Crawford's Corner
Perspective
PDF: Proprietary Data Format?
Geez, you dummy. You must know that "PDF" stands for Page Description Format, that wonderful method for posting multipage documents on the Web. PDF is a wonderful format: it retains typography, design, pagination--and the reader gets built-in document navigation and choice of zoom levels. No wonder so many government agencies are posting government documents as PDF files.
If you were at the Congressional Information Service breakfast at ALA's 1999 Annual Conference,you've already heard a version of this rant. Herewith, a few paragraphs about why PDF makes me nervous--particularly as the format for government documents.(If it's the only digital format for government documents that are only distributed digitally, "nervous" is an understatement.)
The title above is the clue. Adobe's Page Description Format is just that: Adobe's format, entirely proprietary and controlled by a single company. Adobe gives away the Acrobat Reader and Web plugin and Adobe will continue to give away that software just as long as it makes economic sense for Adobe.
Want to create a PDF document? You can start the process using almost any software, particularly any software that will write PostScript print files. (PostScript started as a proprietary Adobe format as well, but it's loosened up a bit since then.) Then you take that PostScript file and run it through Distiller. Adobe Distiller,that is. Oh yes: most Adobe software will create PDF files directly, with no intervening step.
Monopolies bother me. Closed formats bother me. I think they should bother you as well, particularly when it comes to document distribution and storage. Yes, PDF has considerable advantages over HTML--although that may be a bit less clear when XML is fully implemented. But HTML and XML are open standards, fully supported by many vendors with no single-vendor licensing involved. PDF isn't. As far as I know,the only software that will build multipage PDFs comes from Adobe, and costs a little less than $200. That price could go down; it could also go up. With a monopoly, who can tell?
By the time this appears in print, some of my writing will probably be on the Web in PDF form. That's the way the world works. But that writing is a chapter of a print book, and the original text is in a relatively open format (either Rich Text Format or Word 6.DOC format, both of which can be read and created by many programs).
The way of today's computing world seems to be toward open formats. Microsoft Office 2000 makes it possible to use HTML or XML as the native format in most applications, and Microsoft certainly doesn't control those formats. To me, PDF is while quite nice in its own regard a step in the wrong direction. Use it for distribution if you will, but not as the only available format for important documents. For that, it's just too much of a proprietary data format.
DVD Watch
Divx: The Disc Is Dead
Strange things happen at deadline time. I usually prepare Crawford's Corner just over two months before the cover date. So, for example, I would normally prepare this edition at the very end of June 1999. But ALA Annual Conference is at the end of June, and there's always last-minute work to do before ALA. As a result, I prepared this edition in mid-June, sending the pages in for editing on 14 June 1999.
At that point, "DVD Watch"was about the current state of Divx as a continuing distraction for the DVD field and for library adoption of DVD. (As explained in earlier "DVD Watch" and other notes, Divx just doesn't work for libraries--while DVD can work very well. There had been statements that Circuit City was committed to spending huge amounts of money to keep pushing Divx, that they were happy with sales, and that they were about to get Blockbuster or some other large chain to start selling Divx discs. I discussed an editorial and a point/counterpoint in the June 1999 Stereo Review's Sound & Vision, both discussing Divx. It had been around for 18 months (remarkably). Circuit City (which owns Divx along with a Hollywood law firm) wouldn't release firm sales figures, but did claim at least 80,000 Divx players and a million Divx discs. Notably, the only places selling Divx discs were Circuit City, Good Guys, and a couple of very small electronics chains: the stores that sold Divx players. That's like having to buy all your CDs at the chain from which you bought your CD player: what a way to build a format!
Two days after sending in those pages, the essay became almost moot. The Divx folks announced on 16 June 1999 that they were shutting down operations. Circuit City and other Divx sellers would rebate $100 to those who had spent an extra $50 to $100 on Divx-enabled DVD players. They would also offer rebates to anyone who had upgraded a Divx disc to "silver" status (making it permanently playable on that particular Divx player). That makes sense: "permanently" in this case now means 30 June 2001, at which point all Divx discs become useless. Period. (This assumes that the pledge to keep the Divx computer center operational for two more years is kept. As soon as that computer center stops operating, Divx discs stop playing.)
When I read this story (on ZDNet), I was startled enough to want confirmation. The official Divx Web site provided that confirmation. In fact, the site now consisted of nothing but a press release on the end of Divx. I must admit that I barely avoided singing like a Munchkin in a variant of a Wizard of Oz song: "Divx, the disc, is dead--Which old disc? The wicked disc. Divx, the wicked disc, is dead."
A Quick Postmortem
If you purchased a Divx-enabled DVD player, my sympathies. It should still work just fine for DVDs,and you presumably get two years' free use of your Divx discs. Most Divx players were fairly mediocre as DVD players, but almost all DVD players still provide excellent picture and sound quality.
If your library is considering DVD or already building a collection, this is unqualified good news. It cleans up the marketplace and clarifies the DVD message. With any luck, it should increase sales of DVD players and release of DVD discs, particularly from the one or two studios who favored Divx over DVD.
If you're a Circuit City shareholder, there's a $114 million loss that factors into the company's profits. On the other hand, they may eventually get back some of the customers who were boycotting them because of Divx.
Finally, if your library is beginning a DVD collection and someone (a person or a store) offers you a bunch of DVD movies dirt-cheap or even free, make sure they're not Divx. If they are, just say no.
