John Dvorak's Inside Track
The Digital Home

Intel Developer Forum Dept.: This year's IDF was held in San Francisco, where the energy seemed extremely low. But it was actually the orientation of the show that got my attention. Someone said to me that "it looks as if Intel forgot how to do microprocessors." And there did seem to be an overemphasis on everything except microprocessors, resulting in ultrafast desktop computers taking a back seat to home electronics and wireless junk.

This trend is everywhere in the industry and is a partial reflection of the fact that the Consumer Electronics Show has superseded Comdex as the primary SOHO and business venue for desktop computing. For years CES had been trying to capture the lucrative segment of computer makers' marketing budget that is devoted to trade shows. It only managed to do it through attrition. Comdex kind of fell apart as a result both of missteps and of the fact that most of the newcomers to the desktop scene are companies based in either China or Taiwan . Both are historically clueless about marketing and notoriously cheap. If you ask any Taiwan-based company about its marketing strategy, they will all have the exact same answer, "Best price!" That's it. That is the entire strategy.

With the possible exception of BenQ, none of the Taiwanese companies conduct anything more than a sheepish ad campaign. Few go to the big trade shows. If they do go, you'll find them in hotel suites and other inexpensive venues. Many go to Computex Taiwan, a moderately big show, because they will not have to spend too much money traveling. The Korean companies, on the other hand, are very aggressive marketing and advertising companies, but there are too few of them to keep a Comdex afloat. The Japanese companies used to be more like American companies, but many of them have—like Intel—"gone Hollywood," and now they prefer the jazzier venues that push gizmos and home electronics. It would actually be a shame to see Intel fall into this trap.

The one real development that Intel announced, albeit as vaporware, was the dual-core processor. AMD had announced a similar device already. When I begin to see such initiatives I always think back to when there was something called wafer-scale integration. This entailed putting all of the different chips that comprise any sort of system onto one giant chip. Unfortunately, ll it took was a single flaw and the entire wafer was shot. There is more and more stuff being crammed onto the chip already. It seems to me that dual-core processors are just asking for trouble.

The concept of dual core might seem like a good idea if you want to optimize the chip for two different microprocessors at once. This means an Itanium with an X86, perhaps. Anything to sell Itaniums to rationalize all the money that has been spent on a chip that nobody is buying. I have a dual-core idea. Combine the Itanium with an upgraded version of the 432 chip.

Historical Note: The 432, a fiasco from the 1980s, was developed by Intel as the next big thing. Its instruction set was actually the Ada programming language. Since then and every so often, someone tries to make a processor that has a programming language that's as high level as its instruction set. Pascal was used once. An engineer friend of mine once remarked that if they'd only try Fortran, they might have something.

Now Who's Ahead Dept.: It looks as if there will be trials of the DVB-H, the digital video broadcasting system for mobile applications. This new technology will use the part of the radio spectrum that was previously utilized by weather balloons. While I am personally dubious about a lot of whacko uses for cell phones, I can see them being used as small TV receivers. The little screens on many phones are just as big as early Video Walkmans. It would extra nice if there were no fee attached to watching the broadcasts.

While the Europeans and the Japanese are always bragging about how great their respective cell-phone services are and how far behind we are in the U.S., mobile digital video would finally give us some bragging rights. But will it be free, as it should be? Right now the cell-phone situation is a nickel-and-dime-you-to-death sort of business. Allowing a cell phone to be used to receive a TV signal over the air without having to pay a dollar to watch would be great.

Genuinely Interesting Gizmo Dept.:There are now a slew of companies that are making Wi-Fi detectors that you can carry around in your pocket or put on a key chain. The one that I use is the QuickLink Mobile Wi-Fi Seeker from Smith Micro Software ( These cost $29.95, and they're sure to get a conversation started. I like this device over the other Wi-Fi detectors that I've tried, because it's a little bit smaller and it does a Star-Trek kind of scan using the LED light array while it's seeking a signal. These devices are very handy to pull out when you're looking for a true hot spot, especially in a place like an airport, where you want to avoid using the laptop itself to find a connection point. Smith Micro's Wi-Fi detector fits nicely on a key chain, and it works perfectly— highly recommended.

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