Bevor es Steam und Co. gab The next wave of high-speed communications.
Hier ist eine futuristische Art, Software zu kaufen: Sie gehen in Ihr örtliches Softwaregeschäft, stöbern an einem interaktiven Kiosk, der Informationen über Hunderte von Anwendungen anzeigt, und treffen Ihre Auswahl. Innerhalb von Minuten lädt die elektronische Bibliothek des Geschäfts, die Anwendungen über eine kleine Satellitenschüssel außerhalb des Geschäfts empfängt, Ihre Auswahl auf eine CD-ROM herunter.
Here’s a futuristic way to buy software: You walk into your local software store, browse through an interactive kiosk that displays information about hundreds of applications, and make your selection. Within minutes, the store’s electronic library, which receives applications via a small satellite dish outside the store, downloads your selection onto CD-ROM.
That’s the vision IBM Software Manufacturing Solutions and Hughes Network Systems has for DirecPC, a one-way, nationwide satellite system for delivering software to retail stores and large corporate buyers, as well as transmitting news broadcasts and Internet files. Think of the instant gratification of downloading a file from the Internet at 12 megabits per second (90MB per minute). That’s a twentyfold increase over the speed of a 14.4 modem, which takes 20 minutes to download a 2MB file; a satellite can beam the same file in a minute.
“A year ago this technology didn’t exist,” says Jack Malone, senior director of marketing at Hughes. DirectPC costs $1,495 for the 24-inch dish, add-in board, and software, plus $15.95 per month. Since the satellite is receive-only, however, you’ll still need a modem to handle all outbound calls.
Dubbed digital object delivery , Hughes’s satellite service not only gives software manufacturers a new way to distribute software, updates, and fixes, but also gives content providers a way to deliver full-motion video and multimedia information to the desktop.
Satellites are also being used to deliver video to PCs. CNN and Intel recently (debuted CNN at Work, a news service delivered to corporate networks over cable or satellite.
While Hughes is leveraging its Galaxy IV satellite (orbiting 22,000 miles above the earth) for its DirectPC system, other longterm projects are underway. Motorola’s
Iridium and Bill Gates/Craig McCaw’s Teledesic are both low-earth orbiting satellite systems (about 500 miles above the earth) that provide two-way communications.
Satellites already deliver information to notebooks equipped with a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) PCMCIA receiver that determines your notebook’s speed, altitude, and location — useful for surveyors, appraisers, and others who handle documents that need instantaneous and exact location information. The GPS satellite antenna, a low data rate device, is about the size of a baseball. Higher data-rate devices need bigger antennas to provide signal-to-noise ratios for faster signaling.
Will other wired alternatives such as cable prove more economical? We won’t know that for another decade . — Frank J. Derfler, Jr., and Carol Levin
Quelle: PC Magazine USA - Best Products of 1994 (Jan 1995) Publication date