by Chuck Horowitz
Kingston Technologies (Fountain Valley, CA) makes a PC Card hard drive that holds 520MB of uncompressed data or a little more than 1 Gigabyte of compressed data. The DataPak 320 is a Type III card that also has 128KB of dual-ported FIFO data caching and an average seek time of 12 milliseconds with a data transfer rate of 20Mbps. This Plug-and-Play compatible card is priced at $549. Kingston can be reached at 714-435-2615 or www.kingston.com.
Dell Computer Corporation (Round Rock, TX) has released the Inspiron 3000, a 233MHz notebook with 32MB of SDRAM, a 13.3 inch XGA TFT screen, 512KB of external cache, a 2.1 Gigabyte hard drive, a 20X CD drive, and a floppy drive. This unit has a Crystal 3-D surround sound audio system, and a port replicator and a docking station are available. This 6.7 pound notebook has a price tag of about $4,000. Dell can be contacted at 800-388-8542 or www.dell.com.
Akia Corporation (Austin, TX) is producing the Tornado TX233 notebook computer with a 233MHz MMX Pentium processor, 64MB of RAM (expandable to 128MB), a 13.3 inch XGA active-matrix screen, 256K of Level 2 Pipeline Burst cache, a 3 Gigabyte hard drive, a 20X max variable CD drive, and a 3.5 inch floppy drive (included) or an optional second lithium-ion battery pack. The unit also has a 2MB 128-bit graphics accelerator, a 16-bit stereo sound system, a high-speed IrDA port, a USB port, a TV-Out port, a PS /2 port and an integrated TouchPad. The cost for all of this is $4,599. Akia can be reached at 800-936-5481 or www.akia.com.
Symbol Technologies, Inc. (Holtsville, NY) will develop its own version of the PalmPilot (ruggedized of course) with the addition of bar-code scanning and wireless communications. Symbol’s nonruggedized version of the PalmPilot will be shipping by the m iddle of 1998 and will be priced under $500. Later in the year, Symbol will ship the ruggedized version with wireless communications and extra memory which will sell for less than $1,000. Symbol can be contacted at 800-722-6234 or www.symbol.com.
Mitsubishi Electronics America, Inc. (Cypress, CA) makes the Amity CN, a 2.4 pound, 9.3 inch by 6.7 inch mininotebook. This unit has a 133mhz Pentium processor, 16MB of RAM (expandable to 48MB), a 1.2 Gigabyte hard drive, a 7.5 inch Mitsubishi Diamond S can passive-matrix dual scan screen with 1.1MB of video RAM, two Type II or one Type III PC Card slots and a battery life of 2 hours (which can be extended to 7 hours with an external battery pack. The price for this notebook is $1,995. Mitsubishi also plans to release the Panther, a 233MHz MMX Pentium machine with a 1.2 inch TFT screen. This notebook is 3.1 pounds and 0.7 inches thick. The Panther will cost between $5,500 and $6,000. Mitsubishi can be reached at 888-445-5250 or www.mitsubishi-moble.com.
What do you think of the current crop of GPS products on the market that have been promoted for mobile professionals? I’ve seen demonstrations of a few that looked rather interesting. The Sony Group’s Etak, Inc. unit (Menlo Park, CA) has a product call ed Etak Skymap that runs on your notebook and tracks your location in real time as you travel. It comes with a 12 channel GPS antenna and a Type II PCMCIA card connection with an infrared receiver. Maps of the continental United States are on two CDs a nd there is a remote control for hands free operation of the on-screen maps. Etak can be contacted at 888-275-9627 or www.etak.com/SkyMap.
I know that you’ve heard about the modem for the PalmPilot that will allow you to get your e-mail without your notebook (or desktop); well, now there’s a wireless modem for the PalmPilot. Novatel Wireless has the Minstrel for the PalmPilot and I will get more information on this product shortly; however, Novatel can be reached at 619-784-0620 or www.novatelwireless.com.
Chuck Horowitz is a HAL-PC member who can be reached at 281/486-6043, FAX 281/486-6053 at BrisAssoc@aol.com or chuckh@hal-pc.org.
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