PC Values
Curious what happens when companies are scrambling to show the lowest possible prices. Defeaturing continues, so that DVD-ROM is still a low-cost extra instead of being standard equipment on multimedia computers. Many computers are shipping with Corel WordPerfect Suite or MS Works Suite instead of MS Office, and smaller monitors also help to keep advertised prices down.
The paradoxical result this month is that Compaq shows better values than Dell or Gateway at all three price levels. That's paradoxical because Compaq achieves those high value ratios by advertising well-configured systems. All three systems have 128MB SD-RAM, DVD-ROM, huge hard disks, and 16"-viewable displays. The power system even includes a CD-RW drive at a total price below $2,500.
July 1999 Values
July's standard configuration includes 64MB SDRAM, 24x or faster CD-ROM, AGP (128-bit)accelerator with 8MB SGRAM, V.90 modem, a 13.5-13.9" viewable display (usually called 15"), and wavetable sound with stereo speakers.
Top, Budget:Compaq Presario 5700T-450/3 Internet PC: Pentium III-450,17GB HD. Pluses: 128MB SDRAM, 15.9" display, DVD-ROM, JBL Pro speakers. Extras: MS Home Collection with Word. $1,649, VR 8.86 (+12% since 4/99,+25% since 1/99).
Top, Midrange:Compaq Presario 5700T-500/3 Internet PC: Pentium III-500, 17GB HD. Similar to Budget, with subwoofer added. $1,999, VR 7.53 (+8%since 4/99, +11% since 1/99).
Top, Power:Compaq Presario 5700T-550/3 Internet PC: Pentium III-550,18GB HD. Similar to Midrange, but with home network PCI card and CD-RW drive added. $2,499, VR 6.66 (no change since 4/99 or 1/99).
Other, Budget:CyberMax Enthusiast KIII-400: AMD-K6/III 400, 6.4GB HD. Pluses: 15.7" display with 16MB display RAM, DVD-ROM, Altec Lansing speakers. Extras: Corel WordPerfect Suite 8 and other software. $1,099,VR 9.44 (-8% since 4/99, +40% since 1/99).
Other, Midrange:CyberMax Enthusiast PIII-500: Pentium III-500, 17GB HD. Similar to Budget, but with 128MB SDRAM, 18" display, subwoofer added to speakers. $1,899, VR 8.44 (+14% since 4/99, +24% since 1/99).
Other, Power: CyberMax Enthusiast PIII-550: Pentium III-550, 20GB HD. Similar to Midrange, with 19.7" display and 32MB graphics RAM. $2,499, VR 7.31(+9% since 4/99, +24% since 1/99).
Perspective
MP3: The Fury and the Sound
Five months ago, I described the technology behind MP3 and considered whether libraries should care. Since then, there's been a lot more hype about MP3 and I see ways that the format might affect libraries. It's a technology worth following.
The rest of this perspective offers some real-world notes on the situation as of early June 1999. For more complete notes, check my personal Web site: http://home.att.net/~walt.crawford. The specific site is http://home.att.net/~wcc.techx/MP3.htm, but the broader site also has a commentary on the perils of testing and how I briefly posted a wrong-headed set of test results.
The hoopla over MP3 comes from a variety of sources. On one hand, you have the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America), a trade organization that's been busy taking legal action to shut down Web sites with commercially recorded music available for free in MP3 form. These pirate sites were widespread and well publicized;they have, by and large, disappeared. (When it comes to legal action, RIAA doesn't mess around, and Internet service providers aren't going to take risks on secondary lawsuits for hosting pirate sites.)
On the other, you have PC journalists and commentators, always looking for the Hot New Thing--and frequently none too careful about evaluating that wonder. MP3 is decidedly a Hot New Thing. The best journalists have carefully retained the qualifier "near-CD"for the sound quality of MP3; so, for example, a good discussion in the July 1999 Macworld consistently uses qualifiers. But that article is also headlined "So Long, CDs"--and such pundits as John Dvorak have been quick to drop the "near" term and simply claim that MP3 at 128Kbps offers full CD quality. But then, so do the software makers, or at least some of them.
Dvorak simply claims that all recording companies are toast. I've already ridiculed that assertion and there's no point in discussing that issue: there are a variety of reasons that Sony, EMI, and Warner wouldn't just shrivel up in two years even if MP3 is everything it's claimed to be. Indeed, mp3.com's honcho explicitly disavows the idea that MP3 could displace recording companies.
That leaves the more interesting question: what does MP3 sound like?
When I read the first commentary dropping the "near-CD" label, I suspected it was wrong. What I know of the way sound works leads me to suspect that an 11:1 compression ratio without any audible effects is unlikely: the physics of sound don't seem to permit it, at least on a general basis. (Sony's MiniDisc compresses at a 5:1 ratio, and Sony is careful to avoid "CD quality" in connection with MiniDisc:they push it as a higher-quality and more durable alternative to audiocassettes,not as a replacement for CD.)
I had downloaded a couple of free MP3 tracks from legal sites. The sound quality varied from atrocious to roughly FM quality, but was never anywhere near what I'd consider to be CD quality. But that doesn't mean much; the MP3 tracks could have been badly engineered in the first place.
