A PC From Tomorrowland
Monorail PC
price $999
manufacturer Monorail, www.monorail.com (770) 980-0387
The typical desktop PC consumes, well, an entire desktop. We're talking nine square feet of genuine wood veneer with no room for even a single bottle of Orangina. You've got your CPU. You've got your monitor. You've got your modem. Add all the wires that connect these devices together, and you've got one big mess. The Monorail aims to reinvent the loose-and-flabby desktop model by combining all necessary hardware devices into a single, elegant box. It looks like some type of high-tech museum installation, but it might do well to trumpet itself as "baby's first computer." It's inexpensive, can fit on top of anything from a kitchen counter to a dorm room milk crate, and comes loaded with a 33.6 Kbps modem and a suite of Internet software. All of cyberspace is just an ISP account away.
The Monorail's base model ships with an Advanced Micro Devices 75 MHz chip, which feels slower than a Pentium of the same speed. This particular performance benchmark, however, is much less relevant to Internet use than is the computer's 10.4-inch color LCD display. We found the lack of screen real estate confining. Many Web pages are designed for larger displays, and the new trend in "spawned windows" only exacerbates the matter. If you're interested in building your own Web page, you'll definitely need more room to open, and go back and forth among, your favorite art programs, HTML editors, and Web browsers. In Monorail's defense, the machine offers decent screen resolution at 640 x 480 pixels, a dual-scan LCD display (which is brighter than typical passive-matrix LCD displays), and a port for an external monitor. Of course, adding an external monitor means balancing more schtuff on that flimsy milk crate.
The model that currently ships comes with 16 MB of RAM, 1 GB of disk space, a 4X CD-ROM drive, and 16-bit Sound Blaster-compatible audio. Resist all thoughts of tinkering with upgrades yourself. Like most notebook computers, the chassis is forbiddingly sealed like a cryogenic chamber. Future models promise 133 MHz and 200 MHz Pentium chips, and possibly larger displays.
Real People, Real Opinions:
"This would be a great computer for kids. Since they won't have access to the internal cards, they can't mess up things inside the box. I would also recommend it for my friends in college if they don't already have laptops." -Marcela Linkovç
"I can imagine myself using this to cruise the Net, and using it as a word processor, too. But I have reservations about the LCD screen. I don't like the acid-trip cursor that shadows as it moves." -Mark Sebransky
"It's a great alternative to a traditional PC, especially if you want a sleeker, more attractive machine in your home." -Catherine Harris.
A New Accessory for Web-Surfin' Barbie
MessagePad 2000
price $800 plus $150 to $300 for optional modem card
manufacturer Apple Computer, www.apple.com (408) 996-1010
The MessagePad 2000 is Apple's latest submission into the oft-ridiculed Newton legacy. This "personal digital assistant" is bit larger and heavier than earlier units, but offers faster processing, more memory and storage, and sharper graphics in 16 levels of gray. Critics should also be interested to know that Newton handwriting recognition has finally turned a corner from ludicrous to legible. If you purchase an optional PC card modem, you can turn your MessagePad into a mobile cyberstation, accessing e-mail and the Web from restaurants, hotel rooms, and, god forbid, public bathrooms. So what's the Internet like on a 4.9-inch x 3.3-inch LCD display?
Well, if you're used to surfing the Web on a traditional 13-inch color monitor, the MessagePad will break your heart. The unit that begins shipping in April will come loaded with WebHopper 3.0, a browser built expressly for the MessagePad that displays GIFs and HTML 2.0, but none of the components that are now common to even ho-hum Web surfing (HTML 3.2, animated GIFs, Java, JavaScript, and so on). What's more, the unit we reviewed continually dropped its Internet connection. One could barely hit two or three hyperlinks before the line crashed, a problem we blame on the Newton communications architecture since our Internet link ran flawlessly while testing other products for this article. (Apple agrees, blaming the dropouts on beta software. The company promises to fix all bugs before the MessagePad ships.)
If you're a businessperson who travels a lot, and surfs the Web for pure text retrieval, the MessagePad may be an appropriate buy. You can use it anywhere to effectively conduct bare-bones information searches, and the e-mail client doesn't suffer at all from multimedia withdrawal. The device would be perfect, say, for retrieving stock quotes from a showroom floor, or accessing a company intranet page that already limits graphical content. The nifty OS sound effects are cool-very cool-but if you're a recreational Web surfer who requires three-ring splendor, you'd do better to buy a PC laptop with a color display.
