Urge to Merge It's wedding season
in the digital world, uniting gadgets that do–and
don't–belong together
By David Lagesse Years of juggling a
cellphone and a handheld computer finally got to
Jeffrey Kaplan. He sprang for a new, $500 Kyocera
"smartphone" that weds the two and reduced
the lumps in his jacket pocket by one. "More
important," says the 37-year-old Bostonian,
"when used as a [computer], it works, and when
used as a phone, it works."
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After years of
hype, "convergence"--the marriage of
multiple gadgets into one--is finally succeeding.
Just a couple of years ago, combo cellphones and
computers felt like bricks, all-in-one printers that
could fax, copy, and scan were pricey and
temperamental, and combination DVD/VCR players
couldn't be had at any price. Now capable,
reliable converged devices crowd store shelves--and
the pages of this year's U.S. News Tech
Guide.
Many do a good job of marrying gadgets
with obviously similar functions, like DVDs and
VCRs. Others make successful matches of unlikely
partners, such as cameras and cellphones. Some
combos, however, overwhelm users with too many
functions, or, perhaps worse, incompatible
ones--recalling past flops like efforts to put
intensely interactive Web surfing on TV in the
living room, where we'd rather just veg, thank
you.
Digital technology invites such unions
because these days, images, sounds, and computer
data are all the same thing at heart: the ones and
zeroes of computer speak. So why not merge the
devices that handle them? Thanks to faster chips and
roomier hard drives, it's easier to cram many
functions into a single gadget. And the idea has
obvious appeal. Says Gerry Purdy, whose firm,
MobileTrax, follows hand-held devices:
"Everybody would rather carry fewer devices
than more."
Especially people on the go,
like Boston's Kaplan or David Yukio Uyeno, a
Sacramento doctor. Both were enticed by the svelte
new computer/cell combos hitting the market this
fall. Besides freeing up space in pockets,
smartphones do things that the separate components
couldn't--for example, allowing users to dial
phone numbers straight from their computer's
address book. Many carry hefty price tags;
Uyeno's Samsung i500 lists for about $600. Even
so, he says, "I absolutely love it." Purdy
predicts that phone/computer combos, now only a
percent or two of mobile devices sold, could capture
a third of the market in five years or so.
Digital still/video cameras, another big combo
category, seem a natural marriage too. But the
technologies for video and still photography differ
enough that most video cameras can take only
low-resolution stills, while still cameras capture
only short, low-resolution videos. Samsung overcomes
the problem by putting two good cameras in one
casing. At 1.5 pounds, though, the $1,400 SC-D5000
is about 50 percent heavier than a single-function
camcorder. Similarly priced still/video cameras from
other makers (such as Canon's Optura 300, at
$1,300) pack dual functions into smaller packages,
but at a cost in image quality; their still pics are
limited to 2 megapixels, just half what the Samsung
can produce.
Housecleaning. At home,
convergence cuts clutter, reducing multiple boxes to
one. You can tidy up your home office with a $200
all-in-one printer, fax, copier, and scanner. In the
living room, combination DVD/VCR players, now
available for under $150, were just the start. Now
manufacturers are stuffing DVD and CD players into
the boxes needed to receive digital cable.
