The Single Guy's Guide to Technology

sure, there's a lot of neat stuff out there-here's what it can actually do for you

A Short History of Palmtop Computing

Though Apple's Newton Messagepad line (recently discontinued, reportedly to make way for future Macintosh-based palmtops) made the biggest splash with the concept of handheld computing, 3Com's Palm series has refined the concept. While the Newton was designed with enough features to do everything for everybody, the Palm sticks to the compulsories: It is trivially small, it nicely tracks addresses and appointments and records the odd note and, most important for this category, it's affordable.

The Palm has proved to excel in the freestyle category, too. It's beloved by developers and as such has inspired a flurry of third-party software that greatly expands its repertoire. The latest entry, the Palm III, gives users what they want (more memory, chiefly) while maintaining the simplicity and low price that made the originals great.

What of palmtops based on Windows CE? They make your Windows data more portable, but they have little of the ease and elegance of the Apple, 3Com or Psion devices. Those capable of word processing and other big-machine tasks are generally priced within a nine iron of a nice, cheap Windows notebook, anyway. However, Windows CE 2.0 supposedly gives designers and programmers greater flexibility. So better products may be on the way.

The Need for Speed

The universal law of speed is that it roundly sucks, especially when you don't have it and someone else does. The easiest and most satisfying way to boost the speed of your hardware is, of course, the Dumpster Upgrade. But you can't buy a whole new machine just because you're dissatisfied with how fast your solitaire reshuffles and deals. Short of that, a range of options are available.

Painless: Change your system settings. Your computer can get tripped up by simple changes in the way it does business. Change the color depth of your monitor to the smallest range of colors you can work with; A display that is eight bits (256 colors) deep makes the machine do 25 percent of the heavy lifting required by a 32-bit display. Turn off virtual memory if you can live without it--it's a performance cannibal. Check for unnecessary hidden programs launched and left running at start-up--they're found in the Start-up Items folder on a Macintosh, or in the Start-up programs under the Start menu in Windows 95.

Do some spring cleaning. Keep your hard disk at least ten percent empty at all times, which should enable the OS to stash files faster. If you haven't done so in more than a year, defragment your hard drive (with a disk utility such as Norton Utilities or with Windows 95's built-in utility). This procedure tidies up your data so the drive heads don't have to move around a lot to read them. Don't keep more fonts installed on your system than you need: An enormous list of installed fonts slows operations, particularly launching and quitting programs. Clean up your operating system: Check all system extensions and additions, and make sure they are up to date. (Visit the company Web sites for each of the products installed In and on your system; updates are usually free.) An antique bit of code that's subtly incompatible with your OS can cause things to grind to a halt. And once a year, back up your data, reformat your hard drive and reinstall all your software from master disks.

Web Sites That Don't Waste Your Time

Five Web sites that are actually useful:

• What's the name of that old movie about a circus, where the high-diver gets killed and everyone thinks the wife did it? The Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) offers answers on just about every movie, TV movie and TV show ever made, even really pathetic ones like Carnival Story (1954). It's search-oriented, so it's as indispensable as it is exhaustive.

• Is it going to be on TV anytime soon? TV Guide's online listings (http://www.tvgen.com/tv/listings) are useful mainly for searching. Provide your zip code and a few search terms (such as the name of an actor) and--bingo--you'll be presented with a list of every show Clint Howard will be on in the next two weeks.

• Am I dreaming or did that really happen? Check out http://dailynews.yahoo.com, Yahoo's page for current news. (Sometimes the news is just a few minutes old.) It collects info from a range of wire services and other news sources.

• I have a song in my heart but I'll be damned if I know what it is. World Wide Music (http://www.world widemusic.com) and CDNow (http://www.cdnow.com) have tens of thousands of discs in their catalogs, and you can listen to samples of most of them before you buy. Once you've found something you like, you can order online--or just exploit the sites for the sound samples.

• My girlfriend told me to meet her at a place I have no idea how to get to. Type in any known U.S. street address and Maps On Us (http://www.mapsonus.com) will draw a detailed street map of that location. If you have a GPS receiver, it will even give you satellite coordinates.

More Video-Card Tricks

You've heard great things about the audio and video capabilities of modern PCs, and you intend to explore them--right after you're done playing Quake II through your 200-watt home theater system on your big-screen television.

But unless you have an expensive prosumer video card, all your video card can do for you is capture single images from a video source, such as a VCR or a camera. But happily, a computer's strength is its ability to engage in brainless activity for tremendous lengths of time (concluded on page 156)Technology(continued from page 88) without complaint. With that in mind, the advantages of getting your computer to watch TV for you are apparent.

