Flat Screens Get Smarter
New 3D and wireless LCDs, cheap digicams, and business tools.Agam Shah, IDG News Service
Agam Shah is an editor with the IDG News Service, based in San Francisco. Questions or comments? Write to Agam Shah.
News flash: The future is flat. But don't underestimate those LCDs; future consumer monitors will be able to render images in three dimensions. What's more, they may be capable of reproducing sound, if one of this month's gadgets accurately represents technology of the near future.
Also making their debut: a wireless TV and a high-end digital camera for budget-minded buyers. Not to forget businesspeople, there's also Visioneer's CardReader 100, which electronically stores the content from business cards.
NEC LaVie: Good Vibrations
With a keyboard, mouse, and a screen, NEC's LaVie looks like any other laptop, though it doesn't have conventional speakers. Sound instead comes from its vibrating LCD screen, which doubles as a speaker. NEC has built actuators into either side of the laptop's screen, enabling it to reproduce stereophonic sound that sounds better than that from conventional notebook speakers. The imperceptible vibration doesn't affect normal viewing.
The LaVie's other fancy feature is a 3D capability that gives images on the screen a 3D effect, though it isn't as pretty as putting on shades and watching Spy Kids 3D.
LaVie's in-screen speaker is based on the SurfaceSound and SoundVu technologies developed by the British firm NXT. Though the LaVie is currently available only in Japan, NXT's technology will come to U.S. laptops soon, as it is cheaper to use actuators in notebooks than to build in speakers, says Joel Strasser, an NXT spokesperson. NXT is working with Synaptics to build sound-reproduction capability into touchpads for laptops, he says.
Other products featuring NXT's SoundVu and SurfaceSound technology include a 42-inch television from Koninklijke Philips Electronics, audio systems from Brookstone, a CD wallet from TDK, and Pioneer Electronics' HTZ-940DV home entertainment system.
Low-Price Eye-Q
They aren't as capable as Sony's parade of digicams, but Concord Camera's digital cameras are adequate for buyers on a tight budget who want good snapshots.
Concord's newly released 4-megapixel Eye-Q 4360z isn't particularly attractive, but it shoots nice high-resolution pictures and stores up to 20 2272-by-1704-pixel JPEG images in its 16MB internal memory. At $200, the price is right. You can download the photos to a PC via a USB 2.0 port, or store them on a Secure Digital card. The camera has a 1.5-inch TFT LCD, five flash modes, and an Audio Video Interleaved video-shooting mode that supports 30 frames per second. The camera weighs 5.6 ounces without the battery and card, according to product specifications.
The Eye-Q 4360z has some oddities, though. For example, it wasn't ready to use out of the box, as the two nickel-metal hydride batteries needed charging overnight in a special charger sent by Concord; it would have been better to bundle two AA batteries for immediate use. And despite the camera's good range with its 3X optical and 6X digital zooms, it struggled to take decent pictures in the dark with default settings. Those pictures improved after being touched up with Jasc Paint Shop Pro's automatic brightness and contrast adjustment feature. The camera also shut down at the slightest bang, so I learned to place it very delicately on a surface when setting up the self-timer, leaving me fewer seconds to run to my photogenic group.
If you're willing to spend more, you might want to opt for one of the other 4-megapixel cameras that offer a bit more polish. For example, about $300 will get you Sony Electronics' Cyber-shot DSC-P73, Nikon's Coolpix 4100, or Olympus's Stylus 410. The Eye-Q 4360z is available from Concord Camera resellers; for the latest prices, check the PC World Product Finder.
Sharp's Wireless TV
Sharp's 15-inch Aquos wireless TV can go just about everywhere, except inside a swimming pool or a fish tank.
The rechargeable battery-operated Aquos Wireless LC-15L1U-S LCD television with a funky design uses 802.11b technology to allow TV viewing from within 50 feet of a wireless transmitter broadcasting digital TV signals. The transmitter, called SmartLink, has RF, S-Video, and Composite video inputs and a built-in cable TV tuner. In case the wireless experiment fails, the TV has S-Video and composite inputs for normal wired TV watching.
A carrying handle and detachable stand provide portability and stability, making the 13.9-pound TV easy to move. It has a 500:1 contrast ratio and comes with a remote control; and its battery runs for 3 hours on a single charge, says a company spokesperson. Sharp previewed the TV earlier this year, and is now shipping it for $1799. The Aquos uses the rawest wireless and power consumption technology, but it will evolve as the technology advances.
Electronic Card Scanner
Visioneer's CardReader 100 scans and electronically stores the content on business cards, eliminating the headache of filing them. The device retains the scanned card as an image, but optical character recognition technology recognizes the text and automatically enters common fields such as name and title into a database. The program saves the cards' formats so they can be recognized during future uses, according to the company. Bundled software can export information to common applications, including Microsoft Outlook and Excel. It can also sync the contact information with mobile devices running the Palm and Windows CE operating systems.
The CardReader scanned each business card in about 8 seconds. The cards need to be fed by hand; someone with stacks of business cards would appreciate an automatic card feeder. Despite its occasional glitches, the $99 card scanner is a cheap and effective productivity device for people who scan a few business cards a day. A USB port powers the device, which is available from Visioneer.
A colleague with suitcases of business cards tested the product and found it to his liking, but says its OCR technology needs improvement. For example, it read "Corporate Communications" on an Oracle business card as "Corporal Communications," and occasionally filed information into the wrong fields, requiring minor tweaking in the software. My colleague also griped about the device's limited export capabilities, as it doesn't export to Lotus Notes' address book.
A Visioneer engineer says the CardReader's OCR technology isn't 100 percent precise yet, so a few character misrecognitions can occur, but it is competitive with other products in the marketplace. He also says Visioneer continues to refine the product's data export capabilities, although it is already compatible with the most popular software.