Status-Q

Here’s a bit of nostalgia. Anyone remember Digital? How about the AltaVista search engine?

I was browsing through some of my old mail and came across a message from the dim recesses of January 1998. I had just tried the AltaVista translation service to convert a
Spanish review of a Digital laptop into English. It did some wonderful things like occasionally translating ‘desktop’ as ‘tablecloth’ and I thought the results were
quite charming. Here are the first few paragraphs:

Portable, Compact and Powerful. Digitalis HiNote Vp 575

“An equipment of high benefits that competes seriously
with those of tablecloth – by Abel Manto’n”

To the good thing one is accustomed immediately. Portable 575 HiNote VP
stand for casks is so powerful, that one week whole without igniting the
desktop computer can be happened nor remembering for anything him.

One is a cacharrito of 3.4 kilos of weight, with 2.16 gigas of hard disk and
one piece that combines in the same space the disquetera and the reader of
D-ROM.

From the last name comes to him there bent to this machine of 765,000
pesetas in its standard configuration. The computer that we have proven bond
something more, because it included an extension of memory, happening of the
16 megas of the basic equipment to 32.

The memory difference, as already it has been written so many times, is
fundamental to shoot the yield. Unfortunately, the extensions of memory
accustom to being specific for each model and the prices notice it.

An equipment to taste.

Paltar to choose a portable one well is necessary to have precaution in
verifying how the tastes of user to three basic parameters adapt: the
keyboard, the screen and the mouse, that with the programs that run is
essential.

On the keyboard it is necessary to say that a little out of place have some
keys, mainly the one to suppress, the one of beginning and the one of aim.
Model proven had keyboard English, which always incomoda a little, but more
annoying is to have to look for key to erase, which it is where it is
without leaf return, and is an infrequent place. By the others, it is
written wonderfully.

The screen is irreprochable. 12.1 inches, active matrix and a fantastic
angle of view. Sure the graphical card, that has much to do, is a PCI of 128
bits (pure lujazo), of most efficient. It allows a resolution of until
1024×768 points, although doing a trick of panning. That is to say, it
creates a virtual screen that ‘ sale’ of the visible screen and moves on
this one when the leader of the mouse takes towards the ends. Recommendable
and the appropriate thing is to use the resolution of 800×600, with HD
color, that produces the best visual results, without trap nor cardboard.

I suppose that, having worked on and off with VoIP for a little while, I really should have cottoned on to this earlier, but it’s only having it at home that has made me realise what will really be different for ordinary users in a VoIP world.

It’s not the lower cost, though that will be nice. It’s not that you’ll need fewer wires around your house, or that you’ll be able to make phone calls from your laptop, or that you’ll only need to buy one link to the outside world because your internet connection and your phone connection will have merged. No, I think the big changes will be that:

• You’ll be able to have as many extensions as you like for no extra cost. This means that the concept of one or two lines coming into the house may go away. Yes, your daughter will have her own extension, and she’ll be able to call her friend’s bedroom without blocking the line for everybody else. You’ll be able to call the kitchen from the basement, or call the basement from the shopping mall, if you so desire.
• Phone lines will be more like email addresses. And many of the things you can do with email addresses will apply to phone lines. So, for example, you can redirect them to point at other addresses. Or you can make one address ring several phones, which may be in different parts of the house or in different parts of the world.

All of this has been possible in the past, but it won’t be long before this is a standard facility that everybody will have at home if they choose to make use of it.