Want to see what's on that unlabeled six-hour tape before you record over it? Use the time-lapse feature on the frame-grabber software that came with the card. Push the button on your VCR remote that displays the elapsed time on the screen and tell the software to grab an image every second. When you come back six hours later, you can view the entire contents of the tape in a few minutes, discovering in the process that the reason you hadn't recycled that tape earlier was that two hours into it you'd recorded the Letterman show on which Drew Barrymore took off her top.

But that's not really watching TV, is it? For that, your video card will need TV features. Most cards with onboard TV tuners also offer closed-captioning decoders that throw captioned text into a separate window, which can be a boon for folks who worry about missing that two-hour PBS special on the Tokyo market. Instead of merely recording the show, let your computer create a transcript of what was said and scan it when you get home. Some cards can do better than that: Give the software a list of "hot words," and the computer will alert you (or capture the text to a file) whenever they're spoken on a selected channel.

Of course, when a video camera is hooked up to a computer with Internet access, all kinds of fiendish things are possible. If your computer can maintain an Internet connection full-time, tell the image-capture software to grab an image from the camera once a minute and copy it to your Web directory. What you have is a spy-cam accessible from anywhere in the world. If you don't want to seem sinister, you can set it up at home to check on the baby's room while you're at work.

The Triumph of the Notebook

Once, the division of labor was fairly clear-cut: Notebook PCs were slow, limited in their expansibility and had Playskool screens and keyboards that you wouldn't want to work with for any significant length of time. Your real computer was the big box on your desk. But modern notebooks have the benefit of ten years' worth of product design and engineering. They now have easily expandable memory and processors; they have such built-ins as CD-ROM and Zip drives; they have huge, megapixel displays and networking hardware.

Best of all, they are wickedly fast. Intel-based notebooks can challenge all but the best desktop machines. In the Mac OS line, there's almost no difference between the two. (While Intel's Pentium II processor is adapted for use in notebooks--it's huge, consumes Chernobyl-level quantities of power and generates similar amounts of heat--practically any PowerPC processor used in a desktop Mac can be incorporated into a Power-Book design.) Apple's fastest Power-Books are so powerful they can actually run Windows software at speeds comparable to that of a credible Intel notebook via software such as Connectix' Virtual PC, creating a "virtual Pentium" in your computer's memory.

It makes you wonder why you should bother having two machines. Most notebooks let you plug in external monitors, keyboards and mice, so you can duplicate the desktop computer experience at a fraction of the cost without having to synchronize two complete sets of files.

Office Overview

(A) Kitty, with enhanced sense of personal territory.

(B) Magnetic reed switch mounted on interior door jamb, interfaced to the computer via BeeHive Technologies' ADB 1/0 data acquisition and control box.

(C) Power Macintosh, called Crunchy Frog. One of seven computers on house network. Primarily tasked as liaison between house network and the Big Room, i.e., everything outside the house. Up and running 24 hours a day.

(D) Video camera, composite output connected to Crunchy Frog's video-in jack.

(E) Darth Vader action, lights and sounds bank. Ordinarily operated by dropping coin in slot but interfaced via ADB 1/0 box so that it can be activated by Crunchy Frog.

(F) Laser printer, running 24 hours a day to process incoming faxes, features a deep output bin just aft of its fusion rollers. It's a reliable source of heat and thus encourages warmth-addicted Kitty to put his own desire for comfort ahead of owner's need for reliable communications.

Activation Sequence

(1) While owner is away at trade show, Kitty, drawn by siren call of print-bin warmth, leaps against doorknob until he gains entry. Magnet taped to door swings away from switch, causing circuit to open, thus notifying Crunchy Frog.

(2) Crunchy Frog waits five seconds, then silently captures image-form video feed. This image (drawing 2) is attached to a message detailing date and time door opened, and is e-mailed to owner.

(3) Owner receives alert in Hotel room. Sees Kitty wantonly defying his will by napping in printer tray. Sends a reply message.

To: crunchyfrogoihnatko.com

Subject: !password-Dahlia

kitty-countermeasure

In "away" mode, Crunchy Frog checks its e-mail every quarter hour. It receives this message, sees that the password is correct and executes kitty-countermeasure--a prewritten script of instructions. Computer activates Darth Vader bank. Darth lights up and starts swinging his light saber wildly while "Star Wars" music and dialogue blare (drawing 3). Crunchy Frog takes another picture immediately and one more a minute later, then e-mails results to owner.

(4) Waiting in hotel room, owner picks up e-mail and observes events from 3000 miles away. Kitty is reminded that he is utterly powerless against the Dark Side, and owner receives confirmation (drawing 4) that this demonstration has made the appropriate impression upon the subject.

Find where you recorded the "Letterman" show on which Drew Barrymore took off her top.