Editorial

Editorial

BY HENRY MARCINKOWSKI

Jan | Feb 2004
Issue No.14

I hope you all had a happy and healthy holiday season, and you all received G5s as presents. Now that the holiday season is behind us, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the range of goodies technology now offers us.

Apple Macintosh computers are better than ever. I have used a number of computers in my career, including several varieties of Windows machines, and would not trade any of them for my Mac. Read Lloyd Prezant’s Computer Connections column monthly for the latest news in the Mac world.

In saying this, I recognize that I am probably preaching to the choir. Besides the computer technology inherent in my computer, I, like you, have a lot more digital technology at my command than I would have thought possible when I owned a Commodore 64. Take cell phones, for example. Even my relatively low-level unit does things that no telephone user could have imagined 20 years ago. The newer phones can include a digital camera, a PDA and the ability to provide a wireless Internet connection, and--all at affordable prices.

As for digital cameras themselves, the latest crop offers digital and optical features that make owning one almost irresistible. Two to four-megapixel cameras with optical zoom are replacing the old point-and-shoot cameras we all had only a few years ago. Cameras with greater resolution --5+ megapixels--are being used professionally. I have to accept the fact that my expensive old film-fed SLR with its several specialized lenses will be getting less and less use.

With better picture taking has come better ways of saving and showing them. Recently, when I tried to find a few pictures of a recent trip from among the thousands in my iPhoto file, I had no difficulty. Fortunately, my filing system worked, for once just fine. Since I wanted to show some of these to friends and family during the holidays, I could either print the photos, bring my friends to my computer to see them or burn them on a CD for someone else’s computer. What a world this has become!

Then I realized that I had another option: put the pictures on a PDA. The only problem was that my old PDA, a Handspring Visor, was monochrome, and I wanted to see the glow of joy on my granddaughter’s face as she got Minnie Mouse’s autograph at Disney World.

Palm to the rescue. The Palm Tungsten E, list price $199, is in full color, has 32 MB of memory and can--with an SD expansion card--hold lots of photos and even MP3 files. All this besides performing all the standard PDA functions. There are many other PDAs, even other Palm Tungsten units, but this one is was just right for me. Now I can show pictures to anyone who’ll stand still for them. Adding a 256 MB SD card (at a great price from a warehouse store) gave me storage room for more MP3 files than I could listen to with a fully charged battery. [By the way, if you do use a PDA, look into joining NYCDAUG--pronounced "nicedog” and standing for New York City Digital Assistant User Group, presided over by our own Peter Fine.]

Now that I mention MP3 files. In addition to buying music CDs, I have bought individual tunes from iTunes and burned them to CDs for use in the car or on subway rides, using a battery-operated CD player. What a convenience! Now I have three ways to listen to music on the go--CDs through a portable, or CDs through a car player, or from the PDA.

What else? Quality scanners and ink-jet printers are available at pretty affordable prices, and I’m sure that every one of you has such a printer and most have a decent scanner. My need is probably typical; I have a box full of old photos that I inherited from my mother that I am slowly scanning into my iMac. Many of these are fading and will get some revitalization in PhotoShop. Eventually, these will wind up as .jpg files on CDs for my grandchildren. Some of my favorites will wind up in my PDA, too.

Am I through? Certainly not. I would like to have an iBook, if for no other reason than having an Internet connection while out of town. But I now have a cable modem at home. So even if I buy an inexpensive used iBook, I’ll still have the expense of setting up a Wi-Fi network at home and signing up for a dial-up Internet service for use on trips. Regrettably, these are unjustifiable costs, but I can still dream about them.

Aside from those of us who are science fiction fans, not many people could have imagined our current reliance on all of these devices in our everyday lives. Even many Luddites find they have to use them!

I hope you will join me in eagerly awaiting the next technological advances, not only in the Mac world, but also in the rest of our daily lives!