Survey on Information Appliances

n appliance is a tool or machine adapted for a special purpose. Our retail stores are full of traditional appliances that attempt to improve our lives by making an activity less unpleasant. Appliances may provide an increase in efficiency that liberates personal time, such as a washing machine or dishwasher. Or they may perform a task that users couldn't carry out to a high standard by hand alone, such as a vacuum cleaner or a label maker. If a task must be performed frequently , it often becomes worth the investment to spend money on a specialized appliance for the job. Since their invention, computers have changed dramatically in their capability, size, and form factor. The original computers filled an entire room and led to the mainframe concept. Only large organizations with considerable financial resources could consider applying these machines to everyday problems. The trend from mainframe to desktop to palmtop computer highlights an increasing performance versus cost curve, thereby presenting a clear opportunity for computational appliances. Once the cost fell below the point at which the industry could justify dedicating computers to a particular task, and thus creating a simple model for user interaction in comparison to the original model of a general-purpose machine, then a computational appliance could be born. Dedicated computers can be used to build control systems , but control applications alone do not take advantage of a computer's unique ability to communicate, process information, and display it. The intimate connection of a computer with the information economy creates the demand for an appliance that can provide specialized access to information—hence the name " information appliance. " The continuous improvement of low-power, high-performance CPUs is only one of many trends that have enabled the development of information appliances. A single technology trend by itself would not have been sufficient. For information appliances to make their debut as a recognized class of device, low-power displays , rechargeable batteries, and miniature radios all needed to be developed in parallel. In addition, the information infrastructure plays a significant role in enabling the usefulness of an information appliance. Key infrastructural communication technologies relevant to this discussion include the digital cellular telephone network, Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), cable modems, and advanced services such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). We classify the use of information appliances into the following four categories: I Home use I Office use I Mobile professionals I …