Compaq Expands IPaq Family

Making the Net Simple at Home

Compaq has the home in mind with its IPaq brand. Even the Pocket PC and Blackberry devices travel from the office to the home.

The first of the long-awaited MSN Web Companions, the $599 Compaq IPaq Home Internet Appliance is designed to offer easy access to the Web. (See "Pricey Compaq Appliance Runs MSN.")

"It gets people engaged and involved with the Internet," says Trey Litel, marketing manager for Internet services and IPaq products. While $599 is arguably high for an Internet terminal with no hard drive, Microsoft will offer a $400 rebate to users who sign up for three years of MSN. Since the device only supports MSN as the Internet service provider, you might as well. The IPaq Home Internet Appliance is scheduled to hit shelves later this month.

Compaq also announced a personal audio player for its IPaq family.

"So far, the digital music phenomenon has been PC-based," Litel says. With the pager-size IPaq Personal Audio Player, Compaq hopes to help its PC customers get their digital music out of the PC box.

Also available by the end of August, the $249 player comes with two 32MB multimedia cards as its removable memory. Depending on the format, that combination holds about two hours of music, Litel says.

While there are several other popular codecs (compression/decompression schemes) for digital music besides MP3, many portable players only support one or two.

Compaq's player not only supports MP3 and Windows Media Audio but also Dolby's AAC (advanced audio coding), Litel says. Record companies like AAC because it has built-in rights management, he adds. So does WMA.

Compaq says its player isn't limited to these formats. "As other formats come out, the player can be upgraded over the Internet," Litel says.

While other music players such as Diamond's Rio 600 also support several formats including AAC, Compaq adds the perk of a $50 discount off its player when you buy a Presario PC. Compaq preloads the Rioport Audio Manager software in Presarios so you can plug in the player and go, Litel says.

Home Network Hub

As the final announcement in its home IPaq product tree, Compaq is unveiling a residential gateway device called the IPaq Connection Point.

Scheduled to be available in mid-October priced at $499, the Connection Point supports three types of networks at the same time: the wireless Home RF, Home PNA (phone-line networking), and Ethernet, Litel says.

Designed to act as a single modem through which an Internet connection can be shared throughout your home network, the Connection Point bundles security with a firewall product from Watchguard Technologies.

The company will also offer a 90-day trial of Watchguard's Live Security product, Litel says.

Home users without any network will also need to buy other products in order to set up a home network, Litel says. The Connection Point does offer plug-and-play set-up to make difficult tasks easier, such as configuring a firewall or managing a wireless network, he adds.

And if you already have a network, the IPaq residential gateway can free up whatever PC you've dedicated as the host.