Cambridge, UK-based Tadpole Technology Plc is pinning its hopes on the now available SPARCbook 3TX notebook computer following its Pentium flop last year (CI NO 3,054). The company that saw its shares temporarily suspended early last month (CI No 3,132) has been busy signing up orders from sales executives in computer industry companies such as 3Com Corp, Oracle Corp, Cisco Systems Inc, Computer Associates International Inc and Bay Networks Inc. Bernard Hulme, Tadpole’s chief executive officer said the company has no aspirations of becoming master of the universe the day after tomorrow, and refuted that the new workstation level notebooks were a risky prospect. The high-powered portable computer has a 2.1Gb drive and a Fujitsu Ltd 170MHz TurboSPARC processor. Tadpole’s only real competitor in the market is RDI Computer Corp, which installed the Fujitsu chips in its PowerLite notebook last year (CI No 3027), but Hulme said the company wasn’t a threat as its products are plastic, and slower than the SPARCbook 3TX. Tadpole says the new SPARCbook 3TX will be particularly appealing to existing users carrying out three dimensional modeling and simulation, and an external optional hard disk means users will have access to 4.2Gb of drive space. The system can also be used with an external Sun Microsystems Inc keyboard, mouse and display, and comes with the Solaris 2.5 operating system and Tadpole’s Notebook Computing Environment. Recommended prices start at $17,250 for the 3TX with 32MB of dynamic random access memory, with prices rising to $18,750 for 64MB and $21,750 for 128MB. Hulme said the company is targeting sales executives in software and hardware companies and that specific sales targeting has proved successful. Speaking about the company’s recent dark past Hulme said it had been through a rough trot, but said funding would be in place by the end of the month which will enable the company to stabilize, and commented: You can’t do much with a company without working capital. Hulme said Tadpole will be making additions to the 3TX in the next couple of months and new announcements regarding partnerships will be made shortly.
