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Recently in Salon Technology

Technology: View from the top
Broadband warrior
Tom Jermoluk takes on everyone from America Online to the local phone company in his bid to connect with the consumer.
By Mark Gimein
[09/13/99]

Silicon Follies
Silicon Follies
Chapter 52: Barry, beaten -- the rich man and the sea
By Thomas Scoville
[09/11/99]

21st Challenge
21st Challenge No. 26
Compose the perfect dot-com résumé
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
[09/11/99]

Column
Network computing returns -- yet again
Are we ready to hand over all our computing to Sun's network -- or to the Web?
By Scott Rosenberg
[09/10/99]

It's not the end of the "Millennium," after all
The TV series may have been canceled by Fox, but fans are producing a new season online.
By Howard Wen
[09/09/99]

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Before I'd even planted my rear in the molded plastic seat, the yuppie in a suit across from me had already plunged his hands into my shopping bag. "Ooh, you mind if I take a look at it?" he begged, fondling the box with tensed fingers. (I could tell he was deliberating about whether he could convince me to open up the box so he could peek inside.) The parka-clad teenage boys in the back of the bus craned to look at the box, nudging each other and muttering about the merits of the Sony PlayStation vs. the Dreamcast. And a middle-aged mom practically assaulted me as I was stepping off the bus; blocking my path, she demanded to know how I managed to get a Dreamcast console the day before they hit the stores. "I gotta get one for my kids," she yelled after me as I scurried down the street, enduring the continuous slap of the heavy bag against my leg, and the fear that she would snatch the Dreamcast from my grasp.

Yes, I'm exaggerating, but only slightly. At my local Toys "R" Us -- where I hauled my sleepy self early Thursday morning to procure an elusive "Dreamcast RF" unit, which hadn't been included in the package and which was apparently necessary to hook my new console up to my TV -- the sales staff was groggy. Toys "R" Us had already sold out of Dreamcast machines, thanks to a stampede that had converged on the store at 12:01 a.m. the night before. The precious units that remained were hidden in the back, and were being suspiciously meted out only to those who had pre-ordered them. According to Sega, 300,000 fans were wise enough to do so.

What is everyone so worked up about? Perhaps the palpable excitement is primarily due to Sega's savvy (and expensive) marketing campaign; but after spending some quality time with my machine, I think it's fair to say that the Dreamcast is worthy of much of the buzz. More than a mere gaming console, it's a kind of hybrid gaming-browsing machine -- a cross between a WebTV and a traditional Sega console, as it were -- with the most stunning and zippy graphics you'll see off your PC. But it's revolutionary because of how it will change the notion of console gaming -- if it lives up to the interactive promises that Sega is making.

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