If you had any doubt that the computer revolution was hitting every level of American society, know that you can now buy a computer at Wal-Mart Online. The computers, built to order by ACI Microsystems, start at $899 including monitor.
HOBBIES
KEEPING COUNT
This should put the lie to wives’ suspicions that men go off on fishing trips to get away from responsibility–and them.
Six members of the Prairie DX Group, a ham radio club in Chicago’s suburbs, are going to the isolated St. Pierre and Miquelon islands off the coast of Newfoundland, but they won’t be out of sight. Their activities will be constantly monitored on the Internet.
Todd Benson of Elmhurst said that from Thursday through Sept. 2 the six will be fishing for long-distance ham radio contacts from call letters FP/N9PD, and their logs will be updated every minute on www.prairiedx.com. It’s all in support of the hobby called DXing, where amateur radio operators see how many distant stations they can make contact with. Of the 340 or so recognized countries and possessions in the world, the French islands are among the 50 rarest contacts, since there are few hams living there.
So the Chicago hams will make a DXpedition to St. Pierre and Miquelon and talk to people around the world.
So they don’t shame other fisherman around town, let’s hope they at least bring a deck of cards.
GADGETS
AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
Don’t you just hate it when you whip out your personal digital assistant and have to fumble for the built-in stylus before you can do the least little thing?
The folks at Concept Kitchen in San Francisco feel your pain. They’ve come out with a sterling silver stylus that slips over your index finger and works with any handheld device, from the Palm Pilot to the Psion to the Windows CE Handheld PC.
Concept Kitchen suggests that you wear the $19.95 gizmo all day, merely turning it around to protect the tip when you’re not working on the PDA.
The really cool guys, of course, can use it as an icebreaker at the Internet cafe.
SOFTWARE
HELPING OUT
Beginning in January, Intuit Inc. will make it easier for low-income families to file their taxes by offering free tax preparation and filing on their Quicken.com Web site. The price is usually $15 to do both state and federal returns, but filers with less than $20,000 in income won’t pay a penny–and will get their refunds faster by filing on-line.
And now that two-thirds of the country’s public libraries have Internet access, they won’t have to buy a PC, either.
OOPS!
We gave you a bad address last week for downloading the Hewlett-Packard guide to small-office technology. It’s at hpguide.com.
