lsat FWIW- ipaq music center was scheduled to released before 6/30 now due july 15
Smartening up home with new high-tech
By Stanley A. Miller Li, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
LAS VEGAS -- It's 2001, and some people were expecting flying cars and Jetsons-like homes filled with technological luxuries for the average family.
Like a big silver box that automatically dresses people when they step into it.
Or a medicine cabinet with robotic arms that brush your teeth, comb your hair and give a nice, close shave.
Well, the technology industry is still a long way from bringing those fantastic niceties to the American home. But at the Consumer Electronics Show, which was held here Jan. 6-10, more than 1,500 companies showing off their latest products had digital devices for every room in the house. The show is one of the country's largest technology trade events.
The idea of the digital home is the overriding theme because it wraps up so many things -- including high-speed Internet access, wireless networking, digital music and video, and hand-held electronics -- into one tidy package.
In his keynote address to open the industry-only trade show, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said the home PC has become powerful enough to be the command center for a high-tech home, a sort of overmind that dominates the rest of the electronic components in the house.
"We can go back to the original dream of computers being able to do everything," Gates said. "The PC is going to be where you store the information and keep control. Throughout the house, all of the information will be available."
Gates watched as prototype PCs running an early version of Whistler -- the code name for Microsoft's next Windows operating system -- sent digital images over a wireless network to a digital picture frame hanging on a wall. The demonstration also showed digital music being sent to various smart devices, including a prototype alarm clock that can be programmed with specific music and announcements over the Net.
"It's all about the digital lifestyle," said Gates, who then unveiled the Xbox, Microsoft's television-video game-console system scheduled to be released in the fall.
Despite Gates' vision of high-tech homes ruled by personal computers, many of the gadgets, gizmos and Internet appliances displayed here operate independently of the PC but still bring computer technology into every room of the house.
Let's start with the living room.
Compaq's iPaq music center can add digital music to any home stereo system. The device creates digital music files from audio CDs placed into it and stores the tunes on a 20-gigabyte hard drive that can hold days' worth of music.
The iPaq, which looks a lot like a typical stereo CD player, connects to a television set, so users can navigate through their music by remote control. The device also plays music over the Internet and hooks up to other stereo components, so music lovers can convert their cassettes, LPs or even 8-tracks to digital file format.
Compaq representatives would only say the player will be "competitively priced" and be available within the first half of the year.
AI
