New Technologies Emerging: Mark And Hal Discuss What's Next.

HAL: So you drew the short straw and had to go to Comdex. I'm sorry. Was it as crowded and noisy and frustrating and horrible as last year's show?

MARK: You tore Comdex apart last year, Hal. You don't need to do it again. After what feels like 50 Comdexes, I finally got smart and began scheduling meetings based on location. It was worth it. There were some interesting new developments on display this year.

HAL: Like what?

MARK: I think the most interesting thing was a wristwatch with a built-in cell phone and speech recognition.

HAL: Let me guess: You say, "Hey, Watch, what time is it?" and it dials out, and then you hear, "At the tone, it will be exactly three-fifteen and ten seconds." What a concept! Or doesn't this watch tell time?

MARK: I think it does, yes. Anyway, the phone portion was developed by Samsung, which probably based it on a voice-control cell phone that they make. The speech recognition came from a company called Conversa Of course, the prototype required an external headphone/microphone and looked like it was about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

HAL: So you also need a wrist like Popeye's just to wear it.

MARK: I suspect that what they eventually ship--if it ships in 2000, which they said it would--will look quite a bit different from what they showed me.

HAL: Let's move on to important things. Were there any new storage devices at Comdex?

MARK: The tape drives that I've been writing about all through 1999 were being shown and the manufacturers said they're either shipping or will ship them sometime in 2000.

HAL: That's vague enough to keep their stock prices from falling. Which drives did you see?

MARK: Among the ones that are shipping, I saw the Ecrix VXA drive and the Benchmark DLT1. They're both shipping only in limited quantities so far. I also saw Exabyte's Mammoth II drive, which is reportedly shipping to OEMs.

HAL: Did you see the next-generation DLT or the new LTO Ultrium? Those, I think, would be of greater interest to our readers.

MARK: I think all the drives are of interest, but possibly to different markets. Super DLT and LTO Ultrium were there. IBM said their Ultrium drive may actually be shipping by the beginning of 2000 and HP won't be far behind. The IBM drive was demonstrated, working in some of the tape jukeboxes and libraries.

HAL: I met with HP before Comdex and their people told me they'd be shipping samples in the first quarter and volume by mid-year. Seagate and Fujitsu are the other partners in LTO; what did you hear from them?

MARK: Seagate didn't announce a planned delivery date and Fujitsu's playing their cards close to the vest too.

HAL: Did you see SuperDLT?

MARK: Yes. Quantum had working prototypes in their hospitality suite and said they'd probably begin shipping in Q2 or Q3.

HAL: "Probably," huh?

MARK: It could be worth waiting for, Hal. SDLT has some interesting features.

HAL: How interesting?

MARK: SDLT has the high performance and high capacity that Quantum has been promising since it first announced SDLT. Plus, they've got technologies that they claim will make it easier to develop future generations of the drive, compared to Ultrium.

HAL: Look out--here comes another standards war, but what are SDLT's new technologies?

MARK: Instead of using a magnetic tape servo, as Ultrium and virtually all other tape drives do, SDLT uses an optical servo that's bonded to the tape during manufacturing and is supposed to allow more accurate positioning, and thus, to enable more tracks. Quantum told me that subsequent generations might use even more servo tracks, which should make for higher storage densities.

HAL: It's always "Wait 'till next year" in this business, isn't it?

MARK: SDLT also has an infrared sensor and transmitter on the front of each drive for diagnostics. An external reader/transmitter communicates with the drive, exchanging diagnostic and status information. It's probably easier to use this IR link than it would be to try to get information through a RS-232 connection on the back of the drive.

HAL: I assume it takes special software to read this information.

MARK: Yes. It comes with the reader. The tests can be run over the Internet or an office network and the results can be read over the Internet or Intranet.

HAL: So a customer service rep with a wireless modem can be sitting on the beach in Hawaii and run diagnostics on a customer's drive in Minnesota.

MARK: Pretty cool, huh?

HAL: Well, the HP Ultrium has a similar remote-management strategy over telephone circuits and I'd guess that IBM's branded version would too. Have you noticed, by the way, that everybody's application GUIs look like Web browsers now? You didn't see anything to contradict that at Comdex, did you?

MARK: Nope. Sending data over IP networks and being able to interact using a browser is rapidly becoming a standard for management-and-monitoring apps. The information is HTML code and often includes Java, and can be viewed using most browsers. THAT is why the GUIs look like browsers--browsers are used to view the data and applications.

HAL: Was there a "theme" for this year's Comdex?

MARK: Microsoft seemed to dominate the show with--

HAL: Microsoft dominated Comdex? I'm shocked!

MARK: They gave Windows 2000 a big push and had their partner pavilions all over the place. Yet Linux was big too: the developers had their own area in the Hilton and Sun was giving away--for free--its Star Office software suite.

HAL: The price is right, but other than that, why would anyone want yet another office suite?

MARK: Star Office has some interesting features. It's Java-based and runs on any platform that runs Java, including Linux/Unix, Windows, OS/2, and Solaris. It supports most Microsoft Office file formats and could, potentially, cut into sales of the Microsoft suite.

HAL: The Justice Department will be glad to hear that! What other things caught your eye?

MARK: Digital imaging, which can take up lots of storage space, was very hot. I saw some digital cameras for less than $200.

HAL: In that market, do you think Sony's solid-state Memory Stick will take any share away from Toshiba's SmartMedia or SanDisk's CompactFlash?

MARK: It's too soon to tell. So far, Memory Sticks work only in Sony products. Sony will have to get some design wins from other camera-makers. I saw "universal" readers that can take both SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards, but none of them supported Memory Stick. The picture--no pun intended--should be much clearer by next Comdex.

HAL: Well, I'm going to let you rest up from your five-day marathon at Comdex and, since the show is too big for anybody to see all of it, how about asking our readers if they saw anything at Comdex that you might have missed?

MARK: Hal and I will be putting together our list of the most important developments in storage in 1999.