2001: A Home Office Odyssey - Technology Information

Home Office Computing, Sept, 2000 by David Haskin

The kids have teleported off to school and your spouse has headed to work in the family hover-car. Time for you to open the pod bay doors and enter your holographic home office, where your android assistant has ... oh, forget it.

Technology pundits may create media buzz with dramatic forecasts, just as vendors preannounce products in a puff of vaporware, but as a home-based professional, you're not interested in either. Unless you're sure a new invention will boost your productivity, profitability, or both, you'd rather wait to see how things pan out in a year or so. With that in mind, here's HOME OFFICE COMPUTING'S look at your 2001 technology calendar, focused on the emergence of technologies that you've probably had your eye on already.

Rather than pelt you with predicted rates of adoption or forecast trends, we've made our best guesses as to which innovations will actually reach your home office in each quarter of the coming year, and how your workstyle will change as a result. (When we actually cite a product's price and ordering info, it's accurate as of our June 2000 deadline.) Hang on as we fast-forward into the near future.

Internet Devices

New Year's celebrations are over and even grammatical purists agree we're in a new millennium, but you're hard at work as usual, finishing a marketing proposal for a prospective client and sending it off via e-mail. You're on pins and needles waiting for a response, though you keep busy on the Web by researching two additional companies you plan to pitch in the coming weeks.

By midday, you head downstairs to fix a sandwich. On the way to the refrigerator, you notice the blinking light on the Netpliance i-opener Web and e-mail device on the kitchen counter ($399, plus $21.95 per month ISP fee; 800-467-3637, www.netpliance.com). There's your answer, on the color LCD screen: The prospective customer loves your proposal and offers to buy you lunch. You type a quick affirmative on the device's keyboard and head for the car.

Your home office neighbors all have Web appliances, too. Gary, the telecommuter next door, loves to show off the Intel Dot. Station he got for free for signing a contract with his Internet service provider; the Dot. Station is bulky compared to your petite i-opener, but includes a phone with caller ID as well as computing capabilities.

Sandra, the marketing consultant across the street, has both a Gateway/AOL countertop appliance in her kitchen and a 3Com Internet device in her bedroom. And Dan, the freelance Web designer down the block, can't say enough about his Qubit Wireless Web Tablet ($399; 303-716-7826, www.qubit.net). The Qubit's base station plugs into either a phone jack or broadband modem, letting Dan wander up to 300 feet away to surf the Web with the 2-pound, magazine-size tablet.

Speaking of Internet kitchens, appliance makers have begun offering refrigerators and dishwashers with built-in Web connections, but you're in no hurry to throw out your current appliances. Whirlpool TV commercials show smiling families "managing their kitchens better" by checking their e-mail and accessing recipes and shopping lists from an LCD on the freezer door, but that looks pretty silly to you.

Wireless Broadband Service

While your i-opener uses a 56Kbps dial-up connection, your home office PC is plugged into a cable modem; the latter is terrifically quick, but you're not crazy about the slowdown as your neighbors log on during peak evening hours. The answer may have just hit your mailbox in the form of an advertising flyer: Sprint (888-996-0001, www.sprintbroadband.com) just launched its wireless Broadband Direct service in your area, as well as in a dozen other metropolitan areas, and hopes to increase that number to 100 by 2002.

At about $40 a month, Sprint's wireless DSL service costs about the same as traditional wired DSL, but promises download data transfers as fast as 2Mbps--six times faster than most of your DSL-using friends' 384Kbps service. You've heard that AT&T is gearing up to offer a competitive service, but Sprint's deal was too sweet to pass up: In return for signing a two-year contract, you get on-site installation, a cool-looking diamond-shaped satellite antenna for your roof, and the modem, for a setup fee of only $99.

While walking your dog in the park, you run into Linda, a freelance graphic designer, and tell her about the Sprint service. She's interested, but from a different perspective--she's already a wireless broadband veteran, having had a Hughes Network Systems DirecPC dish (about $250 plus $34.99 a month for 100 hours of access; www.direcpc.com) on her roof for two years.

The dish gives her 400Kbps access, but only downstream, so she can't videoconference with her office mates, and she's been frustrated sending large image files over the dial-up connection used for upstream transmission. But both Hughes and competitor Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd. (703-848-1249, www. gilat2home.com) have started to offer two-way service for about the same cost. Gilat offers its technology through partners including Microsoft, which means you can get it as an MSN service.