Slashdot Mirror
Sneak Peak: 3Com's New Audrey
neildogg writes "I had a second while 3Com's new Ergo site was up to save some of the images and screenshots from their new Web pad, the Audrey. I have put them up as a mirror at my site with features and specs as well, straight from the horse's mouth. Enjoy." Apparently the pics were up for just a couple of minutes, and then replaced with some boring "Coming Soon" graphics. So screw waiting, check it out.
And further, I can't think of ANY reason this wouldn't run PalmOS... y'know, their house handheld OS... Your fears of WinCE can stand abated, for now.
There seemed to be some Mac widgets in there. They may all simply be mockups.
Sure does look strange, perhaps a few images from different angle? I notice it has a built in modem, rather than the ability to dial itself. I know this can bring down cost, but it sure does limit portability. Saying that though, if these sort of things become popular, phone sockets will start popping up everywhere.
-- Hob - Java Spectrum Emulator
this only has a 56k modem and USB. That really bothers me. I don't have a USB ethernet connection, and I don't use a modem. Why in the hell would I want to use something w/o an ethernet port? In fact, I would EXPECT it to be a 10/100 card, I don't even use 10mbit ethernet anymore. If you are a college student, you can walk up to almost any port and plug right in. Having a 10/100 card would be an absolute necessity :)
- Bill
Handspring + 802.11. Bingo, the perfect "webpad". Sure it's monochromatic, but it's also dual-purpose.
Trolls, it must be cool to be that bored.
This is true....Wireless is the way to go. =) Given the option between Ethernet and Modem, I'd pick Ethernet. Given the choice between wirless and tethered, I'd pick wireless hands down every time. =)
I just want to take over the world...Why does that automatically make me EVIL?
Go ahead, pay for a slow wireless modem connection and be forced to transfer files across the internet to communicate with other devices on your LAN. I prefer the option to connect to my home or office LAN. Many businesses will insist on it for connectivity to their intranets. It's safer, easier, more private, and you can get a lot more bandwidth for the same money.
I still haven't been able to figure out why only Compaq is offering the general public wireless LAN connectivity from a handheld (mmm...iPaq), or why noone has produced an 802.11b CompactFlash ethernet card. I thought the idea was that all these wonderful appliances and gadgets were supposed to connect to one another. Are we really expected to maintain a separate wireless modem connection for every device in the home of the future? (Granted, it would simplify customer profiling;-))
Actually Wired ran a brief bit on p. 290 of the current (October 2000) issue. The pictures look about the same as well as the specs and suchforth so I'm willing to take them as real or if nothing else, very close to it.
Weird. I haven't found the jack for that on my PalmPilot yet. Hearing this, I know it has to be there, somewhere. ;^)
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I for one am happy to see some nice (read: not these endless chiseled grey blocks) graphic design going into interfaces.
They're using color coding to good effect, they're putting appropriate visual attention in the right places, they're using easy-to-read labels and typefaces...
It's impressive looking. I wonder if it's real, or if it's some illustrator RIP...
Mucous membranes are the part of your brain that, like, make you think about mucous. --Beavis
digital dissonance: a guiltless state of awareness
"On the 23rd of September in a decade not too long before our own, the human race suddenly encountered a terrible threat to it's very existence."
Audrey was a mousey young woman who tried to tart herself up to be appealing to men and would inevitably fall victim to their use and abuse.
Audrey II was the name of the carnivorous plant from outer space with ambitions of world domination.
In some ways, I see both of the traits of these characters in Ergo's product. At least it doesn't run a Windows based OS (then it would DEFINITELY be in the carnivorous, world domination category :-)
So, I got my email from 3Com telling me to take down the site, and a whole bunch of legal crap about copyright laws and the Bahamas (which no one is sure of), so I took down the site, as a nice guesture to 3Com (and I don't like legal stuff). Worst of all is that their "counsel" couldn't even spell Bahamian properly. Hope you enjoyed as much as I could show you though.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I do this now. I have an older sharp Actius (looks like a sony VAIO, less than an inch thick) that sports 64MB of ram and a 266 mmx CPU. Street price for a device like this is probably around $800.
