(Nikkei BP Group)
(No.1 High-Tech News Site in Japanese)
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| IBM Japan to Release Wearable Personal Computer
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September 18, 1998 (TOKYO) -- IBM Japan Ltd. revealed a prototype of
a wearable personal computer that comes as a headset with a small monitor
and a separate PC body fits into a pocket.
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The wearer can virtually see a 26-in. monitor 2 meters
away when the 1cm x 1cm thin-film transistor liquid-crystal display
(TFT-LCD) is set about 3cm away from the eye. The user can wear it while
walking as well as perceive outside views through the display.
The prototype shows 320 x 240 dots and 256 monochrome gray scales, but
it will be improved later to 800 x 600 dots and a color display.
The PC is operated by "ViaVoice 98," voice input software of IBM Japan,
and a small-sized controller with a stick type pointing device, "TrackPoint."
The headset weighs 50g, the controller with a built-in microphone weighs
20g and the body of the PC including the batteries weighs 299g. The
total weight is 449g including the cables attached.
The PC has a 233MHz MMX Pentium microprocessor and 64MB of memory, the
same as IBM Japan's ThinkPad 560X notebook PC. For the 340MB hard disk
drive storage, a 42.8mm x 36.4mm x 5.0mm CompactFlash card-sized Micro
Drive is adopted.
For an interface, one Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, one infrared communication
port and one CompactFlash card slot are provided. A lithium-ion secondary
battery supplies power for 1.5-2 hours of operation.
IBM Japan will merchandise it by the latter half of 1999, although its
price and other details have not been decided yet.
(Nikkei Personal Computing)
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