Fall Comdex 1997 in Las Vegas was like a five-day visit to a Chuck E. Cheese but with cigarette smoke. There was so much noise, so many lights, and so many distractions vying for attendees' attention that only the exceptionally hardy ones made it to Wednesday. But if you could ignore Symantec's crash-test dummies and Intel's boogie people in their Day-Glo clean room suits, there was plenty of useful information to glean from the show.

The products I looked at bode well for the coming year. On the show floor and in closed-door demo rooms, I saw many excellent products for the average plugged-in business. And there are a couple of trends--in particular, a price trend--that could bring sci-fi technology into the hands of you and me. And that can't be bad.

ON THE ROAD

Like most of the temporary population of Las Vegas that week, I was staying in touch with the office mothership via a notebook computer. And like everyone else, I wished I had a two-pound Pentium notebook with a real keyboard, a sharp active-matrix screen, and a battery that could last the week without a recharge. I didn't find one before or after the show. But I did find two subnotebooks so small that they were almost PDAs. About the size of a DayTimer, Toshiba's Libretto has already garnered some praise as a 1.85-pound 120MHz Pentium MMX machine with a 1.5GB hard drive that costs less than $2,000. But the keyboard is problematic. If you're a dainty-handed touch typist or a hunt-and-pecker with slim digits, the Libretto will make you sing. But if you're a ham-handed touch typist like me, the lilliputian keyboard will make you howl.

This flaw doesn't apply to Mitsubishi's Amity CN subnotebook. This $1,995 133MHz Pentium unit
has a 1.2GB hard drive, a 7.5-inch passive-matrix LCD, and a proper Windows 95 keyboard with that Window key that lets you load Explorer or minimize active windows with a single strike. The keyboard is trim but manageable. And this little hummer also includes two PC Card slots, an external disk drive, and interface ports for an external keyboard, monitor, and serial and parallel devices.

Also coming down the pike are low voltage K6 chips from AMD suitable for notebooks. These Pentium MMX&endash;work-alike chips fall shy of Pentium II specifications and speeds, but they are considerably cheaper. Given a choice between a K6 and a Pentium MMX notebook, I'd take a K6 any time because of its price and performance. AMD wouldn't name its K6 partners, but we can expect notebook announcements this month.

MEGA STORAGE

Five years ago, the magic letters at Comdex were CD. This time, everyone was mouthing "DVD."

But the first-generation DVD drives for the PC--slow and limited to 4.7GB, enough for 135 minutes of MPEG 2 video--were old news at this show. This year, the buzz was about second-generation DVD-ROM drives that are faster and can accommodate higher capacity discs. And the drives (from Creative Labs, Samsung, Shark Multimedia, Toshiba, and others) were everywhere, at virtually every PC maker's booth.

DVD makes for good demos. I
was treated to REM videos, the
movie "Mars Attacks" (complete with subtitles), and Madonna. But they never really touched on the computing potential of the medium. DVD isn't limited to 4.7GB. Depending on the format, a single disc can store 8.5GB, 9.4GB, or 17GB. To read anything above 4.7GB, you'll need a second-generation drive, which can also read most CD-ROM formats.

Toshiba, one of the prime movers and shakers that hammered out the DVD standard, showed some of the more advanced examples of DVD computing. One was a svelte, 0.7-inch-high SD-C2002 DVD-ROM designed for notebooks. OEM pricing for the drive is about $250, which means getting DVD for your notebook may add hundreds to the list price.

But read-only DVDs are for the birds. To be truly versatile, you need a disc you can read and write to again and again. That's where DVD-RAM comes in, DVD-RAM is a new standard already embraced by some manufacturers. (There's also a competing DVD-RW specification in the works.) For example, Toshiba is pushing the $799 SD-W1001 (SCSI) or SD-W1002 (EIDE) drives. Single-sided, rewritable 2.6GB discs cost $30; double-sided 5.2GB discs go for about $50. Either way, you're looking at less than a
penny per megabyte for a quick, multipurpose storage device. These drives can read all current DVD formats (including DVD video and DVD-R), and CD-ROM formats, too (including CD-R and CD-RW). I suspect DVD-RAM will eventually render obsolete a lot of other magneto-optical devices and finish off CD-ROM.

Until then, another successful storage medium deserves attention. Iomega's Jaz drive is not only faster and slimmer, it also doubled its capacity to 2GB. Judging from the action at the Iomega booth, the new Jaz will be as popular as its predecessor. But a lot of the questions at the booth revolved around reliability, service, and support. Iomega customers griped about these issues this past year, and rightly so.

