Other
living-room combos steal functions from the personal
computer. Right now the PC is the repository of
digital photos, music, and videos. But PCs crash and
come with fat, daunting manuals, so makers of
traditional consumer electronics are grafting
PC-like hard drives onto home entertainment systems.
A new breed of DVD devices, such as Toshiba's
SD-H400 ($550) and Pioneer's DVR-810 ($1,200),
include a TiVo digital video recorder--a hard drive
that can record live TV. The Pioneer combo device
also lets you archive programs by saving them to a
removable DVD disk.
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Eager to keep the PC in the
picture, computer makers are striking back with
devices that shuttle images and sounds from the PC
to the stereo and TV. Gateway's Connected DVD
Player ($200), for example, can download photos and
music stored on a home computer. Other makers offer
networking devices that link the office PC to home
entertainment equipment in the living room. Linksys,
the biggest U.S. name in home networks, offers a
Wireless-B Media Adapter ($200) that transfers
photos and music from a PC to a TV or stereo across
the house. The MediaPlayer ($250), from a startup
called Prismiq, can handle all that plus DVD-quality
video.
Setting up a home network isn't
easy, however. In fact, convergence typically breeds
complexity even if it's limited to one device,
says Neena Buck, a market researcher at Strategy
Analytics. Manuals for hand-held combos, for
example, invariably get thicker as the devices get
thinner. "These things get so
complicated," she says, "that nobody can
figure them out."
So ponder carefully
whether the weight and space savings of all-in-one
gadgets are worth the inevitable annoyances, of
which multiple menus are just one. There's also
the risk that an entire device will become worthless
if a key component fails. And sometimes you just
don't want a gadget to do more than one thing.
Think of the Swiss Army Knife, with its
scissors, corkscrew, saws, and files all tightly
packed with, yes, a knife. It's wonderfully
handy, but you wouldn't use it to carve a
turkey. Likewise, Purdy says he wouldn't take a
jog in the woods with his Treo 600 from palmOne
($600 before a Sprint rebate), a smartphone that can
also can play MP3 music files and take pictures.
He'd stick to a standard MP3 player, which is
cheaper, lighter, and more rugged."One of the
powers of specialized devices is in their physical
form," says Donald Norman, a design expert
whose newest book is called Emotional Design. Gear
that physically morphs to adjust to changing
functions or conditions may be the answer--but
that's still science fiction.
It may not be
fiction much longer. Already, a few products sport
thin and flexible screens based on "organic
light-emitting-diode" technology. One day, it
may be possible to unfurl a big screen from a
hand-held device, for watching the occasional video
or showing off photos. Or a hand-held could function
as a tiny projection TV, casting an image on a
wall.
