Gadgets for the Frequently Mobile - hand-held devices for telecommuters - Evaluation

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, April, 1999 by Scott Bernard Nelson

They fit in a briefcase and can make life on the road a little easier.

Few people appreciate new technology as much as the nation's 25 million road warriors--the workers who spend days at a time away from the office. To stay in touch with the home office (and home), many have more gadgets at their disposal than a NASA scientist, from cell phones and pagers to palm-top computers and global-positioning satellite systems.

And companies keep introducing new thingamajigs designed to lift some of the burden from the road-weary. The trick, of course, is separating the truly useful and innovative from the schlock. To find a few that deserve your attention, Kiplinger's poked, prodded, tested and torqued this spring's offerings at the neighborhood electronics store. The trio featured here passed muster.

Prices are manufacturers' suggested retail; street prices are often lower and vary according to where you shop. Remember, being on the leading edge usually doesn't come cheap.

Hewlett-Packard CapShare 910 Information Appliance

PRICE: $699

PERFECT FOR: Frequent faxers

MORE INFORMATION: 877-473-6772; www. capshare.hp.com

A recent survey by the Boston Research Group found that two-thirds of mobile go-getters fax documents from the road, averaging 82 pages per month. Figuring in hotel and copy-center fax prices, that adds up to about $160. The CapShare, Hewlett-Packard's hand-held scanner, which is roughly the size and weight of a portable CD player, provides an alternative.

Wave the CapShare over any document, and regardless of whether you move it top to bottom, bottom to top or in a zigzag pattern, CapShare "stitches" the swipes together. It then presents you with a single page stored as a portable document file (PDF) or TIFF file. You can view it either on the device's 2- by 2-inch screen or on your computer using free Adobe Acrobat Reader software or a TIFF-capable program.

You beam the pages from the CapShare to your computer via an infrared signal (like the one your TV remote control uses) or, if your PC isn't infrared-ready, through the connecting cables included. Simple as that, you have document images you can attach to e-mail and send back to your home office.

Earlier hand-held scanners were bulky and maddeningly slow; CapShare is neither. It is light and easy to hold, weighing 12.5 ounces and measuring 4.1 inches by 5.5 inches by 1.5 inches. And images take only about five seconds to appear once you're done scanning. CapShare will save up to 50 pages of black-and-white images before you have to zap them to your computer or erase a few.

CapShare will do wonders for business travelers, but its nonwork utility is limited. Since it doesn't scan in color, and pictures don't come through clearly, it won't do justice to shots from the last family vacation. Converting the files to text is another problem. Before manipulating the words, you'll have to run them through a separate optical-character reader. It also struggles with materials that don't lie flat, such as magazines or bound documents.

Sony ICD-80 Voice File Recorder

PRICE: $250 plus $70 for the personal-computer accessory kit

PERFECT FOR: Road warriors who prefer talking to typing

MORE INFORMATION: 800-222-7669; www.sony.com

Note to self: This is a heckuva lot easier than calling in to the office after a meeting or sales pitch. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the ICD-80 records up to 48 minutes of meetings, memos or moments of inspiration. Once recorded, you transfer the audio files to your laptop computer via the cables included and send them back to the office attached to e-mail messages.

No special equipment or software is needed at the other end. Anybody with speakers attached to the computer (which means there's a sound card in the machine) can download and listen to the WAV-file voice messages in a matter of minutes. Your boss or co-workers can hear not only what was said at the meeting you just sat through, but also the tones of people's voices for clues about how the words were spoken and received.

The ICD-80 works as a low-cost way to call home, too. Talk into it while you're stuck in traffic or idling on the tarmac, then zap your voice across the Internet to your loved ones at the next stopover. It's not the same as actually tucking Junior into bed, but it's free (once you've paid for an e-mail provider).

The ICD-80 records up to 495 separate messages on an integrated-circuit chip, which allows users to switch back and forth between files at the push of a button and erase--or add to--old messages at any time. It stores messages in one of five files separated by type and offers password protection for one of them.

For the most part, the diminutive voice-file recorder works as advertised. The biggest headache is the 48-minute limit. Even though the ICD-80 automatically eliminates silent pauses, it can't record long meetings or hold months' worth of scheduling information. Other problems include the sometimes scratchy sound quality of the WAV files and the voice-file recorder's inability to convert those files into text.