NEW YORK — Personal computers were overshadowed by other gadgets when the computer trade show PC Expo opened Tuesday. Handheld devices — with or without wireless Internet access — home networking equipment and Internet appliances are the focus of attention.
In fact, the 85,000 visitors expected at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York won't be able to see the latest PCs from Compaq Computer Corp. and Dell Computer Corp. The big PC makers have elected to stay away and will instead meet with analysts and press in hotel suites during the show.
"I think they're just not getting a lot of mileage out of PC Expo. There's not a lot new going on that they need to get in there and demonstrate," said analyst Kevin Knox of the Gartner Group, based in Stamford, Conn.
A spokesman for Dell said the size of the show meant a booth would do little to create contact with customers.
"PC Expo for years has always focused on PCs. PCs will be there . . . but realistically the show is going to be a hotbed in two areas: Internet appliances and mobile devices," said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies Inc., based in Campbell, Calif.
One draw at the show will be Sony Electronics Inc.'s venture into the field of personal digital assistants, with a new PDA featuring a color screen and running on Palm Inc.'s operating system.
Palm sells about four out of every five PDAs and also licenses its system to Handspring Inc., which makes a similar line of organizers.
Sony's entry, expected to be on sale later this year, could strengthen the Palm operating system against its main competitor, Microsoft Corp.'s Pocket PC, but might take a bite out of Palm's hardware sales. The PDA will be slightly smaller than Palm's color PDA and will have a slot for Sony's Memory Stick, which can provide additional storage and also transfer files between the PDA and other Sony devices, like digital cameras and music players.
Palm will be revealing an accessory wireless modem for its handhelds, allowing all models to access the Internet like the Palm VII, which has a built-in modem. Accessory modems have been available from other manufacturers for some time, but Palm has previously only offered phone-line modems. Wireless modems are also expected to be revealed for Pocket PCs.
Wireless technology will be a hot topic in general, with several companies including Motorola showing off products based on Bluetooth, a standard that aims to let devices like cell phones, headphones, computers and portable devices communicate with one another over short distances without wires.
Other products aim to recreate office networks without wires or connect home computers in different rooms. Metricom Inc. will be demonstrating wireless Internet access for laptops at more than twice the speed of a phone-line modem.
The show will feature more interesting hardware for road warriors — one bid draw will be PC laptops that use new processor designs to extend battery life.
IBM Corp. will demonstrate one of its Thinkpad 240 laptops modified to use a processor with a radical new design that according to its maker, Transmeta Inc., uses a fraction of the power conventional processors use.
Transmeta announced the Crusoe chip in January after working in secret for several years. This will be the first demonstration of the chip in a working computer, and analysts will be watching it closely. The chip seems well placed to power handheld devices and "Internet appliances," stripped-down computers designed for surfing the Web.
IBM spokeswoman Lisa Kaslyn said IBM is still testing the Transmeta chip.
"We want to be sure that we're getting the 8-hour battery life," she said.
If the prototype is popular among its test customers, IBM will likely release a light laptop running a Crusoe later this year.
In a countermove, Intel is expected to demonstrate laptops with new Pentium and Celeron processors that it claims use almost as little power as Transmeta's chips.
The developments on the laptop front might make PC Expo deserve its name, even if desktop PCs are in little evidence.
"Every year we hear about the death of the PC around Comdex and PC Expo time and I don't believe that's ever true, and it probably won't be true for the next several years," Knox said.
Still, PC lovers may have cause for concern: Even Intel, the pillar of the PC era, will be showing off an Internet appliance that it calls the Dot.Station and started shipping last week.