Having announced nothing of any great significance for some time, Brother International Corp is shouting from the rooftops about what it claims to be the world’s first personal digital notebook. The company believes its GeoBook product brings mobile computing to the masses at an affordable price. At $600 GeoBook has been designed as a notebook, with electronic mail, internet access, fax, word processing, spreadsheet, address book and file transfer capabilities among other things. The product is not Windows-based as seems to almost be the norm these days, but is instead based around the Geos 3.0 operating system, developed by GeoWorks Inc. It has a full sized keyboard and VGA monochrome display, a 1.44Mb disk drive and is said to deliver ‘PC-like’ functionality while avoiding system crashes and compatibility problems. The launch comes in the same week as UK company Psion Plc unveiled its 32- bit notebook-style hand-held the Psion 5 (CI No 3,183). Established in 1908, Brother is perhaps best known for its typewriters, – its 30mth typewriter came off the production line in 1994- but past and present years have seen the Nagaya, Japan- based company also concentrating on a range of products including printers, electronic stationary, sewing machines, karaoke machines and machine tools. Brother says it wants GeoBook to extend mobile computing, and not to act as a substitute for it.
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