Dell Streak 7BMO Capital Markets estimates
that 15 million to 16 million
tablets were sold in 2010—
most of them iPads. The advisory
group predicts that in 2011
there will be 45 million tablet
computers sold, and, by the end
of the year, the market will be
about evenly split between
Apple and Android system
tablets. By midyear, BMO expects
there to be at least 25 to 30
tablets from about 20 manufac-
turers. At the January Consumer
Electronics Show (CES), a dozen
or so new computers in tablet
format were introduced. The Dell
Streak 7, a collaboration of Dell
and T-Mobile USA, is an
Android™ tablet designed
specifically for T-Mobile’s 4G
mobile broadband network. The
bright seven-inch WVGA touch
screen is made of Gorilla® Glass.
It runs Google’s Android 2.2
Froyo operating system with a
dual core 1GHz NVIDIA
Tegra 2 processor that
supports Flash and can
run the more than
100,000 applications,
games, and tools from
Android Market. There’s
a rear-facing 5.0
megapixel camera for stills and
video and front-facing 1.3
megapixel camera with the Qik
Video Chat application pre-
loaded for video calling over the
T-Mobile network. There’s a vir-
tual keyboard and support for
stereo Bluetooth 2.1. Internal
memory is 16GB, and an SD
Card slot will support up to an
additional 32GB. Size is 7.87" ✕
4.72" ✕ 0.49". www.dell.com
ASUS Eee TabletsAlso at CES, notebook maker
ASUS introduced four new tablet
computers ranging from a
pocket-size seven-inch Android
model to a 12.1-inch powerful
Slate running Windows
7 Home Premium
on an Intel Core i5
processor. The Eee
Pad MeMO features a
seven-inch capacitive
screen, a Qualcomm Snap-
dragon mobile processor,
and the Android 3.0 Honey-
comb operating system that
supports HD playback, mobile
gaming, and Web. The two
middle-sized tablets are the Eee
Pad Transformer and Pad Slider.
Both have 10.1" IPS touch
screens (In-Plane Switching is the
system used on iPads) and
NVIDIA Tegra 2 mobile processor,
and they will ship with Android
3.0 operating systems. Both of
these tablets have physical key-
boards. The Slider has a slide-out
QWERTY keyboard, and the
Transformer has a docking stand
with a keyboard. ASUS describes
its Slate EP121 as its most pow-
erful tablet, capable of running
almost any program and able to
connect to any device. The Slate
has either a 64GB or 32GB solid-
state memory drive, 4GB or 2GB
system memory, high-speed wire-
less N and Bluetooth 3.0, Mini
HDMI, 4-in-1 card reader, USB
2.0 port, and 2.0 megapixel
camera. The Slate comes with a
Bluetooth keyboard, a Wacom
digitizer pen and Windows 7 pen
support, and a folio case.
www.asus.com
ATXThe choice of six different ATX
Tax Packages and the account-
ing, payroll, and workflow man-
agement tools make the ATX
suite ideal for small to mid-sized
tax and accounting offices.
Advantages common to all the
packages include a simple intu-
itive interface, easy roll-overs,
audit checks and warnings, and
free training. At the top end of
the offerings, the two Total Tax
Office packages include all fed-
eral individual and business
forms, W-2, 1099, 940, 941,
9444; all state and local individ-
ual, business, and specialty
forms; and electronic filing of all
supported forms. Document
manager lets you scan and save
documents, and IntelliConnect
provides quick answers to your
individual and business tax
questions, all within the pro-
gram. Also online you have
access to tax cases and rulings,
business quick answers, and
state tax laws and regulations,
and there’s a Practical Tax Bul-
TECHNOLOGY
58 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 1
TOOLSof theTRADE
letin that arrives by e-mail
biweekly. The accounting soft-
ware included in Total Tax Office
and Accounting Office programs
includes ATX Trial Balance, Fixed
Asset Manager, and Client
Write-Up with Payroll (Tax &
Accounting Office). Additional
research includes CCH U.S.
Master Tax Guide, CCH 1040,
1041, 1065, and 1120S Express
Answers. You can try the pro-
grams out at www.atxinc.com.
Seagate GoFlexHomeThe Seagate GoFlex Home is an
NAS (network attached storage)
system that provides backup
and a centralized source for
multiple computers in your
home or small business. It’s
available in 1TB and 2TB capac-
ities, with an additional USB
port to add another external
drive for even greater capacity.
The port can also be used for a
printer that will serve all the
computers connected to the
network. The design is
modular, and the base of
the unit
detaches so
you can upgrade
by unplugging the base and
switching it to a higher-capacity
GoFlex Desk hard drive. The
GoFlex Home is compatible with
both PCs and Macs, and the
software simplifies the connec-
tions to both. Up to three PCs
or Macs can be operating at a
time with the system. The entire
system is designed to make set-
ting up a home network a sim-
ple process of plugging the
GoFlex into your wireless router
and then following the illustrat-
ed, step-by-step installation
tool. Included is a remote access
and file-sharing service on the
GoFlex Home system called Sea-
gate Share that allows others to
share photo albums, videos, or
documents. You select the files
and type in an e-mail address.
The people you select will
receive an e-mail with a direct
link to a customized Web page
where they can view the shared
files. www.seagate.com
The 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show
(CES) is a great-grandchild of the World’s Columbian
Exposition of 1893, and although we might assume that
technology has never seen the kind of accelerating
Renaissance as in today’s digital age, you can make a case
that today’s expo provided change that was incremental
while the Columbian initiatives were almost seismic by
comparison.
