The Cadillac of expensive PC scanner makers, Hewlett-Packard Co., held out against cheap competitors for years but this week cried uncle with the release of a sub-$100 parallel port scanner with the coveted H-P logo on the hood. The ScanJet 3200C confronts low-ball scan boxes from Umax and Visioneer as waves of families realize that a scanner is the missing link between just having a new computer and having something to do with a new computer.
DILBERT IN YOUR POCKET
MAKE THAT DOGBERT
Dilbert, the boss-besieged cartoon guy with wire in his tie and a protector in his pocket, leaves cube space for cyberspace this week and the result isn’t pretty. Dilbert Productivity Pack ($50) for the Palm line of personal digital assistants offers some slick hand-held software for drawing doodles and reading e-mail on the things but strikes out by transforming icons on the Palm launch screen into cutsie Dilbert characters.
BIG BLUE BIRDIE
LINKS FOR THE LINKS
Seeking new ways to push its pricey laptops, IBM this week will outfit all 204 players on the PGA tour with ThinkPad 600s specially equipped for the unique needs of a globe-trotting golf hustler.
Each laptop is loaded with software and Web links to let pros to do everything from registering for individual tournaments to getting back-nine weather forecasts on-line. Also included is software to track how a player’s earnings are stacking up, how well a player’s stock portfolio is doing and whether a player has enough money to retire yet. Sound familiar?
LIQUID GLASS
POUR ME A WINDOW
Your laptop batteries conk out all the time because they have to crank out double the electricity needed to display images on the screen using current polarizing technologies, which need to draw each picture twice to get contrast (polar). Now U.S. Air Force missile mavens and experts at the University of Rochester in New York are looking for a name for a new liquid they brewed that gives a screen well contrasted color without polarizing, thus vastly reducing the amount of juice needed to power screens on everything from laptops to wall-sized TVs. Inventor Shaw Chen says the stuff looks like “liquid glass.”
Y2KORNER
SLOW BOAT TO CHINA?
Asian aviators decided last week that they will head off the danger of Millennium Bug air travel disruptions by disrupting air travel on their own in advance.
Starting on the evening of Dec. 31 and continuing until Jan. 2, the International Civil Aviation Organization will reduce by one third the number of flights on one of the world’s busiest routes, the northern Pacific route between Anchorage and Asia.