I didn't think the physics made sense, but I've seen miraculous results in other fields, including the picture quality of DVD. Before making too much fun of MP3 extremists, it was time to do my own tests.
Good News and Bad News
My definition of "CD quality" for a new audio format is really quite simple:
If you record a track from an audio CD into the new format, the playback of that track should be audibly identical to the playback of the CD itself.
If there's any audible difference, then it's "near-CD quality," a wildly imprecise term that I'll interpret as "better than cassette and no worse than FM."
Using the higher of two"CD-quality" rates in the MusicMatch Jukebox (160Kbps), I converted two Simon& Garfunkel songs ("El Condor Pasa" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water") to MP3 format. Pop music is less complex than classical music, and these were 30-year-old recordings, made long before digital recording. It should be a snap for the MP3 to sound as good as (or, rather, identical to) the CD.
To make the test even easier (and a good deal more practical), I was using my aging ears and the modest set of speakers attached to my home PC. I know that my high-frequency hearing is pretty well shot, and the speakers are Altec Lansing ACS400 satellites and an Altec Lansing ACS250 "subwoofer"-good PC speakers, but no more.
In every respect, I was making it easy for MP3. Relatively simple music recorded decades ago, high-rate MP3 recording, a modest speaker system, and a listener with mediocre hearing. I listened to sections of the MP3 version and the CD version in short bursts and longer segments, easy enough to do since I could keep both the Windows CD player and MusicMatch active on the desktop simultaneously.
Surprise, surprise: the MP3 versions did not sound the same-but they were close. Very close, in fact, when I simply listened in normal stereo mode. The timbre was a little different, and the sound in mid-treble and treble ranges seemed rougher on the MP3 side. The good news: it still sounded good, certainly better than typical LP releases or cassette versions of these songs. The bad news: it wasn't quite identical to the CD.
In surround mode, the Altec Lansing circuitry offers a tougher tool for analysis. You can turn down the center channel, effectively creating a karaoke effect (since most vocals are recorded dead-center in a stereo mix, the vocals almost disappear when you do this). This mode offers a clearer picture of stereo image stability and unveils lesser problems with the sound in general. I'm afraid that the "null-center"test isn't very kind to high-rate MP3. On both songs, the sound became unstable,with audible pumping (volume going up and down when it shouldn't) and an"underwater" or warbling effect. Since doing this test, I've seen others comment on the "underwater" artifacts you can get from MP3 encoding-but usually at much lower bit rates. At about 2:25 in "Bridge Over Troubled Water," the nulled-center test shows so much warbling on the MP3 that it's unpleasant to hear.
Listening again in straight stereo, I find that there's a little more air and body on the CD version; the voices are a bit more generic in MP3 form. On "Bridge Over Troubled Water," the piano has a less distinctive sound and the massed strings are a bit shrill in MP3, with "shimmering" that shouldn't be there.
The second pair of early tests was two songs from Gordon Lightfoot's Sundown album, ripped at 128Kbps. While the Simon & Garfunkel cuts were taken from Old Friends,a superbly remastered compilation of S&G songs, Sundown is a 25-year-old recording, not specially remastered. I recorded "Circle of Steel"and "Is There Anyone Home?"
In stereo mode, I found the flute thin (almost turning into a recorder) on "Circle of Steel," with a little loss of air and depth; the oboe later in the song was edgy and distorted. Even in stereo mode, the differences were clearly audible, even on my PC speakers and with my indifferent hearing. In null-center mode, both cuts ranged from pretty good to ugly. The guitar on "Circle of Steel" seemed distorted; at 1:30 into the cut, it got bad enough to be unpleasant. In general, "Is There Anyone Home?" suffered from pumping and warbling.
At 128Kbps, even with this easy a test, I consider "CD quality" to be an overstatement; this wasn't even all that close. On a serious high fidelity system, I'd expect the differences to be fairly dramatic.
I need to qualify this claim. I was listening carefully on speakers set up properly, and the Simon& Garfunkel cuts were (while thirty years old) well recorded. On a pocket-size portable player with typical headphones, I doubt that the difference at 160K would be audible, and 128K might even work well. For most popular music,for most listeners, under most casual listening circumstances, MP3 is good enough. It just isn't true CD quality, not at those encoding rates, at least not on my system.
Why Call It CD Quality?
So why has the claim of CD quality appeared so often in print? Set aside what the software maker says; it's the job of PC journalists to validate such claims, not simply repeat them.
I'm a skeptic, but not a cynic. I don't believe that there's much outright deception going on. Instead, I see a mix of four factors: hype, ignorance, equipment problems, and hearing problems.
Hype: People want MP3 to work miracles, and they're accustomed to Digital Technology as working miracles. Overstating the quality of MP3 recordings is par for the course.
Ignorance: Many people really don't know what stereophonic music should sound like, and I suspect quite a few PC journalists fall into that crowd. If you've never heard anything better than a boom box, you've never heard what a CD should sound like.
Equipment problems: This is a variation on "ignorance," in one sense. If your equipment doesn't offer decent reproduction, the loss of quality may not be audible. I used an inexpensive set of speakers for this test--much better than a boombox or a typical carry-along player, but nowhere near as good as a"mid-fi" stereo system. If you can't hear the difference between a song played on FM radio and CD, you may not be bothered by MP3 sound. If you don't care about the difference between AM radio, a cheap cassette player, and CD, then you certainly won't mind MP3 sound.
