Stories about: Socket Communications

Bluetooth is set to get easier to use with PCs this year as Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer Inc. both integrate the short-range wireless technology into their client operating systems and vendors unveil a variety of new devices.

Get ready folks! The Bluetooth rush is on!

Sprint PCS rolled out a suite of wireless services and products for corporate users, including access to Exchange and Lotus Notes e-mail, corporate travel sites, sales force automation tools and corporate directories.

Despite bundled Pocket Outlook and Pocket Internet Explorer, Pocket PCs don't have built-in wireless capability. But you can add it.

Microsoft Corp.'s wireless plans for Pocket PC extend beyond adding modems to actually putting Pocket PC in a mobile phone.

Chuck Yort is vice president of business and government for Palm Inc., which dominates the market for handheld personal digital assistants. He spoke recently with Senior Editor John Cox in the wake of Microsoft Corp.'s launch of the new PocketPC operating software, which will compete with Palm's PalmOS.

Microsoft Corp. may be trying to do an end run around arch rival Palm Computing with the new Pocket PC it unveiled last week.

Microsoft Corp.'s new challenge to Palm Inc. finally debuts today, sporting a built-in Web browser and slim hardware running an update of Windows CE. But most of the snazzy new designs won't show up until summer--and you may not really want all the stuff inside.

Mobile users generally juggle their everyday business activities among numerous mobile devices, including cell phones, handheld computers, and notebooks. But the danger of using multiple devices is that they can lack a network or Web connection and employ old data. This can lead to inconvenience or embarrassment, especially when dealing with clients.

The large number of wireless data transmitters for personal digital assistants exhibited at last month's PC Expo in New York suggests that a new era of portability has arrived. But long-standing technical and market hurdles remain that are likely to make ubiquitous computing and Web access a dream slightly deferred, according to analysts and vendors. Before the debut last month of 3Com's Palm VII wireless PDA, few manufacturers managed to squeeze cellular phone circuitry and antennas into normal-size PDAs. Most "wireless" PDA devices require a physical link to an actual cell phone for transmission--even the Socket Communications Digital Phone Card for Windows CE devices, which garnered much of the attention at PC Expo. But that should change in the next 18 months as phone vendors such as Nokia and Qualcomm introduce cell phones on a chip, says Bruce Kasrel, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

I come away from PC Expo with one overwhelming impression: For the first time, mobile phones outnumber PCs.