:)
I added a set of wireless ethernet cards (webgear aviator 2.4Ghz) for another $150, and dropped the second card in my basement Red Hat 6.2 server (a 233 AMD system with 64MB ram and 20 gigs or so of hard drive).
Because both run X, I can export whatever graphical apps (including the whole display) across the wireless link whenever I want. It is (as you describe) very usefull.
Here's the rub. Even though my laptop is reasonably modest in capabilities (you could not buy a machine today with this small a CPU), it still runs for $800 used, and still only displays 800x600 pixels. OK for a laptop, but embarrassing for a desktop. For an XGA laptop, we are talking some serious money. Even assuming you could drop some non-essentials (floppy drive, hard drive, etc), you are still looking at $300 or more just for LCD screen, not to mention keyboard, glidepad, cpu, memory, etc.
That's why all these cheap internet appliances have a custom dedicated UI, to keep them cheap. Any kind of usable generalized access device for a desktop system is either going to be more expensive then your desktop (because of the more expensive portable components), or so inferior in capability as to be useless.
The displays are really the rub right now... it is pretty darn cheap to produce a big glass tube, and pretty darn expensive to produce a small LCD. Maybe once the lighte emitting polymers hit the real world this will change, but don't expect it inside of the next two years.
IMHO
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
--MD
I realize that this does little for the Nix crowd but it would be interesting to see the thing. Particulalry since many of the clients I have to work with use NT for everything. If you've never used Citrix, you can get a desktop on an NT terminal server from anywhere on the network. I've used it quite a bit at work and it seems to suck less than I expected it to.
Icebox
I apologize. Earlier I did not justify why I was so upset at this potential direction. The reason is very simple. 3Com is a big name, and they are about to release a larger integrated device. I think it's *very* important for Linux to secure places in the integrated market because that is where Microsoft are going next! M$ are gearing up for cell phones, PDA's, and this may only be the next instance of one - except it's being made by a company that is or at least used to be pro-Linux. Do you see my point?
I had the same reaction. My first thought was "Have mercy! That thing is butt-ugly". If the Jetsons had an Etch-a-sketch, this is what it would look like. And the colors! What marketroid thought of "Audrey-Meadow"? That yellow color (Audrey-Sunshine) is utterly hideous. Fortunately, none of them are available right now.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
Is this just another marketing-esque way to describe something that has been around since the dawn of GUIs? (Like a menu bar)
Icebox
Even sending changes in terms of rectangles (or whatever) of pixels is quite expensive, mainly because you have to look at what the changes are in the first place (the graphic engine of the underlying platform may be of great help here).
Although VNC is a Good Thing(TM) when the server runs on a *NIX machine, there are more mature (in terms of performance) products to remotely display Windows applications (i.e. PCAnywhere). VNC people acknowledge this, saying that there is large space for improvements.
But if you need only to run remote X applications and have an X server, a really good solution is compressed X protocol: see the LBX-HOWTO and DXPC in particular (the link in the HOWTO is outdated). With dxpc, 128kbps should be really more than enough for everyday's needs (unless you have to play Quake, of course, or watch a DVD...).
Now, what I'd really like to see is something supporting both this and ICA (and perhaps some local apps in ROM/Flash, since the thing necessarily needs some processing power and RAM in any case).
I also know an answer is "shut up, buy yourself a laptop with 802.11, install Linux on it and on your box in the basement", but a device having a only a compact flash slot (instead of hard disk/floppy/cdrom/etc.) and keyboardless (if you have to type extensively, better go to a desktop anyway) would be IMHO a better (and possibly cheaper?) solution.
