The company’s Clio NXT notebook replacement perpetuates the unique design of the original Clio, with a near-full-sized Qwerty keyboard and a 9.4-inch touch-screen display that pivots about its horizontal midline allowing the device to be used in either laptop- or tablet-mode.
However, the new Clio adds a number of features now common to notebooks and PDAs that were not part of the original Clio C1050, the roots of which date back to 1998. These include 802.11b wireless LAN and USB connectivity, plus a beefed-up CPU in the shape of a 400MHz Intel XScale, and the latest Windows CE .NET 4.2 Professional operating system.
Additional features, which seem likely to include an update to the handwriting-recognition technology that featured on the original Clio (and which Microsoft once licensed), will be announced in the coming weeks.
New Orleans, Louisiana-based Data Evolution said the Clio NXT can be expected to pop up in some very exciting places once shipments begin in early 2005, through its channel partners. Probable pricing was not disclosed but seems likely to fall in the $800 to $1,000 range, based on the quoted prices for other machines in the Data Evolution range, such as the similarly Windows CE-powered Cathena laptop clone.
Data Evolution specializes in building Windows CE-based hardware for data capture intensive industries, and functions such as healthcare, financial services, education, government services and sales automation. The company licensed the Clio design from original manufacturer Vadem Ltd’s Pinax Group subsidiary. Another Vadem division, ParaGraph, continues to develop the CalliGrapher handwriting-recognition software used on the original Clio.
