From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 23:30:07 -0800 (PST)
To: Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: PDAs as alternatives to smart cards?
In-Reply-To: <199702180141.RAA19121@toad.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970217112701.00655258@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 04:49 PM 2/17/97 -0800, Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com> wrote:
>With the widespread adoption of an industry standard IR link between PDA
>type devices, networks and PCs might this not present an opportunity for
>their use as more user-configurable and application agile financial and
>communiation privacy instruments?  

PDAs are becoming somewhat widespread among technical and sales people,
but there are a lot of different varieties and horsepowers,
and some are generally programmable with near-free-ware while others aren't.
Newtons have horsepower, but aren't that common; most of the others
have 8086en or so, including the easily-programmable DOS HPs,
the cool objecty Psion OS, a few different GeoWorks based systems
(is Pilot one of those?), etc.  Then there are a huge number of
totally non-programmable Rolodex/Calendar widgets.

Any of the interesting ones cost too much to go after the
retail market, and they're owned by people who can use email.  
For the broad market you want a <=$10 device, and stores grumble if you
charge more than $200 for a really complete reader system -
which means smartcards.  

Perhaps once pager capability in PDAs becomes widespread and cheap,
the retail/wholesale pharmaceutical trading set could get interested :-)

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)