Hearing problems: My hearing is substantially degraded, but I do pay attention. A lot of people-particularly a lot of adult men-have significant hearing loss, and many of them (us?) really don't care. Once again: if you can't hear the difference, you won't care about the difference.
This is not a sexist comment, but so far I haven't seen a commentary by an adult female music lover saying that MP3 offers "CD quality sound." Adult women typically retain hearing better than men do. If a woman cares, it's likely that she'll spot MP3's defects.
This modern miracle is a bit less miraculous than I'd like. That's OK-unless, of course, the hype-meisters are right about MP3 replacing audio CDs. If this level of sound quality becomes accepted as the ideal, I'd be unhappy. I don't see that happening, but I'm an optimist by nature. Right now, high-rate MP3 is good enough that I might use it for convenient background music, but no better than that.
Incidentally, while you can't play MP3-encoded CD-Rs on regular CD players today, the key word there is"today." If MP3, or some other (probably copy-protected) compressed audio format, becomes widely accepted, it would be nearly trivial for Sony and other CD-player manufacturers to add a decoding chip to their players. That would be a huge win for spoken-word recordings, where putting 10 (or even 20) hours on a single disc makes enormous sense. There are a number of other cases where commercial MP3 CDs might make sense without ruining good sound for today's recordings, and, to be sure, enthusiasts could collect those new obscure bands without big-label contracts.
The skeptic in me notes the problem in collecting MP3 cuts from obscure bands. While record companies may indeed be ignoring vital talents because big-company processes make them too expensive to record, there's a good reason that most obscure bands are obscure. As with most other areas of artistry, most obscure bands just aren't very good. I've sampled every song in the free "103 best songs you've never heard" CD from mp3.com, and, with a few exceptions, I'm not surprised that you've never heard them.
Platform Watch
Somogy, S. (1999), "Windows 98 emulators," Macworld, Vol. 16 No. 2, p. 37.
How much performance do you get with a $170-$180 program to run Windows 98 on a Macintosh? Roughly the equivalent of a Pentium-60: one-fifth the performance of a Celeron-300.(I'm guessing the crippled Celeron, lacking L2 cache: the review doesn't say.)That's the major story here: yes, you can theoretically run Windows 98 software on your G3 Mac, but very slowly. The alternative, hardware emulation, costs almost as much as a low-end Windows PC. Oh yes: the review judges the two contenders, SoftWindows 98 5.0.4 and VirtualPC 2.1.1-as roughly equal. The first is more convenient, the second more compatible.
Breen, C. and Penwarden, M. (1999),"The iMac challenge," Macworld, July, pp. 68-77.
Which is easier to use, an iMac or a consumer PC? Can you expect an unbiased answer to that question from Macworld? The answer to the second question may surprise you: yes, if you ignore the spin at the end of the story. For this article, Macworldconfigured a brand-name Windows PC aimed at consumers with roughly the same configuration and price as a 266MHz iMac, then had nine new computer buyers try assembling, connecting, and using both computers.
The Windows PC was a good choice: Gateway's Essential 366c, a Celeron-366 system. With the same size display, comparable processor, same RAM, slightly larger hard disk, and comparable CD-ROM drive and modem, it sold for $16 more than the iMac--but that$16 included a year of free Internet access and a substantially richer software setup.
The editors learned what I've known for years: the Mac's interface is no more obvious than Windows, until you understand how it works. They told people to "go to the Finder" and people had no idea what they meant. It's like saying "click on the taskbar" in Windows:until you know what the taskbar is, that's a meaningless statement.
The iMac was a little easier to set up: with one piece, that's understandable. Surprisingly, the Gateway got on the Internet faster-Gateway.net is even more plainless than the iMac's Internet strategy. You could get help a little faster on the iMac, and it was easier to get started on a document in the iMac's AppleWorks than in Gateway's Word. But then, Word offers a lot more power than AppleWorks(and I'm not sure why the paper clip was causing Word users so much trouble). CD-ROM handling was better on the Gateway, and of course its separate Altec Lansing speakers sounded a lot better than the internal speakers on the iMac.
Expandability? The Gateway's small cabinet doesn't offer a lot, but it's a lot more than the iMac. Compatibility? The Gateway runs Windows: enough said. Style? To the user panel,it was a tie--which the editors found a little galling. Speed, overall experience, and display quality all came in as ties--but, as any iMac user would tell you, the Gateway's mouse was a much better device than the bizarro iMac round mouse. You get a lot more support from Gateway.
As for actual speed tests,startup took exactly the same time on both systems (I would have expected the iMac to be faster); the iMac was faster on file duplication and printing, while the Gateway was faster on copying to and from a Zip drive and running Quake.
Basically, this whole test was a wash--and if you recognize that setup is a one-time operation, the Gateway might inch ahead. But then the editors start their spin. We're told that"Windows' roots as a DOS shell are still too easily exposed" (which I've never seen in Windows 98, and rarely in Windows 95) and that "more often than not,solving a problem on a Windows-based computer will trap you in the inner workings of the operating system" while the Mac OS "insulates you from encountering any arcane programming." I've never had to "rebuild the desktop" or run a "conflict catcher" for "extensions," so I won't comment--except to note that I've never felt trapped in DOS workings.
