In March Telxon Corp will begin shipments of a pen-based wireless thin client for use as a mobile point-of-sale or remote sales forces device running Sun Microsystems Inc’s JavaOS 1.1 operating system. It’s expected to be one of the first commercially available devices running the Luna release of JavaOS and it uses a StrongARM SA 110 RISC, DEC’s high-performance, low power implementation of Advanced Risc Machines Ltd’s embedded systems chip architecture. The PTC-1124 measures 7.6 by 4.5, weighs around 1.5lbs and will cost between $3,000 and $5,000 in a basic configuration, $7,000 with a color screen. The user interface is based upon Sun’s HotJava browser, it runs the JDK 1.1.5 Java application environment and can connect to a variety of wireless networks. Data can be captured through the touch screen or via plug-on modules for laser bar code scanning, image processing or magnetic stripe reading. The Akron, Ohio company also offers similar devices running Windows CE. It won’t use Sun’s Java-on- silicon picoJava chip technology because it consumes too much power for the battery-operated devices but is evaluating Rockwell Collins Inc’s JEM1 high-performance picoJava implementation for users that requires additional processing capabilities. It said it hadn’t considered the Patriot Scientific Java chip.
