For soldiers who want to hang computers alongside their hand grenades, Computing Devices International will ship its belt- machines to the US military in August. The Bloomington, Minnesota-based company says it may position the computer, called The Wearable, for private sector markets such as hospitals and package handling firms, but first must get permission from The Flexible PC Company, Northfield, Minnesota, which has patented the technology that allows the processor and PC card to sit on a flexible back plane. The Wearable has 10 to 20 beta customers, including the US Army, which is using the machines for field language translation in Bosnia. It weighs 2lbs and uses a 75MHz Intel Corp 80486 DX4, 16-bit sound board, PCMCIA board and IBM’s Voice Type Applications Factory software. Prices will start at $9,000. Computing Devices hopes to make the machine lighter by using a lithium ion polymer battery in the future.