The editors write off PC expandability: "Most home users won't want to crack open the case" (even though actual users wanted that expandability). Then they conclude by discussing"the overall elegance of each computer." And that, of course, makes the iMac supreme in a Macintosh magazine: it's "what ultimately makes the iMac stand out." So there.
If you omit obvious spinning, this is a fair comparison fairly presented. A reminder of why, as a devoted Windows person, I enjoy Macworld and regard it as one of the better PC magazines.
Product Watch
Cheap Scanner, Big Brand
It's been possible to buy a scanner for less than $100 for quite a while. Now you can do that with the security of a big name. Hewlett-Packard's ScanJet 3200C has a list price of $99;it offers 600 dpi optical resolution and scans in 30-bit color. It comes with Adobe PhotoDeluxe and Caere OmniPage (OCR software). You don't get much of a warranty, and the scanning software (which automatically crops images) doesn't let you adjust brightness or contrast.
This isn't a model to consider for high-end work or production scanning. For those of us who want to scan once in a while, it may be worth considering.
LaCie's DVD-RAM Drive
EMedia Professionalfor April 1999 reviews the LaCie DVD-RAM External SCSI Drive, a $799 box "for PC and Macintosh." If you have a hunger to write 2.6GB to a single disc the size of a CD (or 5.2GB, using both sides), this may be one of your best choices. It's not designed to write DVD-Video; rather, LaCie sees it as a high-capacity storage box for graphics professionals.
The device apparently works well, but a few cautions are necessary. LaCie touts the five cents per megabyte cost of DVD-RAM cartridges as being a "clear winner when compared to other removable disc technologies from Jaz to Zip." But that price looks pretty poor now that CD-RW blanks cost as little as $3 each, or a half-cent per megabyte. (Let's not even discuss CD-R blanks at a buck each: less than a sixth of a cent per megabyte.) The only advantage of DVD-RAM over CD-RW is capacity.(The LaCie offers slower data transfer rates than good CD-R drives.)
The real problem is compatibility, with a minor note about LaCie and its market. That note:Macintosh users know and respect LaCie, mostly as a packager of disk drives and other peripherals. PC users have never heard of LaCie (as far as I know)--and,to be sure, most PCs don't come with SCSI support. Then again, neither do most brand-new Macs, which may be a bit troublesome for LaCie. What about compatibility? Well, DVD-RAM is just one of several competitive "standards" for writable DVD. Current DVD-ROM drives won't read DVD-RAM, and since the two-sided form requires a cartridge, you're not likely to see that change much. For that matter, while the LaCie can read all forms of CD, it can't write CD-R or CD-RW. Oddly, it can only read DVD-Video if the host computer has MPEG decoding:that's not part of the package. I'm not too sure about this one: it has a lot of the feel of SyQuest about it.
InterMute
Here's a charmer: a $20 utility that runs alongside your Internet browser and attempts to block out banner ads and other "Web nuisances." Such "nuisances" include pop-up windows,so a lot of valuable sites won't work as well if InterMute is set wrong, but $20 may be a bargain to get ad-free browsing.
I probably wouldn't bother to mention InterMute were it not for the five-star review in the June 1999 PC/Computing. They love it, and they show two screens that illustrate InterMute's effectiveness. Without InterMute, it took 65 seconds to load the page over a 33.6Kbps modem. With InterMute, it took only 21 seconds. What a savings! The page they chose? ZDNet.com. Hmm. Ziff-Davis runs ZDNet "for free," hoping to pay its substantial costs through banner ads. Ziff-Davis publishes PC/Computing,mostly paid for by all those ad pages. If a subscription clearing house offered"MagClean," a service that stripped out all ad pages before sending you PC/Computing,would ZDNet cheer it as a great idea?
I'm used to the left hand not knowing what the right is doing. It's a little more unusual for the left hand to be stabbing the right hand in the back. Oh, that's right: ZDNet makes its money from all the poor idiots who don't read PC/Computing and will still see the banner ads. Sounds good to me.
Fix-It Utilities 98
Here's an intriguing one(seriously): Mijenix Fix-It Utilities 98, $50 list. It's intriguing mostly because of Edward Mendelson's review in the 8 June 1999 PC Magazine,which begins: "To put it plainly, [Fix-It] makes every other Windows utility package look clumsy, underpowered, and obsolete." Mendelson knows his stuff, and that's strong language in a field that includes Norton Utilities and Nuts &Bolts 98.
This bundle runs in Windows NT 4.0 as well as Windows 95 or 98. It includes virus checking, Y2K compliance, unneeded-file removal, defragmenting, Registry cleaning and repair,and an overall "Fix-Wizard." There's a crash protector and a range of system diagnostics. The package also includes PowerDesk Utilities 98, which I swear by and consider easily worth $40 on its own-it's the advanced file manager to replace Norton Navigator, since Symantec no longer produces a file manager.
I've been using Norton SystemWorks happily enough, particularly since it includes CleanSweep. But given Mendelson's enthusiasm, I may just try this alternative. Since I haven't, I'm not endorsing it yet.
Audible Mobile-Player-Plus
On the same page of PC Magazine as Mendelson's review of Fix-It Utilities, there's a review of a mobile Web audio player that avoids the "near-CD-quality" nonsense and piracy issues of MP3 devices. The Mobile-Player-Plus from Audible Inc. costs $299,measures 4.6 x 2.9 x 0.8", weighs 3.5 ounces, and comes with rechargeable batteries, headphones, and a cassette adapter, as well as the needed docking station.
