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Beware the wireless Web

Don't believe the hype: Current wireless gadgets are miles from full-fledged Web devices.
Written by Alice Hill, Contributor
Note: This is the first column of a new series by Alice Hill. Alice was the vice president of development and editorial director of CNet.com, and before that at Ziff Davis as a senior technical and features editor for many Ziff publications. For the past eight years, Alice has been covering new technologies with a frank, no-nonsense approach to help guide her readers past the hype and to products and services that are truly worth their time. She welcomes your comments and e-mails.

Here's a tip that may save you some serious disappointment the next time you decide to spring for a new communications device: If you see people in TV commercials using the device on the beach or in an airport -- it's not ready for prime time.

I'm not sure when Madison Avenue began linking flimflam products to luxurious beach scenes, but I think AT&T started the phenomenon when it showed someone sending e-mail from a beach chair nearly a decade ago, with the inspiring message, "You will."

This year, if you use my little TV commercial theory, apparently no airport or seaside resort is safe from travelers desperate to surf the Web via cell phone.

Going wireless is a theme we've all been trained to wish for (probably since the days of the original "you will"), but I'm here to tell you that there is an enormous difference between wireless devices such as beepers, cell phones and even some two-way e-mail gadgets, and using your cell phone to surf the Web.

For starters, have you tried to make a basic cell phone call lately? In San Francisco, there are entire pockets of mystery airwaves where for no explainable reason your phone disconnects.

Analog, digital, high- and low-end, cellular technology is still a staticky, hit-or-miss proposition in most major cities. True, calling plans continue to offer more for the money, and a clear connection is something to doff your hat at appreciatively, but making the leap from checking your voice mail, to checking your e-mail, to checking out Amazon.com via cell phone is another story altogether.

First is the obvious: screen size. Web-enabled phones from Sprint and Motorola (to name a couple) have unbelievably tiny displays. We're talking 3 to 5 lines of 15 to 17 characters per line. The new Qualcomm pdQ can do 12 lines of 36 characters per line, but that is still an unforgivably small window into a world that is still largely text-based.

Then there's the absurd notion of using your phone's numerical buttons as a keypad. Storing a name in your phone's address book and patiently hitting a key three times to get to the letter O is OK if you add to your phone book sporadically, but imagine typing "http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Newspapers/" or answering an e-mail message with more than "thanks." No thanks.

Worst of all, connecting to the Web via cell phone is far slower than the average wired Net connection, and incredibly costly. The average charge for a Web connection today is between 15 and 30 cents a minute, and unlike phone calling, where you can place a call and hear the busy signal for free, connecting to a Web site and getting a big "404 Site Not Found" message means you just paid connect-time charges for nothing.

That makes the notion of searching the net for random information an expensive and potentially angering proposition. Someday, the highly anticipated third-generation or "3G" wireless broadband technology will be unveiled in this country, and cell phones will be able to pump data at 2Mbps, but according to AT&T, nothing is expected before 2005. Translation: "You won't!"

The key thing to keep in mind in all of this: There's a big difference between wireless e-mail and the wireless Web.

There are in fact many compelling ways to bring your inbox anywhere you go, but for now, I'm suggesting you leave the Web out of the equation. Two-way text pagers, like my beloved Blackberry pager from R.I.M. Technologies (the one thing I miss from my days at CNet); Motorola's PageWriter 2000X; and even the Palm VII are all relatively affordable ways to stay in touch via e-mail and manage your calendar and contacts list with one simple wireless device.

Since most people drawn to wireless gadgetry are used to carrying a pager and cell phone anyway, carrying two devices is no big hardship, and the surprising benefits of being able to send e-mail while on the beach ("I did!") cannot be understated in real life.

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