Real People, Real Opinions "It timed out so often, I felt rushed to keep clicking something rather than lose the connection. If it times out faster than you can read a page, then it's useless." -Mark Sebransky "Web access is easy if you already know where you're going, and that the site has compatible technology. Personally, I would only use this item to check e-mail while traveling, and to keep notes during business trips." -Larae Brown "This was my first time on the Net, and if this is indicative of how it works, then I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I also found the type hard to read, but I believe that's due to the screen." -Thor Gudmundsson.
E-Mail You Can't Escape
DNS E-Mail Paging
price e-mail account costs $10 monthly, plus a $10 set-up fee; paging service costs $30 to $40 monthly, plus an $18 set-up fee; pagers range from $110 to $180
provider DNS Communications, www.dns-com.com (713) 471-2763
E-mail paging is exactly what is sounds like: You get e-mail messages over your alpha-numeric pager, along with all the telephone numbers you're already receiving. E-mail paging may be the perfect solution if you want extra "intelligence" when deciding whether a regular page is worth a quick call-back ("Phone me NOW! Fluffy ate Bobby's green Power Ranger!"). It's also a luxury for people who've become tethered to their home e-mail accounts. These slaves to communication can now receive a constant stream of electronic small talk whenever and wherever they want. Of course, it's also a nice gimmick during parties when the pager emits its euphonious chimes, and it's a message from your friend in the back room posing as Courtney Love.
DNS Communications will provide you with all you need to get into e-mail paging. You get a new e-mail account (yourname@infohwy.com), nationwide paging service, and a pager if you don't already have one. Message routing can occur in two directions. You can have your home account forward messages to your DNS account (thus allowing you to receive all your home e-mail all the time), or you can ask DNS to forward all your paged messages to your home account. This might be imperative given the limitations of e-mail paging: Since you can receive only 87 characters (including the sender's name and a subject line) in any given paged message, long messages get quickly truncated. For example, the message, "You are now 6 hours past deadline. If you do not turn in your story posthaste, we will revoke your Web surfing privileges," would be received as: "[Sender's Name/subject] You are now 6 hours past deadline. If you do not turn in your story posth" Clearly, e-mail paging is designed to transmit precisely worded action items, not flowing discourse.
The DNS service is limited to one-way, incoming paging. Along with e-mail and regular phone paging, you also get weather, sports, and news updates from Associated Press. These reports are not truncated, and actually add a lot of value for current-events junkies who need quick news fixes.
Real People, Real Opinions "Pagers are the backbone of communication in the construction industry. Being able to send a message to the field directly from a desktop seems to be the next logical step." -Thor Gudmundsson "It doesn't have any bad features if you take it for what it is: a way to immediately receive written messages. I don't see the 87 characters as much of a limitation." -Marcela Linkovç "There are other ways to receive as much as 180 characters in an Alpha pager. I would definitely use this technology, though I'd be implementing its functionality separate from a major paging service." -Jonathan Stevens.
Big Fun for the Family Room
Destination Big Screen PC
price $2999 to $4499, depending on CPU and peripherals
manufacturer Gateway 2000, http://www.gw2k.com/destination (800) 846-2309
It's the year 2000. Colin Powell is president, Elizabeth Dole is vice-president, and Al Gore is in a white chef's hat carving prime rib at the front of some buffet line in Nashville. Technology, too, has dramatically veered from what anyone may have expected in 1997. Computers and televisions share the same floor space in family rooms, and sprawling set-ups like the Destination reign supreme.
The Destination Big Screen TV is an all-in-one fun plan for families who feel computing has become an integral part of the home entertainment experience. Spend $4500, and you get a Pentium CPU that runs at 200 MHz, 3.8 GB of disk space, a 31-inch video display, a Harman/Kardon sound system, and all the memory, video RAM, expansion slots, disc drives, and peripherals you'll ever need. Manipulate your cursor with a remote control trackball, an alternative to balancing the wireless keyboard on your knees and using its touchpad.
As the ultimate Web surfing platform, the Destination in many ways succeeds. Recreational users should relish the opportunity to surf the Web from a comfy chair and view pages on a gigantic screen. What's more, since the Destination is driven by a high-powered computer running Windows software, it doesn't suffer from any of the deficiencies intrinsic to the set-top add-on boxes. You can use any browser you want, install any compatible plug-ins, and save any downloaded content to the hard drive.
