Pocket PC Thoughts: CeBIT America 2004: Exploring The Show Floor

Figures 26-28: The YellowJacket, and a spaced-out Janak modeling it. ;)

The YellowJacket booth was actually quite well-done and informative. Janak posted an article a few days ago on their flagship product, which is a calibrated wireless receiver module that interfaces with HP's iPAQ Pocket PC in sweeping, analyzing and optimizing 802.11a and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi networks. We actually saw the unit in action and the representatives were informative, friendly and helpful, and quite knowledgeable, a rarity at such events these days. In fact, the three of us have concluded that car representatives are far more knowledgeable about their products at car shows than the reps about electronics at electronics shows.

Suhit complained that the YellowJacket was bulky and not pocketable, but they correctly pointed out that it's a better solution than carrying around a laptop to do the same survey. Janak found it very comfortable to hold in the hand -- it's quite light despite the volume.

The YellowJacket folks were, interestingly, the only ones to give away virtually anything during our tour of CeBIT; they gave the three of us a nice iPAQ leather case from Cases Online. Sadly, gone are the days of the late 90's when there were great giveaways at pretty much every booth.




Figures 29, 30: Iomega's Networked Attached Storage (NAS) unit.

Suhit was looking forward to seeing Iomega, and they certainly did not disappoint. First up was their Network Access Storage (NAS) unit. These units have 160GB Hitachi Deskstar drives in them (and can be purchased with up to 480GB of storage), a 2GHz processor and up to 2GB of RAM. Currently you will not be able to daisy chain these storage units together, but they may offer clustering options in the future.






Figures 31-33: Iomega's Rev drives (external and internal, respectively) and a Rev cartridge.

Even more impressive than the NAS were the new Rev drives, available in both internal and external forms. The third picture features the 35GB (uncompressed) disks (they claim 90GB compressed, although we're not quite sure what they backed up that claim with). The device is shipping now and is available for approximately $330, with cartridges are about $50 each. They interface using USB 2.0 or Firewire and apparently have blistering transfer rates. Since the read/write head is in the drive and the platters are in the disk, Iomega utilizes an "air-tight" drive mechanism to avoid dust. Suhit thinks this is an excellent backup solution, while Janak's a little more skeptical (given his mixed Zip and Jaz history). Both agree that Blu-Ray optical media may be the ideal future. ;)