notes on any sheet of paper, using a Cross pen equipped with a digital transmitter. The pad records up to 50 pages of notes, which are then uploaded to your PC back at the office with a serial cable. Page images can be printed, searched by keyword, or cut and pasted into documents or presentations. Can a wireless interface be far behind?

At the HP booth, we found JetSend, a protocol that enables devices to negotiate how to transmit and render an image, without going through an intermediary host/PC/OS. HP designed JetSend and is deploying it in their products (printers, scanners) right now. They've also published the spec and license a developer's kit implementation for a lowish one-time royalty. What interests me is that HP has enlisted a strong list of partners with active JetSend product deployment plans, including Lexmark (!), Encanto (e-commerce), Canon, Ricoh, Xerox (digital imaging), and Castelle (fax gateways). On the horizon, JetSend seems ripe for integration into HPCs/PDAs, wireless devices, and Internet messaging gateways: print/scan/fax across the 'net, from any source.

Of course, what would PC EXPO be without the world wide web? Dozens (hundreds?) of web development tools were on display. I sat down to take a break at the NetStudio booth, and in just a few minutes found myself hooked. This web graphics workbench enables those of us who aren't artists to develop eye-catching banners and gifs without much effort. Unfortunately, I've been entirely unable to download this beta from NetStudio's single and apparently very busy FTP server - I wish you better luck!

On the other side of the fence, those of us crawling our way through the world wide wait may find relief from bloated web site banners and advertisements with WRQ's new @Guard product. @Guard operates as a sort of "personal firewall" for desktop PCs running Windows 95 or NT. It uses packet filters to permit or block incoming and outgoing web access, by application and URL. @Guard can block the download of ads and selected graphics to significantly speed web page access and reduce connect time. It also transparently blocks cookies, logs URLs visited or blocked, and signals intrusion events. If you're looking for faster web access or greater privacy, I recommend you check out @Guard. I did, and it works.

I hope you enjoy these tidbits from PC EXPO, and welcome your feedback on my observations. If you try out any of the products I've mentioned here, let me know what you think!


- Lisa A. Phifer, June, 1998