The system's problems lie in its video display, which, by design, doesn't match the quality of good desktop displays. We're talking VGA resolution (8-bit) versus the increasingly standard 24-bit resolution on desktop systems. In terms of the Internet, this means you won't see GIFs and JPEGs in high-res if Web designers posted them as such. You'll also experience screen-flicker and color saturation, which is a problem with all video displays running computer content. Finally, the status and address bars at the top and bottom of your Web browser will appear way too small if you're sitting more than two feet away.
But it certainly looks better than a set-top box. As a big-screen TV, it probably looks better than your current TV that you'd be placing that set-top box on top of. And, since it's a complete computer, you'll be able to watch and hear CD-ROM games or any other software on it, in addition to surfing the Net.
Real People, Real Opinions "It seems like a good value for the money. The 31-inch screen is a bit overwhelming at first, but it beats everyone huddling around a 17-inch monitor on top of someone's desk. There is some slight curvature to the screen that may cause eye strain. I don't think this set-up would be practical for word processing." -Irene Ng "It may create competition for TV, VCR, and gaming use in the same room. I can perhaps see it being used by a parent helping a child do Internet research." -Steve LeVine "The 'thumb ball' is difficult to use in detail situations. Small buttons are hard to zero in on. This is not a good alternative for people used to doing work on PCs." -Jonathan Stevens.
A Pipsqueak Way to Surf the Net
Bandai Pippin
price $499
manufacturer Bandai, www.bdec.com (310) 404-1600
Imagine a next-generation gaming console with decent RAM, weak processing power, and a built-in modem for Internet access. That's the Pippin, a device that was mired in Apple R&D for years before the company decided to license the technology to someone else. Apple, it seems, couldn't figure out how to market a box that would be of little value to power Mac users and underwhelming to hard-core console gaming fans.
Bandai has rescued the Pippin to give it a fighting chance. Since the machine lacks a dedicated chip for graphics processing, its utility as a polygon-crunching gaming device is somewhat limited; playing multimedia "edutainment" titles is a more appropriate application for a CD-ROM drive. The Internet, however, doesn't require a lot of firepower, and this is where the unit will make or break itself. With the Pippin, you can begin Net surfing out of the box. Just hook up a few wires, press a single button, and, boom, you're dialing into Pippin's own @World network without the hassle of configuring anything whatsoever. From here, you can send and receive e-mail, run hybrid CD-ROMs for multi-user Internet gaming (see page TK), or surf the Web at large (your account will cost $20 monthly).
The Pippin's proprietary browser is HTML 3.2 compliant, but doesn't currently support Java, JavaScript, animated GIFs, or Netscape-compatible plug-ins (all of these features, however, are intended for later versions). The Pippin technology has been optimized for TV monitors, and while its display is somewhat sharper than that of Saturn's Net Link (see below), it's not nearly as impressive as WebTV's display (see later). The Pippin's font rendering has also been tweaked. Type appears inordinately large to compensate for screen flicker, and this tends to throw page rendering into a tizzy. Yes, you can surf the Web, and, yes, you can have your Tables and Frames. But you will never see a Web page unfold as it was designed to unfold.
You can navigate the Pippin with its game controller, and "type" URLs into the on-screen keyboard display (this entails using the cursor to punch individual letters; an external keyboard is an optional purchase). You can also plug in a floppy drive through a PCI port for local storage. The Pippin ships with a 28.8 Kbps modem, 5 MB of RAM, and a Power PC 603 chip running at 66 MHz.
Real People, Real Opinions "This is a cheap, voyeuristic intro to the Internet that may be attractive to novices and children. The controller requires some dexterity. I couldn't find all the buttons by myself." -Steve LeVine "Having never used a mouse before today, I found the game controller much easier to use." -Thor Gudmundsson "It might work well for someone just starting on the Net, for poking around. That will last until that person finds out they can't save any images to a hard drive." -Irene Ng.
Surfing at Sub-Sonic Speed
Sega Saturn Net Link
price $400
manufacturer Sega, www.sega.com (310) 404-1600
The Saturn console gaming system boasts more than enough power to drive a Web browser, so why not sell an add-on modem that hooks gamers up to the Internet? So reasoned the people at Sega, whose experiment is being closely monitored by Nintendo to determine if enough gamers are interested in poorly rendered Web pages for another $200.
