Technology: Hardware Advances Coming
By Paul Harris

John Moynahan foresees the day, just five years away, when mobile learning and other wireless applications will be standard fare. "Everything will be smaller, lighter, faster and cheaper," says Moynahan, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Xybernaut, a provider of wearable computing hardware, software, and services. "We'll see mobile learning applications make the classroom partially obsolete." He says wearable technology will tie people together remotely for learning applications.

Within that period, Dick Tracy's futuristic wristwatch--metaphor for tomorrow's wizardry--will have become yesterday's news. "We will move to the invisible, such as display technologies clipped onto a standard set of glasses," he says. Meanwhile, the improvement of wireless bandwidth "will have a huge impact on real-time content."

Xybernaut is one of several companies offering wearable computers. Its latest offering is the new Mobile Assistant V, touted as a new generation of wearable design for lightweight, hands-free mobile computing. It features a Texas Instruments on-board integrated programmable digital signal processor (DSP), ATI's Rage Mobility graphics processor, and an Intel Mobile 500 MHz processor. Manufactured by IBM, the unit provides processor speed, connectivity, mobility, and power efficiency in a package that's almost 40 percent smaller and lighter than earlier models. Pricing will start at US$3,995.

Like Moynahan, other hardware developers are bullish on mobile computing. Many insist that more Internet connections will be made through such mobile devices as mobile phones, PDAs, and Wallet PCs than through wired devices. He says the continued evolution of Bluetooth wireless networking technology will further benefit mobile learning.

Published: July 2001