Mobile |
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by Chuck Horowitz |
Bansai (800-566-6832) makes the MFX-1 MicroFax portable FAX. With Bansai's special attachments you can fax from your car; from cordless, public or cellular phones; and from other parts of the world. It only has 200 dpi resolution but this is a small price to pay for its portability.
Computer Products and Services, Inc. (Fairfax, VA) and InterVision Systems (Raleigh, NC) make wearable computers CPSI's computer is called Mobile Assistant and consists of a belt worn 486, with a 340 MB internal hard drive. It has a lithium-ion battery pack and a head mounted 0.7 inch VGA display. This is the ultimate in mobile computing, if you're willing to spend about $10,000.00.
Micron Electronics, Inc. (Nampa, ID) makes the Millennia TransPort, a 133 MKz notebook with an 11.3 inch active matrix color display (800 X 600), Intel 430MX PCIset, 256KB L2 pipelined burst cache, 16MB EDO memory (expandable to 48MB), 4X modular CD-ROM, PCI graphics accelerator with 1MB RAM, Pick-a-Point dual pointing devices integrating both stick and touch pad, removable EIDE hard drive (to 1.2 gigabyte) and a 3½" floppy drive. It also has a lithium-ion battery, SoundBlaster 16 stereo sound, built-in speakers and microphone, two Type II or 1 Type III PCMCIA slots, S-Video and NTSC video-inputs, headphones, microphone and line-in jacks, two infrared ports (one front and one back), parallel, serial, VGA and two PS/2 ports and a carrying case. Windows 95, MS Plus, Microsoft Office Pro 95 and Bookshelf 95 come preloaded. All this and the unit weighs only 6.9 pounds.
Microcom, Inc. (Norwood, MA) has LANexpress 3.0, a program which allows mobile users to connect to their corporate LAN with a click on an icon and then work as if they were directly connected. LANexpress recognizes the NetManage Camelon TCP/IP stack and it will allow you to dial into your network using a PPP connection. An added utility, ICOnexpress, lets you designate an icon on your notebook as a representation of one or more network applications.
IBM's new Mobile & Wireless Division (Research Triangle Park, NC) has released the IBM 2488 Model 300, a rugged 50 Mhz 486-based handheld PC. The 2.4 pound pen-based device has a 3.5 X 4.75 inch transflective LCD touch-screen with 640 X 480 pixel VGA resolution. The device has 4 MB of ROM, a NiCad battery pack (up to 12 hours), and Type II and III PC Card slots. The unit will run DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. A comparable unit by Norand Corporation (800-452-2757) is the PenKey 6100 handheld PC that weighs 22 ounces and comes with a 33 Mhz 386 processor and 8 MB of RAM.
Altec Lansing Technologies, Inc. (Milford, PA) makes a portable multimedia communications center for an unbelievable $500.00. If you have a notebook computer with a Type II PC Card slot and 16-bit audio you can get the AMC2800 and add an 8X CD-ROM drive, a built-in full duplex Internet phone and a 4-speaker sound system with audio CD player.
Digital Equipment Corporation (Greenbelt, MD), has the HiNote Ultra II notebook which is an inch thick. It's a 133 Mhz Pentium and weighs less than 4 pounds. It comes with Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 3.51 or Windows 95 pre-installed. The Windows NT version, 133 MHz with 24 MB RAM, a 1 G-plus removable hard drive and Digital's ClientWorks software costs a mere $6,000. The Windows 95 version with 8 MB RAM, bundled with ClientWorks, Traveling Software's IR, Adobe Systems' Acrobat, ThunderByte Antivirus and Starfish Sidekick only costs $4,600. Both systems are powered by lithium-ion battery bars and have a 10.4 inch display. For options we have a port replicator expansion dock, a port replicator with Ethernet interface and a mobile media module with quad-speed CD-ROM drive. These add-ons only cost an additional $1,198.
Commax Technologies, Inc. (San Jose, CA) makes the SmartBook V-star, a 120 Mhz (3.1v) Pentium with a 1 Gigabyte hard drive, 16 MB of RAM (expandable to 40 MB), a 1.44 MB floppy drive, Lithium-ion battery and a 12.1 inch NEC active matrix LCD. A 1.3 MB hard drive and a CD-ROM are available options. Windows 95 is pre-installed.
NT is coming to the notebook computer. Mobile features will be in an add-on pack that will come out after the release of 4.0. Digital Equipment (Maynard, MA) has been loading NT on its HiNote Ultra II; IBM Personal Computer Company (Somers, NY) will pre-load NT on some 700 Series ThinkPads. Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto, CA) and NEC Technologies, Inc. (Foxborough, MA) will also pre-load NT device drivers on notebooks before the end of the year. Gateway 2000, Inc. (North Sioux City, SD) will offer NT on a custom basis.
Chuck Horowitz is a HAL-PC member.
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