C'mon, this thing's supposed to be the phone communication center. It has a modem in it. Make it answer the phone, too! I'd love for my answering machine to wav messages and send them to my main machine. (of course, they'd be mp3'd when they get there to save bandwidth, but that's a minor detail) Wav is cheap, especially if you're on a LAN and have the bandwidth for the file transfer.
After a bit too much testing here in the lab (huge company on West coast) - we've found 802.11 "11Mb/s" devices max out a bit above 5 Mb/s. You won't get better, you will get worse. Every obstruction and foot of distance counts. Most users will find 4 Mb/s until they venture more than 100 feet away. Also, that 5 Mb/s is SHARED. Keep these things in mind.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
Is it just me... or do the fonts and widgets in one of those screenshots look decidedly MacOS-like? Particularly the third channels screenshot.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Ugh. I don't want to pay for this thing, which exists ONLY to push branded content at me, apparently. Lool at the brands visible in these images:
http://www.onebahamas.com/audrey/ch_fullsize_01
http://www.onebahamas.com/audrey/ch_fullsize_03
http://www.onebahamas.com/audrey/ch_fullsize_02
If it's fully configurable, that's one thing... have to wait and see. Hopefully these are just pre-placed bookmarks, and not the complete infoscape for this device. But nothing would surprise me anymore, since they transfered me to Sales at work.
I'll wait for the Audrey II, since it will be a mean green mother from outerspace!
Well I got them from ergo.3com.com, that's a pretty definite url, and there a lot of other people that actually saw the site that I can get to attest to it.
You see, Windows NT Terminal Server *IS* a multi-user, multi-processing, remote display-enabled system.
But it's a heckuva lot more expensive than Linux!!!
-Joe
Eeek, I didn't think of that.....you're probably right.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
"Of course, given that only Linux (with it's multi-user, multi-processing, remote display-enabled X server) is well-placed to provide this need is just a plus..."
Heh. Go look at this link, then.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
::sigh:: Forgot to paste the link. Microsoft Airstream
I don't mean to be pedantic, but don't you mean "Sneak Peek"? 8{
(this is not a
There is something about this product that smells of Micro$oft. Considering 3Com's recent deals with MS to release Windows-only ethernet hardware (like the HomeConnect series [the 405's] that are identical in everyway to 905's, but are specifically designed to be incompatable with Linux in very much the same way that LoseModems are). Do we have any specs on the OS this puppy is supposed to run or am I just blowing anti-M$ smoke?
My God, what is that thing? I'm not exactly sure what it looks like, but it seems to be more of a wastebasket than a high-tech email terminal.
Hmmm...then again, perhaps I could create the world's first net ready trashcan. Yet another reason to postpone taking out the garbage.
Thats why they removed the specs. The 3Com CEO said - 'No device leaves 3Com without an ethernet connection'
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
just visit www.furnitureporn.com WARNING! This article contains material some armchair-lovers may find offensive.... The quest for kinky online filth ends here - with www.furnitureporn.com. This site has everything sleazemeisters could ask for. What self-respecting porn offering would be without a ménage a trois, bondage scene and office bonking? Only difference is that the 'participants' in the antics are all chairs. Meet Lance the overstuffed armchair and his partner choice Debbi - a cheeky pink baroque specimen. Click on the pictures and spy on what they get up to, and what positions they get up to it in, when their owner's away. Or for the more adventurous there's the bondage seat - all trussed up and being told that "deep, deep down you WANT to be punished". Ahem. It's enough to make any self-respecting perv blush - even if it is only a black leather seat with a bit of rope tied round it. Viewers to the site first have to agree to a few conditions, including admitting to the fact that they are a "computer nerd over the legal adult lawful age of consent in my country, state, county, city and /or incorporated village and too scared to go inside a store and buy real pornography".
Once through this stage it only takes one click of the "Yes! I want to see hot, triple XXX chair-on-chair action!" and they're inside this depraved soft furnishings cyberworld run by a Los Angeles comedy group.
