744 Words
By Jason Romney
The news said it was the coldest Melbourne day in almost a century but two road warriors stood shivering on the nature strip outside my house, a notebook computer clutched tightly in their blueish fingers where, truly, a hot thermos should have been.
Yes, your intrepid correspondent has the one (?) house in this suburb which stubbornly refuses to entertain mobile wireless communication. The man from Motorola was certain that former resident and builder of the house, Governor Hotham, must have put a hex on it as we trooped from one room to another seeking a connection with the svelte Personal Messenger 100D wireless PCMCIA modem card.
Finally we did get it going - the tiny antenna had worked itself loose from its socket. One flat battery and an ``illegal function call'' message later we were on air and indeed, your correspondent was deep bit by the wireless bug.
While the business world clambers onto the Internet through traditional ``wireline'' links, I suspect wireless digital communications (give or take the odd glitch) is a second revolution waiting closely in the wings. Road warriors long liberated by mobile phones and notebooks can now take a jubilant extra step, integrating their personal digital assistant (PDA) with the Internet or a central office database through wireless packet links which do away with the legendary search for a phone outlet or battles with PABX switchboards.
The release of Motorola's Personal Messenger last November was a world-first and breathed new life into PDAs such as Apple's Newton or Hewlett Packard's LX200. In the Windows world, Australian Internet gateway provider, OzEmail (tel: 1 800 805 874), was also quick to create a special suite of Internet accessing applications for the Personal Messenger, a type II PCMCIA card with a matchbox sized battery compartment and foldaway aerial attached at one end. (The PM100D weighs 155 grams, operates for up to 40 hours on a 9-volt alkaline battery or 8 hours with a NiCad rechargeable and is able to store either 64KB or 8KB depending on the model you choose.)
OzEmail's program let you send and receive e-mail (including attachments), send faxes, interrogate news group and Web browse with software that emulates the function of most of your existing Internet winsock applications. The PM100D uses Motorola's error-correcting DataTAC system (which interfaces with Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Canada - but NOT the USA) to send information generated or requested by the OzEmail software at rates of up to 19.2kbps (effectively, however, 14.4kbps or less).
It is difficult to gauge the ultimate appeal of this system now. An expected six month trial offer in which an OzEmail account and software cost $50 per month (after purchase of the PM100D for between $1250 and $1450) should win plenty of hearts. After that, and particularly for large data transfers, the GSM network with a digital phone is likely to pose strong competition.
But in the meantime, even the most jaded road warrior will get a tremendous kick out of OzEmail's system. Your incoming e-mail is initially listed with the sender's name, the subject, the mail's size and date, and whether it has been read. You choose the messages to download in full, leaving long ones for wireline retrieval.
Deletions and transfers to and from the mail server are drag and drop operations and messages can be saved as an independent text file. If you are careful about the way you configure your Telnet session, all the standard Internet Unix applications are available such as Lynx for Web browsing.
In the future, the so-called ``vertical'' wireless applications (for service technicians who need technical documentation or warranty information at customer sites or salespeople needing delivery and inventory data) will be a great money spinner for the Australian software industry. Simpler programs such as Scribblemail for the Newton (from BHA, tel: 07 258 4444) and the WinMessage paging software from A2B Telecommunications (tel: 03 670 6099) show the way now.
This transition to vertical applications will take time, however, with one American study estimating that at least 25 percent of cellular data users will still be using wireless connectivity only for functions such as e-mail and faxing by the year 2000. But at least by then people will probably remember to bring a thermos...
* Jason Romney is a solicitor and information systems consultant at Price Brent's Information Media and Communication Group. E-mail: jromney@werple.mira.net.au
ENDS