Meanwhile, the (good) Negroponte tries to shrink the Gap with cheap laptops ...
Friday, September 30, 2005 at 7:51AM
Thomas P.M. Barnett

Interesting article sent to me by reader: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4292854.stm.


As much as I admire this sort of stuff, I am chastened by son Kevin's response to my new Treo yesterday (he being all of ten): He immediately asked me if he could have my Mac laptop. Why? He said, "If you can do all that on your cellphone Dad, you don't need your laptop anymore, right?"


My guess is that what ultimately connects most of those Gap kids will be something inbetween the two, but closer in portability to the super cellphone. Here's why: the big hang-up for heavy use of the Treo is the lack of the keyboard. But I had a foldable keyboard for my Palm (whose connection naturally doesn't fit my new Treo, just like all power cords must be different so the companies can keep selling you new ones!), but I would expect to a Targus portable keyboard for my Treo.


In fact, I may check that out now at their site. [Just did and found the keyboard that seemed right, but Treo's are not listed as compatible PDA/cells; I imagine that will change shortly.]


Once you have that, then you really are getting close to not needing the laptop (with the addition of a bit of software, of course, although I've done my sharing of serious composing in the "Memos" function on my Palm).

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