The top scenario has got to be the office interview, with wooden Miss White teasing leather swivel-chair Mr Brown with: "I want you to know Mr Brown, that I don't take off my antimacassar for just anyone."
'Nuff said, you can imagine the rest - this little vixen, sorry piece of furniture, manages to bag more than a new job by the end of session.
Why can't someone create a webpad that isn't a User Experience? Why not just create a simple "remote display" pad? That way the user can use whatever programs (and processing power) they already have on their desktop (which they have already customized or at least gotten used to).
The only answer I can think of is: distance. If it's just a remote display, you can't tote it around outside the house. I have two responses:
1) So what? It would still be a useful product--wireless will get you pretty far (the yard and maybe even next door).
2) Ubiquitous wireless: People say how great it would be if they could be "always on" but never mention the problems of synching up your palm with your car with your phone with your desktop. So why not integrate all these things: Your house has a "computer center" (a regular desktop would do) and all your remote devices are just displays from that center. Now synchronization in time (when I switch devies) AND in space (when I'm using device A and wifey is using device B) is automatic.
Of course, given that only Linux (with it's multi-user, multi-processing, remote display-enabled X server) is well-placed to provide this need is just a plus...
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
I am glad to hear that 3Com has wisely chosen to integrate a hardware-based pornography blocking mechanism to the new pad. This will steer many Americans away fromn the devil and toward our LORD Jesus Christ .
Sincerely,
Bob Jones III
good thing Jobs doesn't run 3COM, or he'd have your ass.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Does it run PalmOS or CE? Any idea what processor is in it?
I'll have the fries, please....
And to think I always belived it was impossible crossbreed a Palm, an iMac and a flowerpot.
I really love the 'Meadows' color, too...Who'd have thought that avocado green would come back on a computer...
--K
---
> Do they look obviously retouched?
Well, while I can't give the definitive answer on that, the interface on this image [http://www.onebahamas.com/audrey/ch_fullsize_03.g if] is absolutely identical to that of Mac OS. From the pull-down menu to the "Find" button to the text on the page, this looks exactly like a screen shot from a Mac web browser.
This says something about either the underlying OS of Audrey or the veracity of this information. I'm just not quite sure which.
It looks like it runs neither PALM nor WINCE like everyone seems to be saying. Take a good look at the pictures. That looks like QNX
(http://www.qnx.xom)(http://get.qnx.com)
QNX is a unix clone and the company just released it into the 'free' domain, meaning the base OS is free, as well as some applications. If I recall, the netappliance i-opener that was released earlier this year also runs the qnx platform, and people managed to hack into it and use their own isp's, also people were able to install linux (the linux install required a hardware hack though).
That would mean that this handheld would run a client similar to xwindows. This is a dream come true. Perhaps it is an easily hackable unit also?
Oh, if anyone wants to see QNX, look here QNX website
QNX is a realtime OS also by the way, and I believe is posix compliant....
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Ah well, enough whining...ErgoAudrey, meet Mr.Soldering Iron. I believe the two of you have a date for the voiding of your waranty this evening. (evil grin).
I just want to take over the world...Why does that automatically make me EVIL?
Voice email lets you leave a voice message with someone without having to wait for it. People talk faster than they type, so it's all about convenience.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
The problem is solved on the Palm PDAs with Graffiti, FITALY and similar, but not on cell phones. Voice is the most compact and intuitive interface for entering information, so it's one obvious solution for small consumber devices. Time will tell if it's a good solution.
this device is yucky. icky. eww.
it's not small enough to put in my pocket like a palm and yet it's not really a computer like i'm used to. What's so hard about making a laptop-sized machine with a flip-out keyboard (or attachable via cable) and a pen-sensitive screen (flipped over from the normal laptop orientiation, so that the device can be rested on a forearm and held by one hand and "written" on with the other) that runs on either x86 or ppc chips and natively supports either win9x/2k/nt/linux/mac os-- depending on architecture. Why does this have to look so dang ugly, and how many more of these vaporware announcements can I stand?
