InformationWeek

February 26, 2001

A Stinger Of A Different Nature

Microsoft announced its "Stinger" operating system for smart phones--hybrid digital cell phone with a palm-sized computer--but to Stuart J. Johnston, there are problems with this concept.

By Stuart J. Johnston

year ago, I visited Microsoft's research labs in Beijing for a peek at what the company has in store for the Pacific Century. One night, I had an exciting dinner with Kai-Fu Lee, then head of MS Research China. The chef at the southern Chinese ethnic restaurant where we ate came to our table with something bright-green wrapped around his hand. It was a live, and deadly, Asian pit viper. He slit its throat and drained the blood into a bowl of rice wine, which was poured into thimble cups for us.

That was one of two things I didn't consume that night, though I did eat a bite of cooked snake (yes, it did taste like chicken). The other delicacy that I skipped was the fried scorpions with the stingers left on--maybe it was because I couldn't grasp which of the four major food groups scorpions fit into.

On the flight back to Seattle, a Microsoft researcher loaned me her Windows CE-based, Toshiba Libretto handheld PC. It was a nice little, nearly full-function, color PC, though the keyboard was unusably tiny and the battery lasted only as far as Tokyo. But it was a welcome loan, because I hadn't lugged my notebook PC along.

Much can happen in a year. Today, Kai-Fu Lee is VP of Microsoft's newly created user-interface platform division in Redmond. Lee holds a Ph.D. in computer science and wrote one of the first continuous speech recognition engines. Besides his research credentials, he was CEO of Silicon Graphics Software and was VP at Apple Computer in charge of QuickTime, QuickTime VR, and PlainTalk speech technologies.

Which brings us to a stinger of a different nature. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced its "Stinger" operating system for smart phones--basically, a hybrid combo of a digital cell phone with a palm-sized computer. To me, there are problems with this concept. Stinger is built on Windows CE 3.0, a more full-function operating system than other competing systems, such as Symbian, or the Palm OS and, in small form-factor devices, anything that takes more memory, processor power, or battery power, increases weight, size, complexity, and cost.

In mid-February, I attended the O'Reilly peer-to-peer conference in San Francisco where I ran into Bob Frankston, co-inventor of VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet. Bob was packing--literally. The Compaq iPaq is a color-screen "PocketPC" also based around CE 3.0. It has a similar form factor as the Palm or Handspring devices, but it's significantly larger, heavier, and more expensive.

What made the iPaq cool was that the two floors of the hotel where the conference was held were equipped with 802.11b wireless networking. Anyone with a device equipped with a wireless modem, like Bob's iPaq, was constantly online, browsing the Web and trading E-mails without lugging around a notebook computer. A lot of people had handheld devices at the conference, mostly Palm or Handspring units, many running wirelessly. Microsoft hasn't missed the trend, recently announcing a deal to put wireless networking into Starbucks stores.

Analysts predict there may soon be a billion wireless devices. Though Palm still dominates massively, Compaq can't make iPaqs fast enough--they're sold out for months in advance. But neither are a replacement for my notebook--they have no keyboard and the handwriting recognition is crude.

As a journalist, I'd love a small form-factor device that communicates wirelessly as well as enables me to take notes, dictate articles, and transcribe interviews. But the technologies have got to be several orders of magnitude better than what's available today. Microsoft's prototype PC tablet device may accomplish that in a few years, but its form factor is much more like a notebook. It will take a few more years and a lot more processing power before something I can really use arrives. Who will win, Palm units that don't try to do absolutely everything, or the more full-function Stinger, remains unclear.

So you can see why Kai-Fu Lee's new position is so pivotal to Microsoft's future. If Microsoft doesn't succeed, someone else will. Furthermore, the impact of even a moderately successful design may have a huge impact in Asia, where technologies such as speech and handwriting recognition may greatly increase the productivity of workers who are handicapped by the unwieldy nature of keyboards because of the calligraphic nature of their languages. Just a small boost in knowledge-worker productivity in China could help transform it into the single largest economy on the planet in only a few years.

Say, would you pass me the stinger...I mean, scorpions? Mmmm. Crunchy..

Stuart J. Johnston has covered Microsoft for more than 13 years. He can be reached at stuartj@halcyon.com.

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