I shuddered when the notice came in the
mail. The official letterhead of the Federal Court was concise and to
the point. "You have been chosen to appear for selection for the
Federal Grand Jury. If selected you will appear for 3 days per month,
for the next 18 months or such a period as deemed suitable by the
court."
"Perfect timing," I thought. This just as we started a
complex development project at work. I remember previous experiences
with jury duty, involving hours of waiting and boredom. Now don't get me
wrong, I'll do my duty but there had to be a way to use the downtime to
keep up with my group project.
I live out in the country in the mountains of Northern Arizona, but
the district Federal Court is in Phoenix about 200 miles away. So I
needed something small, portable, and with great battery life. But I'd
be away three days at a time, so I also needed something very capable;
something with a useable keyboard and a decent screen. My notebook PC,
an IBM Thinkpad, is very reliable and capable computer. But it's not all
that small and it has horrible battery life. Using it means I have to
carry around pounds of equipment, including the Thinkpad, the power
adapter and accessories. In addition, I didn't think I'd have easy
access to an AC outlet in the Courthouse.
Then I remembered that a friend had just bought a new Sharp Mobilon
Pro (www.sharp-usa.com). This
Handheld PC Pro (see Screen 1) has a bright, active matrix color screen,
gets up to 8 hours of continuous use on a fully-charged battery, boots
up instantaneously, and has a keyboard big enough for my large hands.
Best of all, it's small enough to throw in my briefcase. I bought one.
Screen 1: The Sharp Mobilon Pro has
a full, 640x480 4K color screen, up to 8 hours of use on a full-charged
battery, and a touch typeable keyboard.
The next problem was how to connect the Mobilon Pro to my
e-mail account. The easiest and fastest way to do this would be some kind
of ISP based e-mail client. That's because I use Outlook Express on my PC
at work and a compatible e-mail client comes with Windows CE. I'm not
knocking ccMail or others. It's just that this wasn't the time to switch
to something new.
While pondering this dilemma I picked up my mobile phone
and I idly keyed through the menus to check my voicemail. Then it struck
me. My mobile phone service is provided by Sprint and I remembered getting
a notice that Sprint's "Wireless Web" data service was coming to
my area. I dashed off to my stack of bills to find the notice. I found it
and sure enough, Phoenix was one of the first cities to get Wireless Web.
Wireless Web is a terrific idea. In the old days of analog
and GSM phones your only choice was to go out and buy a special modem.
Then you would be stuck with incredibly slow connection speeds of no more
than 2400 BAUD. Yuck! New digital standards have changed all this. PCS,
CDMA, and TDMA standards mean that all you need is a cable to connect your
mobile computer to your mobile phone. The phone itself acts as a modem!
As of January '00 Sprint has digital data service
nationwide and Nextel is ready to start. Virtually all other service
providers will offer digital data of some kind this year. Check with your
service provider for availability. Best of all, nationwide digital
networks mean low-cost, national pricing plans. This means no more hunting
for a local access number. It wouldn't cost me a penny more to call my ISP
node at home while on jury duty in Phoenix.
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