by Chuck Horowitz
Sony Electronics, Inc. (San Jose, CA) has produced a new HiFD that uses 200MB floppies and also reads 1.44MB floppies. The drive is 3.5 inches and can reach a data transfer rate of 3.6MB per second. The drive will be produced in both internal and external versions and will be available at retail. A notebook version is expected to be released in 1999. The drives will cost about $200 and the disks will cost somewhere between $10 and $15. Sony can be contacted at 800-352-7669 or www. sony.com/storagebysony.
Unicent Technologies (Aurora, OH) makes the Voyager 1420, a 266MHz MMX Pentium notebook with 64 megs of SDRAM, a 4.0MB EIDE removable hard drive, a 20X CD-ROM drive, a 1.44MB floppy drive, a 14.2 inch TFT XVGA active-matrix screen, 4 megs SCRAM video adapter, 512K of Level 2 pipeline burst cache, integrated 16-bit stereo sound and speakers, and a fast IrDA and USB ports in addition to the standard ports. All this for only $3449. Unicent can be reached at 800-320-0549 or www.unicent.com.
Extended Systems (Boise, ID) has released an enhanced port replicator for the Toshiba Tecra and Portege, and the Compaq Armada 1500 notebook computers. These replicators support plug and play and automatic docking. The enhanced port replicator has built-in Ethernet connection (10 Base T) in addition to all of the standard docking station ports, with the exception of a PCMCIA Card slot. Extended Systems can be contacted at 800-235-75765 or www.extendedsystems.com.
Kensington Microware Limited (San Mateo, CA) makes the Master Lock, a universal notebook security cable. There is a slot built into the side of many notebook computers and peripherals by the manufacturer. Apple, AST, Compaq, Dell, Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Panasonic, Texas Instruments, Toshiba and Zenith to name a few. The package also comes with a glue-on security slot in case your notebook does not have a slot. I have been using this lock for a few weeks and I don’t leave home without it.
You make the choice as to where you lock down your notebook, and its security is only as good as your choice. Still, it is nice to have help from Kensington and at $39.95 it’s a bargain. Kensington can be reached at 800-535-4242 or www.kensington.com.
Remember Dick Tracy’s Wrist Radio? Well, some of you might remember. Anyway, Seiko has come out with a wrist PC called the Reputer. This portable of all computers has a 16-bit CPU, 128 KB of RAM, 512 KB of memory and up to 2MB of storage.
Also included are three applications that will run on Windows 95. Both graphics and text can be downloaded from your notebook or desktop. At this time you can only buy it in Japan if you’ve got about 38,000 to 48,000 yen laying around (that’s about $300 to $375 in our money).
Dell Computer Corporation (Round Rock and Austin, TX) makes the Inspiron 3200 D266XT, a 266MHz MMX Pentium notebook with 512KB Level 2 pipeline burst cache, a 13.3 inch XGA active-matrix TFT screen, 96 megs of SDRAM, a modular 3.5 inch floppy drive, a 6.4 Gigabyte Ultra ATA hard drive, 128-bit graphics accelerator, stereo speakers with 3D surround sound, a modular DVD-ROM, a smart Lithium Ion battery, Zoom Video and USB ports, CardBus ready, fast IR 1.1 and a TouchPad. All this weighs only 6.9 pounds and can be yours for $3,999. Dell can be contacted at 888-562-3355 or www.dell.com.
Hewlett Packard Company (Palo Alto, CA) now has the OmniBook 800CT, a 166MHz MMX Pentium mini-notebook. Measuring 7 X 11 X 1.5 inches, this OmniBook has 16 megs of RAM, a 2.1 Gigabyte hard drive, an external floppy drive. The unit weighs 4 pounds without the A/C adapter and floppy drive (these items bring the weight up to 5.2 pounds). It also has a full sized keyboard, a touchpad (there is a mouse that pops out of the side of the notebook when you push the button), a 10.4 inch screen, two PC Card slots, a serial, a parallel and an IrDA ports.
The unit does not include a CD-ROM and costs about $4,200 when you add an external CD-ROM and enough memory for the unit to be functional. Hewlett-Packard can be reached at 800-322-4772 or www.hp.com.
Mobile Computing & Communications magazine has a wealth of information for Road Warriors in their May issue. Check-out the article by Richard Bell called “When Bigger is Better.”
In this article he examines twenty-two multimedia notebooks and gives you a comparison matrix so that you can make your own choice according to your needs and your pocketbook.
Mobile Computing also reviewed twenty-eight Windows CE programs, twenty-three Newton programs, seventeen PalmPilot programs and ten Psion programs.
The article is a mini-review of each program with a phone number and web address for each company.
Chuck Horowitz is a HAL-PC member who can be reached at 713-739-4893 or BrisAssoc@aol.com or chuckh@hal-pc.org.
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