Meantime Digital Equipment Corp has of course been showing off portable computers developed in-house for a couple of years now without actually launching anything, but is finally ready to go and is generating some excitement. The HiNote line includes the HiNote Value notebook and HiNote Ultra subnotebook, and they come with 80486DX2/66 and 75MHz and 100MHz DX4s, 9.5 colour active matrix and passive matrix screens, and disks ranging from 250Mb to 810Mb. The 4 lbs Ultra features a wedge-shaped floppy drive and battery along the back of the computer, forming a pivoting stand, so the external floppy drive can slide underneath, and it has an 11 keyboard. The Value’s floppy drive also snaps out, and can be replaced with a second battery. They will feature infra-red communications. The smaller one is expected to start at about $1,700.
