These phones got issued to all the Microsoft consultants and account managers here in the UK. Every time I would speak to one of them they would soon tell me about how bad these deveices were, that they crashed or their voicemail didn't work, etc. Pretty soon, it was noticable that they all were carrying two phone, the SPV and their previous standard Nokia.
Okay WAP is currently a bit slow (9.6k) and the content was thin to start with (although rapidly improving), but it works and it is here now. The European GSM infrastructure on which it relies offers coverage almost anywhere plus full roaming capabilities so location is not a problem.
What we have to look forward to in the very near future are a whole series of infrastructure technology refreshes which will offer "always on" connectivity at speeds of up to 114 kbps in the next 12 months (GPRS), then up to 384 kbps in the next 18 months (EDGE) and then approx 2 Mbps (UMTS) in the next 24 months. If you think we will all be using WAP browsers with tiny monochrome screens on conventional phones in that time period, then think again. And don't think that is all this is just vapourware and promises. All the major mobile telcos in Europe are busting a gut to deliver the benefits to their customers as soon as they can. So very soon, who will need a PC to access their content and applications?
Even more of a consideration than older browsers are the new breed of non-PC platform browsers running on QNX, WinCE, Palm and many other assorted appliance-type devices and set top boxes. These browsers will soon explode onto the Web and form a large proportion of all browser usage.
Often these browser support a subset of existing features found on the current offerings from Microsoft and Netscape. How do we square the circle of providing in-yer-face full functionality on the PC browsers and yet allowing for graceful fallback onto the much less functional browsers on other device types
Although all the information released to date about the Transmeta technology is concentrating on its ability to run x86 (or any other) chip-specific code, surely the ultimate goal is to run native code on this fast cheap hardware. If it run x86 code at high speed, then Transmeta have a potential revenue stream from day one. But hey, that doesn't really explain what Linus's role in all this does it.
Say that in parallel to developing the x86 compatability, Transmeta are also developing a native code environment. What operating system would be the easiest to port to such a new environment, and who would you want on board to do it for you? Duh...
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These phones got issued to all the Microsoft consultants and account managers here in the UK. Every time I would speak to one of them they would soon tell me about how bad these deveices were, that they crashed or their voicemail didn't work, etc. Pretty soon, it was noticable that they all were carrying two phone, the SPV and their previous standard Nokia.
Okay WAP is currently a bit slow (9.6k) and the content was thin to start with (although rapidly improving), but it works and it is here now. The European GSM infrastructure on which it relies offers coverage almost anywhere plus full roaming capabilities so location is not a problem.
What we have to look forward to in the very near future are a whole series of infrastructure technology refreshes which will offer "always on" connectivity at speeds of up to 114 kbps in the next 12 months (GPRS), then up to 384 kbps in the next 18 months (EDGE) and then approx 2 Mbps (UMTS) in the next 24 months. If you think we will all be using WAP browsers with tiny monochrome screens on conventional phones in that time period, then think again. And don't think that is all this is just vapourware and promises. All the major mobile telcos in Europe are busting a gut to deliver the benefits to their customers as soon as they can. So very soon, who will need a PC to access their content and applications?
Even more of a consideration than older browsers are the new breed of non-PC platform browsers running on QNX, WinCE, Palm and many other assorted appliance-type devices and set top boxes. These browsers will soon explode onto the Web and form a large proportion of all browser usage.
Often these browser support a subset of existing features found on the current offerings from Microsoft and Netscape. How do we square the circle of providing in-yer-face full functionality on the PC browsers and yet allowing for graceful fallback onto the much less functional browsers on other device types
Although all the information released to date about the Transmeta technology is concentrating on its ability to run x86 (or any other) chip-specific code, surely the ultimate goal is to run native code on this fast cheap hardware. If it run x86 code at high speed, then Transmeta have a potential revenue stream from day one. But hey, that doesn't really explain what Linus's role in all this does it.
Say that in parallel to developing the x86 compatability, Transmeta are also developing a native code environment. What operating system would be the easiest to port to such a new environment, and who would you want on board to do it for you? Duh...