You dock the unit,download audio content from Audible's site, transfer it to the player, then play it on headphones, over an unused FM frequency, or on a car's cassette player. The 16MB unit stores more than seven hours of content--because it's storing voice.
Audible specializes in the spoken word, with more than 16,000 hours available on its Web site. Most of these files are for sale, including unabridged best-sellers ($15 to $20),abridged fiction and nonfiction titles ($5 to $10), a month of twice-daily summary downloads from the Wall Street Journal for $10 or a year of selected daily downloads from The New York Times for $50.
The player won't handle MP3, and it's no threat to CDs or other music formats. You can't share content between players, and it's probably a non-starter for libraries, but it's a plausible narrow solution for particular users and uses.
Rocket eBook: Another Medium Heard From
Without doing a full-fledged "eBook watch" this time, it's worth noting a review of NuvoMedia's Rocket eBook in the 31 May 1999 Industry Standard. This weekly is "the newsmagazine of the Internet economy," so you'd expect the review to be favorable. After all, in the Internet economy, eBooks are a natural.
"If NuvoMedia's Rocket eBook is any indication, the future of print looks bright." That's the lead sentence. They discuss the newest function, which lets you download original content (including Web sites) to the eBook. "Simply enter a URL and the HTML is zapped into the docked device." But, of course, you're looking at a Web page on a 5.6" monochrome LCD, multipage documents swallow the eBook's memory, and "all too often text formatting is screwy and pictures are pixelated beyond practicality."
The closing sentence echoes the first: "it's simply no replacement for old-fashioned pulp." They give it an estimated lifespan of six months, "but just as airplane entertainment."And you thought I was tough on electronic books!
Press Watch
Tellig, S. (1999), "Sam's space,"Stereophile, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 45-51.
I wouldn't normally cite Stereophile, although I use it as a source of background information on certain consumer digital technologies--but this particular column struck a nerve. Stereophile is a "high-end" magazine, aimed mostly at people who are comfortable spending $20,000 to $200,000 on a stereo system. High-end systems use high-end CD players, a field where anything under $3,000 is a bargain-basement unit. So now comes DVD-Audio, and for that matter audio-only DVD-Video discs. Where are the high-end DVD drives?
Tellig, who claims insider knowledge, says that "DVD has a drawback for manufacturers not allied with[Toshiba, Panasonic, Pioneer, and JVC]. I am told that independent manufacturers...can't source inexpensive DVD drives off the shelf, the way they can CD drives from Sony, Teac, JVC, etc. [They] would have to buy a DVD player and scrap most of it, retaining just the drive...or source a relatively expensive DVD ROM drive. Neither option is feasible when you're designing to a lower price point."
Well, sure, but what's"relatively expensive" about DVD-ROM drives? Early this spring, Creative Labs was selling a DVD-ROM kit-not just the drive, but cables and whatever else you need-for $130. Creative Labs has never been the price leader. Gateway and Dell each charge $80 to upgrade from a CD-ROM drive to a very high speed DVD-ROM drive. Just how cheap does a DVD-ROM drive have to be?
"Upsetting the Applecart"
You have to read market analyses carefully, particularly when they're reported by PC/Computing. That magazine now tries to get people to leaf through its pointless, lengthy"A-List" section by putting new facts and comments along with the lists of"best" products. The top of the Notebooks page for June 1999 has the headline above accompanying a brief paragraph and graph of "popular portables." The paragraph begins: "Believe it or not, Apple's PowerBook G3 accounts for nearly 10 percent of all notebooks sold through retail channels." Wow! Ten percent:what a rebound for Apple.
But look a little higher on the page, where another paragraph says that the retail market is more important for notebook computers than for desktop computers. "In fact, retailers still account for nearly 40 percent of portable sales."
In other words, Apple's PowerBook accounts for a little less than four percent of notebook computer sales: a slightly less astonishing figure. The graph is a little misleading because it's comparing all current Apple PowerBooks (they all use G3 CPUs) with specific models from other brands.
Yes, the combined sales volume of PowerBooks is a lot higher than sales of HP's OmniBook 800CT or Toshiba's Satellite 4000CDS, but HP has at least eight current OmniBooks and Toshiba has a dozen or more different current notebook models. My first thought on seeing the graph was surprise that Compaq isn't represented, but given Compaq's huge number of different models, it's no big surprise.
Optimal for Who?
Later in that same June 1999 "A-List" section, the Graphics page has a note saying "the higher your screen resolution, the more information you can view at a glance without scrolling." Hard to argue with that, but the last sentence of the paragraph goes on: "Interestingly, most PC users connected to the Internet have their monitors set to a less-than-optimal resolution of 800 by 600 pixels."
Huh? If you're using a 14"-viewable display, 800 x 600 pixels is most certainly not"less-than-optimal", and corporate and home buyers looking for bargains still buy more of these displays than larger screens. Even on the so-called 17"screens (16" viewable), many users prefer 800 x 600 because the characters and icons are larger.
The final sentence is nonsense. It would only make sense if accompanied by another graph showing that more than half of Internet-connected PCs have displays with at least 16 viewable inches, and I doubt that's the case.
