Robert Dow

To read the press and speak with industry leaders you’d think the whole world revolved around trade shows. They plan product launches, special events, and announcements, and even small stage shows for them. To give a keynote speech is considered a major PR coup by the marketing people, and the executives who give such speeches, with few exceptions, do it … Read more

This last week I’ve been playing “F.E.A.R.,” a Sierra game, and so far (I’m about three-fourths of the way through it) it lives up to its name. More than once I’ve had the hair stand up on the back of neck, literally, as an elevated level of adrenaline coursed through my system. It is a classic FPS (and also available … Read more

A software bug is an expensive mistake that can cost a company developing the software and/or its users hundreds of thousands of dollars to remedy. That’s nothing in light of the worldwide economic costs of the SARS virus. The first-order effects (thousands of sick people and hundreds of deaths), the second-order effects (thousands losing their jobs in the travel and … Read more

With the introduction of new Intel-based Macs, machines that are over three times faster than their Power PC predecessors, Apple is on the threshold of doing what it’s been claiming it has done—redefining the personal computing landscape. After all there were three major arguments against the Mac: it cost more, it was slower, there were fewer apps. The first two … Read more

Hey look someone left their giant golfball here on the side walk. Today, we’re young, fresh, willing to take on the world and we’re happy to be in Vegas. Check with us in a few days to see how we’re holding up. Here we are in beautiful Las Vegas. After the rough weather we’ve had the past weeks, we’ve cut … Read more

Huh? At CES and afterwards you are going to hear about how the TV set manufacturers are suddenly in a panic to get digital-ready sets. This is happening since the FCC’s announcement last month that moved up the deadline on which “TV receiver devices such as VCRs and digital video recorders must include the capability to receive broadcast digital television … Read more

Crackdown cracks up. (Source: Microsoft) A couple of weeks ago I had an opportunity to get up close and personal with an Xbox360. I had a comfortable chair, a coach, and a dozen new friends as well as a group leader. Microsoft knew I and a few others were not up to speed on the games, and god bless ’em, … Read more

Now that we have every conceivable type of media available on our PCs, in every form factor, medium, and bandwidth, with more than able storage, and on all the PCs we have including our laptop, and we have really cinematic quality games, great sound from 3.1 to 7.1, wireless everything from keyboards and mice to remotes, and sources of information … Read more

Upton listens. In a classic example of getting the best politicians money can buy, the brilliant U.S. Congress is once again demonstrating its disregard for logic or majority view and responding to special interest groups. Twenty representatives, including many members of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee, have written Subcommittee Chairmen Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) backing reinstatement of the … Read more

I used to think we were in the technology business, and I was proud, first as a young buck engineer, and later as a trying-to-be entrepreneur, to say I was in the technology business. And it is the technology that gets me and a couple of hundred of my friends around the world jumping out of bed in the morning … Read more

My ears are ringing from all the pipelines that have been piped into them this week. Nvidia has one in their 6150, two in their 6200, and 24 in their 7800, while ATI has six in their 800, and 16 in their 1800 (relying purely on early leaks on the web about Ruby’s new r520). Then in the Southeast we … Read more