I do not have a signature
Is It Just Me Or Are These Rediculously Ugly?
The tops are way to thick, and the colors are horrible too.
Just My Opinion
...will it work with my CueCat?
---
GetSystemMetrics(SM_SECURE) == FALSE
Dang! Beat me to it! :-P
Yes, kids, I remember a time when not all colors were named after fruit. There were words called purple and green that were used to describe your grape and meadow colored bits of plastic...
-- Sent from a computer.
When is 3Com going to announce it's name change to 3.NET?
You can go to palmstation ( http://www.palmstation.com ) for more information, including more links to complete pages.
There has been discussion there about these links all week.
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
Mac Cube. Before it's announced, super-secret, fake looking pictures appear on websites. They all look obviously fake, then bam. They're all true.
Now I'm paranoid. How many people actualy saw this momentary images? Do they look obviously retouched? Whats the source? But wait, i thought the mac cube was fictional and was wrong, so then i start questioning my questioning...
The only way from here is down...
I just hope, for 3Com's sake, that they never release an "Audrey II".
I think that if 3Com entered the flesh-eating plant business, their image would suffer immensly.
I don't understand why people keep talking about voice email. This is about the most useless thing I can think of.
First, a voice email is always much larger than an ordinary one with the same content. That doesn't just affect the transmission time (that Audrey thing only has a 56k modem, so that does make a difference), but also the amount of space it needs when stored. My email archive is already in the thens of megabytes, and I store attachments separately.
And why do I need voice, anyway? What do we have writing for? And if I want you to listen to me talk, why don't I just leave a message on your answering machine?
I don't get it. Is this just so that people will not have such problem with the stylus input, or are they serious about this?
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Seen on The Register
Sony launches wireless home Net access device By: Tony Smith Posted: 28/09/2000 at 16:18 GMT Sony has unveiled a product to bring the Net to the Net-less - a home-oriented mobile device that gives users access to the Net without the need for a PC. Based on home wireless networking, Sony's Airboard is an LCD screen tablet and base-station combo. The base-station hooks straight into the Net and beams requested Web pages and downloaded media files across the ether to the Airboard. "Without using a PC, users can access information from anywhere, effectively solving the so-called 'digital divide' problem," Sony Electronics' Shizuo Takashino told a press conference held this morning in Japan, referring to the gap between the Net-connected PC-owning elite and... er... everyone else. for rest of article click here
Interesting that both devices are being released at the same time.... anyone know what the price tag on the audrey is going to be? Or have pics of the sony device? If anyone remembers the last big 'sony pda' (the MagicLink) it was launched to rival the Apple Newton, and was a nice unit, but i don't think they sold to well. It used the magic cap OS, had a built in phone that could be used with a headset, a modem, AOL, and alot of other programs. Anyone know how the 3com and the new Sony device compare to each other?.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
So what if every company in the work has announced that they are going to have a webpad on the market next year? I found this nifty webpad, well ok it runs CE, (but linux and qnx will run on the processor), but it does have some cool features like wireless connection with a broadband base. The best thing is you can buy it today. Dsscube
I agree with you that modem-only connectivity is a loser, but I don't agree that Ethernet is necessarily the right way to go.
You have this ultra-portable pad thing, and you want to wire it to the net? That's insane. These things cry for wireless. And it's not even an option.
Count me out of this one. (And that's too bad, 'cause the first company that gets it right will have me stampeding for the checkout counter.)
jim frost
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
NatSemi had been working on their Linux version for 7 months but it didn't make it in time. They may have gotten their Linux version completed, but I suspect the speed to port BeOS and produce a plausible IA interface might have killed Linux's chances.
Maybe they include drivers to talk to a USB Ethernet device.