Visor, a palm pilot clone running the same operating system, but costing half the price, is to be launched in October. The company run by two of the original developers has cut the cost to $149 for the basic machine with 2MB of RAM and a USB port. The Visor deluxe comes with 8Mb of RAM, cradle and in 5 colours for $249. Both work with windows 95-98 and Apple MAC system 8.1 or greater. The name of the new company is called Handspring and extra hardware packages will be available later to plug in Pagers, GPS receiver or MP3 player. No UK launch planned yet.
The Minidoc (Mobilescan in USA) is a very small scanner 1.7x2.6x11.2 inches running on a 4.8v Nickel-Hydride rechargeable battery pack or AC adapter 7.5v 2amps. Working only with Windows 95 and 98 it has an OCR package, image manipulation programme. Page type will let you type over the image with text and send the results through to a database. But the biggest advantage is it's size, allow documents to be scanned into the computer for contracts, graphics taken direct from a customer for a brochure.
A USB modem, powered by the computer and no bigger than a telephone adapter plug has been displayed by Multitech especially designed for mobile users as it stops using power when disconnected from the USB port, unlike a PCMCIA card when it is left in the machine. The 1.3 x 1.0 x 3.13 inch fully functional V.90 data/fax modem is built into the USB cable used to connect the computer to the phone line. The new MultiMobileUSB (Model number MT5634MU) is available on the US site ,but not on the European site. The use of the USB port would free up the serial port on most PC's and free up some CPU time as the USB controller takes care of interrupts. A version is also available for the Apple MAC.
Pretech produced a 160Mb compactflash card at the recent Windows CE developers conference. This is the highest compactflash format card yet. A 320MB version compatible with the IBM microdrive compatible format will be available by Christmas. Pretec also do s 115bps serial card and a parallel port card that plugs into a compactflash slot (see site for details)
The Five of Hearts International modem from Ositech allows the connection through a digital handset as well as the conventional analogue telephone socket. The v90 modem will also connect to GSM handsets. The digital connection option allows people working on a Digital PABX system to attach their PC to a telephone extension with blowing up either the telephone PABX or the modem. As most PABX systems are digital already or are being converted in the near future, it makes me wonder why it has taken so long! The Five of hearts modem is approved for use in 21 countries worldwide and costs £140 RRP ex VAT with GSM upgrades are priced from £87.
Pretec's compactflash modem is available in the UK from PPCP. It weighs half an ounce, and is the size of a book of matches. It gives full V.90/56Kbps data download speeds, and 14.4kbps send-and-receive fax, It costs £115 RRP complete with PC Card converter and software.
inviso is a VGA screen on a LCD chip 11mm square. The 800x600 bit display uses only 100 milliwatts, one fifth of the normal screen power required for the average notebook. The display should cost about £100 in quantity. It is seen by the computer as SRAM (memory), so it will need special drivers to run on any computer, but this format saves on expensive DAC's (Digital Analogue Controllers). It is intended for cellphones, but may be unreadable due to it's small size and high resolution ( the text will be really small).
Orange has announced it intends to produce a protocol called H. Orange over a High Speed Switched Data (HSCSD) service to be launched in the Autumn. The protocol will be used to provide a videophone, cellphone based around Microsoft's Windows CE 3.0 PDA technology. The videophone will cost £500 and will be the first device to use the 3rd Generation 2Mbps system which should enable it be used Europe wide if approved by the EEC. The IMT-2000 standard operates as two 5Mhz carriers at 1.8Ghz and will be in full production by Q1 2000
Passport checks aren't the only worry for notebook travellers face at the airport. Vogan International's George Stevenson says every Government customer is given a copy of GRIP a program to recognise pornographic images that has featured in court case. HM Customs are one of the customers, so they may ask you to insert a floppy disk into your PC to see if it contains illegal pictures, Zip files (including encrypted versions) or deleted files.
Mark has amazingly loaded Windows 3.0 (running in real mode with a mouse) on his Sharp PC3100 palmtop. He is also running Word 1.0 and Excel. The secret is a compactflash card, but If you would like to know more see his very interesting site.
Samsung has announced another notebook called the GT6400XV powered by a Pentium II running at 400Mhz. The 10Gb hard disk machine costs £2,185 ex vat. It has a 15.1 inch TFT display, 24x CD-ROM and 128Mb of SDRAM.
A DOS emulating a CGA video XT based computer is available for the Psion Series 5 computer. The XTM utility costs £24.99 will allow pre-Windows programs to be run on the Psion,. limited by the computers RAM size. DOS will have to be loaded as well as NBI does not supply one.
MIcrosoft has formed a new company for wireless portables called WirelessKnowledge. Integrated with the DNA, Digital Nervous System, speech recognition and may form an operating system for Qualcomm chips. The service called Revolv and supports the following USA cellphones Qualcomm 1860, Qualcomm 1960, Samsung Duette and the Denso. It also supports Windows CE or Palm computing device utilising popular web browsers Internet Explorer 4 or 5 or Netscape 4.x. It provides Email, paging, scheduling and contacts update. This is a USA service, but Microsoft is making investments in the UK, so expect to see it exported here soon.
IBM automates Netscape's Web browser via it's ViaVoice and Home Page Reader for the Blind. The browser will then read html pages back to the user and the ViaVoice will allow commands to be input to control the pages selected, and call URL's (links) on the page. The special needs page gives the details of the Home Page Reader which costs $149. ViaVoice is IBM's speech recognition engine. It supports French, Italian, German, Spanish, British English, and US English.
English A free trail demo in US English is available from the web site.