Confusing Percentage Growth
The June 1999 Computer Shopper has a brief discussion of cheapo PCs ("sub-$600") that can be confusing. They are the fastest-growing segment of the PC market: 10.8 percent of retail and direct U.S. consumer sales this year, expected to rise to 13.7 percent next year, according to International Data Corp. That's "an increase of 27 percent" according to the article.
So far, so good, but the next system asks you to "compare these superaffordable systems with what is generally considered the heart of the home market, systems priced from $1,000 to$1,500. Dataquest estimates that desktops in this price range will account for 26.9 percent of sales this year and increase a mere 0.4 percentage point in 2000, registering a puny 1.5 percent growth rate."
Note those adjectives:"mere" and "puny." Note also that two different market analysis firms are quoted, which seems strange if you're trying to compare projections. Then pay close attention to the numbers themselves. Let's state this another way:
In 1999, estimates are that 2.49 $1,000-$1,500 desktops will be sold to U.S. consumers for every under-$600 desktop sold. In 2000, that ratio drops: 1.99 of the more expensive desktops will be sold for each cheapo desktop. The share of a growing marketplace held by midprice systems continues to rise, while the much smaller share held by cheap systems rises faster. Suddenly, the "puny" figure is pointless.
Guterman, J. (1999), "Opening Windows," The Industry Standard, 31 May, p. 80.
What would happen if Microsoft made Windows an Open Source system? (If you don't know what Open Source means, it's easy enough to learn about.) This article poses that possibility and suggests that it could be "the most powerful weapon Microsoft could yield to extend its industry dominance." It's a potent one-page read.
In theory at least, Open Source software should improve more rapidly than proprietary software, since so many programmers can be working on it. (Mozilla doesn't seem to be proving this as a universal truth, but never mind.) A more stable Windows would dominate the field even more than the current one does. Microsoft might lose revenue from sales of the operating system, but it could still charge a distribution fee for the complete installed system. That's how Caldera and RedHat make money on Linux: they bundle the OS with everything else you need to get a system running,put it all on a CD-ROM with documentation, and sensible people happily pay $50 or $60.
Microsoft makes a lot more profit from each sale of Office or individual applications than it does from each copy of Windows. For that matter, Office is as dominant on the Mac as it is on Windows. A more stable Windows means that Office works better.
Will it happen? Who knows?The essay is speculation, not prediction.
Machrone, B. (1999), "The floppy replacement," PC Magazine, Vol. 18 No. 12, p. 85.
What will replace the floppy? I've been considering that question for some time and the answer continues to be unclear. I had high hopes for Sony's HiFD, but it's significantly late. As Machrone notes, the LS-120 SuperDisk probably should have been the floppy's replacement.
Unlike some people working this vein, Machrone does pay attention to CD-R and CD-RW, but he still says "you pay a lot more" for CD-RW. True a few months ago; less so now, with CD-RW discs regularly selling for $2 to $4 in quantities of three to five discs.
His cut: "LS-120 for shirt-pocket convenience and CD-RW for capacity and flexibility." I don't think you can count out the Zip drive that easily; I'd also make the two-format assumption, but the shirt pocket format would still be the Zip.
Review Watch
Desktop Computers
Metz, C. (1999), "Managed PCs," PC Magazine, Vol. 18 No. 12, pp. 160-82.
This roundup includes ten corporate PCs, where "corporate" means that the PC has tools allowing for easy top-down management. A significant portion of the ratings appears to be based on how effective the management tools are. HP's are the best; Compaq and Dell are close. Everyone else uses Intel's LANDesk Client Manager, which is less complete.
The Editors' Choice is HP's $2,525 Vectra VLi8 MT. Honorable mentions go to units from Dell, Compaq,IBM, and Toshiba. If you need a cluster of PCs with this level of management,read the article; I don't understand the concept enough to comment intelligently.
Venezia, C. (1999), "The Pentium III at 550," PC Magazine, Vol. 18 No. 11, pp. 41-4.
For a change, Intel isn't just pushing a direct speed gain as the reason to pay for the Pentium-III 550. Instead, they tout the new Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) as a way to "get into the Internet." There's even a tiny grain of truth in the hype: some Internet plugins will take advantage of SSE instructions to improve speed and quality,particularly for streaming content.
This "first looks" review covers the three earliest 550MHz systems that PC Magazine could obtain from name-brand vendors: one each from Compaq, Dell, and Micron. (Gateway sent a Pentium III-500 system, but didn't have the new CPU in time for the roundup). They're very similar systems: $2,748 to $2,899, the same Diamond Viper V770 graphics adapter using the new nVidia RIVA TNT-2 chipset, 18" display, Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Sound card, high speed (7,200rpm) hard disks ranging from 18 to 22GB, and V.90 modems. Dell and Micron include 6x DVD-ROM drives;Compaq, surprisingly, ships a 52x CD-ROM drive (a legitimate speed: this is a True-X drive). Compaq and Dell include 32MB video RAM; Micron, only 16MB. Compaq and Micron ship MS Office 2000 Small Business Edition; Dell, surprisingly, MS Works Suite 99. All three include three-part speakers, but Compaq's are relatively weak. All three ship some form of removable storage, but here there are significant differences. Compaq includes the ubiquitous 100MB Zip drive,while Dell ups the ante with a 250MB Zip. Meanwhile, Micron includes a Sony 4x CD-RW drive with its 660MB capacity.