In the broadest of overviews, last year’s CES (2010)
was seen as the harbinger of the Year of the e-Book, and,
this year, pundits are crediting the show with ushering in
the Year of the Tablet. In the Columbian Expo, 117 years
ago, visitors were treated to Edison and Tesla knocking
heads over the most cost-effective and technically sound
way to deliver electricity to homes, factories, and public
buildings that currently were lit by gas pipes protruding
through the walls.
TECH THEATER IN THE ROUND
Both expositions were designed as showcases of tech-
nology, manufacturing, and the arts. The Columbian
Expo was held in Chicago, and there were many more
agriculture-related exhibits, as you might expect—it was
1893. CES 2011, a 44-year-old event that was first staged
in New York in 1967, opened this year on January 6 in
Las Vegas, where it has been held on an annual basis since
1998. The Columbian Expo was also called the Chicago
World’s Fair—the CES boasts the “World’s Largest
Consumer Technology Tradeshow.”
The lists of innovations debuted at both shows offer
some interesting contrasts. Of the more notable first
bows at CES is some memorable hardware. The video-
cassette recorder (VCR) was introduced in 1970 and was
followed in 1981 by the compact disc player, DVDs in
1996, and the DVR (digital video recorder) in 1999. The
Two Tech Expos: CES 2011 and
Columbian Expo 1893By Michael Castelluccio, Editor
continued on next page
TECH FORUM
Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 1 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 59
year’s latest comput-
ers, such as the Com-
modore 64 in 1982,
have frequently first
seen the display lights
of the open market in
Las Vegas, and this year was no exception with more than a
dozen new tablets joining the race to catch Apple’s iPad.
This year’s debuts include Motorola’s Xoom, three ASUS Eee
models, Panasonic’s Viera, the Dell Streak 7, the Cydle M7
Multipad, and the Open Peak and Coby tablets.
But long before CES took America from Pong (1975) to
X-box (2001), the Columbian show had its own diverse list
of launches. Among the firsts for the 19th Century show
were the original Ferris Wheel—designed by a bridge
builder and capable of carrying more than 2,000 passen-
gers; neon lights and phosphorescent lamps; and several
classic American culinary staples including Shredded
Wheat, Cream of Wheat, Quaker Oats, and Juicy Fruit gum.
Of course the products weren’t nearly as sophisticated as
the chip-based offerings of today, but it might be worth
noting that the Atari consoles that let you remotely paddle
a white ball across your television have mostly been
relegated to garages and dumps while the wheat and oat
inventions of 1893 are still stocked on grocery shelves
across the country.
In terms of pure technology, the most fascinating
exhibits at the Columbian Expo were in the building called
The Great Hall of Electricity. There the Tesla polyphase sys-
tem of alternating current power generation and transmis-
sion was on display. Having underbid Edison’s/General
Electric’s offer to light the entire exhibition, Tesla/Westing-
house created what was to be a Waterloo for Edison’s plan
for national direct current municipal power supplies. When
President Grover Cleveland pushed the button that lit
100,000 incandescent lamps throughout the grounds and in
the buildings, a significant engineering corner had been
turned. The power was provided by 12 Westinghouse gen-
erators that provided safe, cost-effective alternating, not
direct, current.
“The War of the Currents” between Edison and Tesla
began with an established advantage for Edison’s direct cur-
rent systems. When his ex-employee, Nikola Tesla, threat-
ened the Edison hegemony with a very practical alternative,
the Edison camp resorted to creating unfounded concerns
over the safety of Tesla’s AC systems. Public demonstrations
for the press and others that involved electrocutions of dogs
and cats—even livestock—with AC power sources were
intended to frighten anyone considering importing this
menace into their homes. Edison claimed his DC supply
required lower, safer voltage levels. But as the competitive
threat from AC grew, the countermoves reached bizarre
levels. At one demonstration, the DC advocates electrocuted
an elephant, and the far limit was reached when Professor
Harold Brown, actually an employee of Edison, rigged a
Westinghouse AC generator to the first electric chair. The
execution of its first victim, a condemned axe murderer,
went horribly wrong, but not so badly that it prevented the
Edison camp from unofficially designating this kind of exe-
cution as “Westinghousing.”
Yet despite the head start with installed infrastructure
and the legendary inventor’s name recognition, the spectac-
ular success of the Columbian Exposition put a World’s Fair
seal of approval on the alternating current system for Tesla
and Westinghouse. The event provided such a reversal that a
reported 80% of electrical devices ordered after the
Columbian Expo were for Westinghouse and Tesla’s alter-
nating current.
SUCCESSES
In a late press release, the 2011 CES announced the success
of its international expo with preliminary attendance that
exceeded 140,000 industry professionals. The show was open
for four days, but the exhibits weren’t open to the public.
By contrast, the Columbian Expo, which was open to the
public and open for more than six months, had a visitor
count that reached 27 million. Quite an accomplishment
given that the most recent census (June 1890) listed
62,622,250 citizens in the whole country. SF
60 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I Fe b r u a r y 2 0 1 1
TECHNOLOGY
(Left) Commemorative stamp issued from the
1893 Columbian Exposition.
(Below) Dell tablet premiered at CES 2011—also
does e-mail.
TECH FORUM