The first company to step forward and say that it is developing a hand-held computer based on the new Chips & Technologies Inc F8600 single chip processor board, is Abstract R&D Inc of Moraga, California, Microbytes Daily reports: the new handheld computer will be 7 by 4 by 1, will run for between 50 to 100 hours on two AA batteries, and sell for $500 to $600; it will include a 25 line by 80 character CGA screen, have 640Kb memory, bus connector, and optional hard drive; the company says that the best feature of the new chip is the power-management features that are built in, since that is the hard part about designing a handheld; a 1.8 hard drive will add about 1 inch to the thickness of the case and will require three AA batteries rather than two, and will be operated as if it were a floppy, turning off the drive when it is not in use; the company is also looking at the possibility of using solar panels – but backlighting is out of the question; working samples should be on show at Comdex, with production systems available by year-end; two models are likely, one with disk, the other with a memory card to the PCMCIA standard.
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