PANEL DISCUSSION

If you've ever moved a 17-inch monitor, you know why I think flat-panel LCD displays are such a good idea. Contemporary CRTs are big and hot desk hogs. But imagine a monitor that's cool, sharp, and only four inches deep. It uses a trickle of electrons, has zero emissions, and weighs less than 10 pounds. I saw dozens of these thin-film transistor (TFT) panels as stand-alone monitors at the show. Until now, 14-inch and 15-inch flat panel displays, such as Compaq's TFT500 and NEC's LCD400, had cost up to $3,700.

But thanks to new TFT fabrication plants in Southeast Asia, especially Korea, supply may no longer be a problem. The newer flat-panel displays being shown by Samsung not only look stylish, they include built-in speakers and a universal serial bus port and cost about $2,400. That's hardly bargain basement, but Sampo has shrunk the price further by shrinking the form factor. Its 12.1-inch Space Saver, an active-matrix panel, costs a mere $1,000. And since the entire LCD panel can be used for image display, a 12.1-inch unit almost matches the image size of a 14-inch CRT.

Touch-screen manufacturer Dynapro has already begun experimenting with adding touch-screen capability to a 14-inch Sampo flat panel. The engineering sample they showed was clear and bright, even with the touch-screen overlay.

But on to the real buzz on the show floor. Some international financial analysts believe that with big debts to pay off on their new fabrication plants, LCD flat-panel makers will need a lot of foreign currency fast. The obvious way to earn this money is to sell a lot of products. And the fastest way to do that is to slash prices. Here's hoping.

In short, expect a lot of action in LCD screens in '98. The units I saw looked sharp and bright--even by Las Vegas standards--and could be viewed easily from all angles. I, for one, will happily dump my massive, electron-sucking dust magnet of a monitor just as soon as LCD panel prices hit that sweet spot.

SAY IT WITH COLOR

You'd think that in a town full of neon, mere colored paper would have little impact. But the color printers at Comdex wowed show attendees with their stunning output. At the low end of the scale were some decent inkjet printers, such as Lexmark's 1000 Color Jetprinter and Canon's portable BJC-80. Their output was tolerably good, especially when you consider the Lexmark price tag is less than $100. To move up to stunning output, you'll need Lexmark's 7200 Color Jetprinter, which costs $399. With the right kind of paper, it will generate photographic prints.

Really impressive color from a multifunction device is the holy grail for most small offices. Having the convenience of fax, printer, copier, and scanner is all well and good, but the color output from HP's OfficeJet line and Xerox's cheapie Document HomeCentre range from tolerable to just OK. But Canon may have cracked the output quality barrier with its $450 MultiPASS C3000 MFD. On glossy paper, the output matches that of moderately priced inkjet printers. Brother's $1,799 Color MFC-7000FC doesn't beat the pack with its color output, but this combo unit does have one unexpected feature: an NTSC port that can capture stills from a VCR or camcorder for printing or other uses.

For color laser output, there's no shortage of decent models selling for about $3,500. The six-month-old Minolta Color PageWorks recently added PostScript, putting it on a par with Tektronix's $4,000 Phaser 560 printer. Minolta also added an extremely handy duplexing capability. With all these capable, reasonably priced multifunction units coming out, why would anyone buy the tank-like, mediocre HP Color LaserJet 5M?

COMPUSERVE: DATABASE CLEARINGHOUSE?

There are thousands of useful Web sites, but the ones that provide the best information make you pay for the privilege. That's OK; a $3 data transaction can save me an hour of fruitless Infoseeking. But what I can't stand is reconciling bills from multiple Web sites. CompuServe's new service, C from CompuServe, comes up aces in that department.

The service is tiered: Some levels are free, some pay-per-view. By the time you read this, you'll be able to browse more than 600 of CompuServe's forums at www.c.compuserve.com. The forums include hobbyist topics, hard business information, and travel reservation services. You can browse these for free. However, if you sign up with CompuServe, you can participate in these forums and also plumb fee-based databases, such as Information Access Company's Database Plus and Hoover's Online, and have CompuServe handle the billing.

One snippet of data I would have willingly paid for at Comdex was how to get into the Spencer Katt party at the Harley Davidson Café. I had a valid invitation, but they turned me away at the door. However, I didn't feel rejected for long. They also turned away a charismatic Midwesterner ahead of me in line. I bet the hosts of the party would have paid for the scoop on his true identity. He was Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway 2000.

© 1997 Matt Lake. All rights reserved.
Matt Lake has racked up experience in three major corporations and one branch of the government. He currently heads up a small business near Philadelphia. You can reach him at mattlake@usa.net.