The two C-notes buy you a 28.8 Kbps modem along with a CD-ROM that includes a Web browser, connectivity software, and theme Internet interfaces. Your Internet connection will cost $20 monthly. As with the other set-top boxes reviewed in this article, getting on the Net with Net Link is extremely simple. And as with other set-top boxes reviewed in this article, viewing the Web with Net Link can be laughable.
Compared to its category mates, Net Link portrays the Internet the most poorly. Images are super-saturated, and somehow evoke memories of the Nintendo Entertainment System's 8-bit color. Screen flicker is similarly bad. In an attempt to beat this problem, Sega has included an on-screen "magnifying glass" that let's you zoom in on text for clarity. This slows down the reading process-it's difficult to keep track of where lines begin and end-but at least you won't go blind. (We predict any extended attempts to decipher text without the magnifying glass will lead to aneurysms; alert your physician each time before going online). Sega's Web browser supports standard audio file types, all of HTML 2.0, and much of HTML 3.0. The Excite search engine is prominently featured in the browser control interface, and a separate e-mail client is included as well. As with the Pippin, you can "type in" your URLs and e-mail messages into an on-screen keyboard display if you don't have the jingle to pay for an optional keyboard.
Clearly, multi-user Internet gaming will rescue Net Link, if it is to be rescued at all. Sega intends to release a library of networkable games that can be played by competitors across the Internet's topography. The first title is the arcade port Sega Rally Championship, a game that should take full advantage of the system's independent graphics processing.
Real People, Real Opinions "I would use this for e-mail if I had a Saturn already. The resolution is poor, and it's a cumbersome way to surf the Net." -Catherine Harris "Very nice. It would make a great gift for someone who already owns a Saturn and wants to get into multi-player gaming. The Net stuff is just icing." -Teresa Gonzalez "The browser environment is confusing, and the game pad is a pain to use. The screen bounces a lot as you type, which is really irritating." -Larae Brown.
Weaving an Untangled Web
WebTV
price $350
manufacturer Philips Magnavox and Sony, www.webtv.net/ (800) GOWEBTV
With an advertising campaign appearing everywhere except in computer magazines, WebTV is thrusting the new Internet paradigm down the non-wired public's nervous-newbie throats. WebTV is easy. WebTV is non-confrontational. WebTV will tame the big bad Internet and lock it in your television set where it can't escape and hurt you.
WebTV also offers the cleanest display of all the new set-top boxes, boasts the most distinguished user interface (Web sites are referred to as "publishers"), and slips in with the lowest price point. You didn't really want a CD-ROM drive, did you? That's for gamers. WebTV is an Internet box.
Setting up WebTV and dialing into its network ($20 monthly) is more simple than setting the time on your VCR. Once you're in and running at 28.8 Kbps, you can surf the Web and send e-mail with ease. Since the remote control has no gaming application, its buttons have been expressly designed for intuitive Web page navigation. To enter text, you can peck into the funky on-screen keyboard, or buy the optional mini-keyboard for $70. It's infra-red to keep WebTV a completely wireless affair.
Despite the shortcoming of its proprietary browser, the WebTV experience somehow seems complete. If you've never surfed the Web, we suspect you'll still enjoy the system despite the fact you'll be missing out on Frames, Java, JavaScript, and Netscape plug-in compatibility. You'll get your animated GIFs, as well as some sound formats. Screen flicker is so subtle, it's almost not a factor. While text is relatively easy to read as is, the system would do well to borrow Sega's magnifying glass. The remote comes with a TV/Web switch, so, for example, you could watch a football game, and switch back and forth between the game and your home team's Web page.
So is the Internet ready for prime time? Yes-if you're an information junkie who doesn't require a lot of pageantry or the ability to save downloaded content (WebTV, like all the other set-top boxes, has only enough storage space for bookmarks). The system offers a rudimentary surfing experience for a relatively modest price, and will leave only curmudgeons feeling cheated. Web page designers, by the way, should be happy to know that WebTV has posted a white paper online that explains how to optimize Web pages for TV display, and exactly which tags WebTV's browser can and cannot read. WebTV is coming on strong with a national marketing blitz, and assumes that in the next 12 months most sites will have an option for Netscape, Internet Explorer, and WebTV.
Real People, Real Opinions "The best of any TV-based box. Less flicker, and the overall look is very polished. The user interface is first-class." -Jonathan Stevens "This is the only set-top I wouldn't run away from. It's got better colors, and the remote is simpler." -Mark Sebransky "Very cool-looking interface. I don't know how long, though, before people would get annoyed at not being able to use Frames." -Irene Ng.