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Dressing For Success: You Might Find That Tech Suits You
By Stephen M. Lawton
Technology
is grand, isn't it? Today we have organizers that are roughly the size
of a credit card. Cell phones that don't have to be dialed, you just speak
the name of the person you're calling. We have fully loaded PCs that are
roughly the size and thickness of an issue of MicroTimes, storage
devices that can hold the collected works of the Library of Congress several
times over and watches that double as a PDA or pager.
Who says you can't take it with you?
These days, you can take everything with you just so you can get
away from it all. Has technology become that much a part of us or is there
hope for us that we can disconnect from it all and still survive?
I certainly hope we can, but I fear
sometimes that I'm wrong. Recently I gave one of our salesmen a gift because
he was becoming overloaded with gadgets. It was a holster that held a
cell phone and a PDA, plus had a place for him to clip his pager. I can
just imagine him trying to walk through airport security with that setup.
Technology today has gotten so small,
and so many of us have become so dependent on having it all, that it is
often hard to know when enough is enough. Personally, I'm down to carrying
only two gadgets with me all the time a watch that doubles as a PDA and
a cell phone. I can store phone numbers, to do lists, set alarms and do
just about anything except take notes on the watch. The phone doubles
as an alphanumeric pager and has a builtin Web microbrowser.
The next step: wearable computers,
of course. Pshaw, you say? Not at all. I first wrote about a wearable
computer some 10 years ago. Today, it's Alice's Restaurant you can get
just about anything you want.
What makes this relevant today is
that in addition to all this technology wizardry being available, it's
available at a relatively affordable price. I've been wearing this brand
of watch since it was launched about five years ago I bought my last one
for about $40. You can pick up a highend Palm Connected Organizer or a
PocketPC for just a few hundred dollars, and cell phones they're free
when you sign up with a wireless service provider, although the Webenabled
phones normally cost about $200.
This month's MicroTimes Holiday
Gift Guides include dozens of cool gifts for $1,000 or less, but we could
have just as easily filled an entire story with wearable gizmos and gadgets.
Computing isn't something you do at home or in the office anymore you
can do it anywhere, anytime. But despite the instant-gratification society
we live in, don't forget this: Have a life.
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