I have recently experienced two technologies which have changed my view of how
the internet will develop. I now have a cable modem that
provides me a true broadband connection and I have seen a
WebTV setup. Both of these made a deep impression on me and
have forever changed my view of the future of the internet.
I reported in a
earlier column that I was awaiting the availability of a cable
modem. On October 13 Cox@home
came out and installed one for me and the change has been
profound. I have limped along on a 21000 to 26400 bps
connection ever since I bought my first 28,800 bps modem. I
live four and a half miles from my phone company switching
station which is two miles too far for any kind of a decent
dial up or ADSL connection. Fortunately cable does not have
this limitation and I live in a area where COX Cable Inc. over
a 12 year period, built
from the ground up, one of the most advanced fiber optic
systems in the world. The result of this is true broadband
connections. I have no caps on upload or download rates, and I
routinely achieve downloads of 3.62 megabytes per minute!
This increased bandwidth has
had a profound way on how I work online. Prior to my cable
modem I viewed web email programs as nice to use for backup addressees or to front end and
protect my real email address from spam, but I never
really thought of them as alternatives to an email program on
a hard drive. However with fast access using an online email
service like the one NOSPIN offers, no longer involves the
drudgery of waiting for pages to load while I go from read
mail to write mail to open folders. With fast access pages
just pop up ready to use just like they would if I was using
my installed email program. The next logical step is a Net
Terminal and online applications.
The idea of the Net
Terminal which has been articulated by Sun’s CEO Scott
McNealy and Oracle’s Larry Ellison always seemed far-fetched
to me. Why would someone want a dumb terminal that didn’t
have a hard drive ? However with broad bandwidth and lots
companies offering free 25 megabyte plus storage space maybe
you don’t need a real desktop computer to work online. Maybe
all most users really need is a dumb terminal with an internet
connection and this brings me to WebTV.
When I first heard of
WebTV I thought it was a novelty. Who would want this ? It is
not a real computer, you can’t run applications, you
can’t store data, and you must do everything on line. In
short it’s an appliance. One day a friend told me that he
had WebTV. He uses it to email his kids, trade on line, make
vacation reservations, do research and of course browse the
Net. He doesn’t have to update software, nothing locks
up, nothing ever crashes, and it always works when he
wants it to. He has a color printer hooked up to it and can
print out web pages. He can’t do anything off line or even
much on line but…OK group pay attention because here
comes my revelation….he
doesn’t want to. This setup does everything he
wants or needs it to do. He paid about 150 US dollars for it
including a cordless keyboard and then signed up for a
standard ISP monthly fee to WebTV.
What he has is the first
really useful internet home appliance
for about what people pay for a premium cable box.
There is almost no learning curve, no operating problems, no maintenance, and even
controlled content if your worried about your kids being
corrupted on the web or your sensibilities being offended.
If you combine high
speed access with WebTV all of a sudden you have something
that is very appealing to a LOT of end users. I would guess
MOST end users. With broadband and WebTV you can word process
from your TV, store data in online storage sites, play online
games, all without any of the problems associated with using a
PC.
Will this combination replace the PC? I don’t think so,
but for the vast majority of new users I believe it will be an
extremely popular alternative.
Rode
