The notebook computer Tadpole Technologies Plc is developing for IBM Corp is not the only portable RS/6000 IBM will have in its armoury. As reported briefly yesterday, Acer America Corp says it has begun manufacturing a new Powerportable Unix workstation based on the motherboard for the IBM RS/6000 Powerstation 220. The machine was designed by QTA in San Jose, and will be marketed by IBM Advanced Workstations & Systems to RS/6000 users that need to use their AIX applications away from the office. The basic system with 33MHz processor, 8Kb cache, Gt1 two-dimensional graphics, a 10.4 640 by 480 pixel active-matrix thin-film transistor colour display capable of supporting external cathode ray displays with maximum resolution of 1,280 by 1,024 pixels, a 2.88Mb floppy, 457Mb or 1.2Gb removable hard disk, 16Mb of on-board RAM expandable to 64Mb and keyboard with integrated trackball, starts at $13,500. The system also includes Ethernet, SCSI, parallel, serial and external display ports. Luggable rather than portable, it weighs 17 lbs and runs off the mains with battery-powered operation planned. It comes preloaded with AIX Version 3.2 and AIXwindows, and was developed in response to a request from the US Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau will use it to provide a new Automated Land and Mineral Record System to be installed in 221 Bureau offices at 156 sites mainly in the western US. Tadpole’s Powerbook notebook computer version of the RS/6000 can be expected to weigh in at no more than 7 lbs or so, and once it is on the market, there is not likely to be too much further demand for the Acer luggable, especially since, judging by Tadpole’s Sparcbook machines, there will be a range of models with a much lower entry price than $13,500. The Tadpole Powerbook is still about a year away from its launch.