The three systems test out almost identically (not surprisingly), and each includes fairly substantial online support. The Editors' Choice goes to Micron's Millennia MAX 550, but the other systems are also excellent choices--if you want to spend this kind of money on a PC. Then again, these are leading-edge systems; three years ago,comparable (but much lesser) systems would be in the $4,000-$6,000 range.
Digital Cameras
Grotta, D. and Grotta, S. W.(1999), "Cheap 1-megapixel digital cameras," PC Magazine, Vol. 18 No. 12,pp. 41-4.
The title tells the story:medium-resolution digital cameras have dropped to the $300 to $500 range. Of four cameras reviewed here (from Kodak, Polaroid, Toshiba, and Yashica), all but one are true megapixel units. The Toshiba PDR-M1, second cheapest at $320 and the Editors' Choice, has a 1.5 megapixel sensing unit, although its maximum resolution is 1280 x 1024. It offers good ergonomics and a true autofocus lens,with some advanced features. Of the four included photographic samples, the Toshiba seems far and away the best.
Johnson, D. (1999), "Pixel perfect," FamilyPC, June/July, pp. 110-14.
It's unusual for two Ziff-Davis magazines to test exactly the same hardware category in the same month, but that's what we have here: digital cameras costing $500 or less with at least one megapixel resolution. Six cameras are reviewed; only one of the six is among PC Magazine's group: the Toshiba PDR-M1. In this roundup, it comes in third (although with a Recommended rating of 88), because FamilyPC emphasizes family needs and the Toshiba is "not for novices."
Two cameras tie with the top rating at 91: Epson's $499 PhotoPC 700 ("a great camera with a few annoying quirks") and Ricoh's $499 RDC-4200 ("powerful zoom and a clever swiveling lens"). A fourth unit, the $399 Olympus D-340R, also achieves a Recommended rating of 87. FujiFilm and Kodak cameras don't quite make the 85-point cutoff. The FujiFilm is essentially identical to the Toshiba and costs $100 more; the Kodak has terrible battery life and lacks autofocus. It also has the lowest resolution of the bunch at 1152 x 864 pixels: the others all offer 1280 x 960 or 1280 x 1024 resolution.
Printers
Karney, J. (1999), "Network printers," PC Magazine, Vol. 18 No. 11, pp. 183-212.
The bad news: this group review (27 monochrome laser printers, all but one rated 12ppm or faster) doesn't include print samples. The good news: it probably doesn't need to; most of these printers offer excellent print, frequently at 1,200dpi or higher.
As always with PC Magazine roundups, you should read the article to see what meets your own needs, but the Editors' Choices are good places to start. For offices and workgroups where you might need tabloid output, they recommend Hewlett-Packard's$3,350 LaserJet 5000GN. That price includes a duplexer (for two-sided printing)and network adapter. Honorable mention goes to Tektronix' $1,500 Phaser 740L,which can be upgraded to color for $550.
If you don't need tabloid capabilities, last year's Editors' Choice continues to stand out for speed and value: Lexmark's $2,830 Optra S 1855n. Finally, if you need a departmental printer (25 ppm or faster), another HP LaserJet gets the nod: the $3,450 LaserJet 8100DN, with 32ppm printing, 3,100-sheet capability, and superb network management software.
Labriola, D. (1999), "Colorfast lasers for less," Computer Shopper, Vol. 19 No. 6, pp. 186-94.
Color laser printers continue to come down in price: the five in this review all cost less than$2,500 and all offer 600dpi color printing. There's a fair amount of detail in this roundup, but also some points that aren't quite clear. They claim that the printing cost per page of the HP Color LaserJet 4500 is 6.6 cents monochrome and 13.1 cents color, for example--but also that a black cartridge costs $78 and lasts 9,000 pages, while a color cartridge costs $98 and last 6,000 pages. If the toner for monochrome printing costs less than a cent per page, where are the other 5.6 cents going? (The same questions can be asked for the other four printers, but HP doesn't require separate fuser oil as an added cost--and they criticize HP's high per-page costs. Thus, it seems particularly appropriate here.) There are tiny print samples that also seem to belie the written commentary, but these are supplemented by larger Web-based print samples.
Their Best Buy choice is NEC's $2,256 SuperScript 4400N, with "noteworthy" runner-up status for the HP($2,403) and QMS' $1,868 magicolor 2 CX.
On the Web
What are my criteria for CD-ROM point scores? What can you expect in future Crawford's Corners? Who is Walt Crawford, anyway?
Check my home page: http://home.att.net/~walt.crawford. You won't find backgrounds, animations, or sound clips. You will find a table of CD-ROM evaluation criteria, maximum points for each criterion, how each is weighted, and a brief discussion of each one. A section notes forthcoming appearances: future Crawford's Corner editions, columns in Database and Online, articles in American Libraries, scheduled speeches. There may be color versions of the screen shots in "CD-ROM Watch" and occasional Web-only extras.
The Details
Crawford's Corner is written by Walt Crawford, an information architect at the Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG) Opinions herein do not reflect those of RLG or MCB University Press. Comments should be sent to wcc@notes.rlg.org. CD-ROMs andDVD-ROMs for review should be sent to Walt Crawford, 1631 Columbia Drive, Mountain View, CA 94040-3638; Windows 98/95 only.
