March 2003

Intermec introduces rugged Tablet PC
Newstream.com reports that Intermec Technologies Corp. introduced the CT60, a rugged pen slate that runs Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Based on WalkAbout's Hammerhead XRT, the rugged tablet has a 10.4-inch display, hot swappable batteries, up to 40GB of disk, built-in wireless, all in a milled aluminum housing. The inclusion of this unit to Intermec's impressive distribution and service network seems a great move! -- Posted Monday, March 31, 2003

R:BASE launches Pocket PC version
R:BASE Technologies and Sybase announced Pocket R:BASE, a mobile version of R:BASE, a relational database product that goes way back to the early days of personal computing when R:BASE was a fierce competitor to dBASE. R:BASE applications developed by Pen Computing's editor back in 1986 still run in unmodified form and we are sure to report on the Pocket PC version! [see press release] -- Posted Monday, March 24, 2003

SonicBlue intends to file for Chapter 11
Sonicblue announced it plans to file for Chapter 11 and is selling the assets of its main product lines, the Rio MP3 player and ReplayTV. Only a couple of years ago, Sonicblue was the promising maker of the ProGear pen tablet that we reviewed in our January 2002 issue. -- Posted Friday, March 21, 2003

riteMail 2.0 is here
Pen&Internet™, LLC announced riteMail® 2.0 for Windows and Pocket PC platforms. riteMail enables users to take handwritten notes on their mobile devices for editing, recognition and storage back at their desktops. With riteMail 2.0, handwritten notes taken on a handheld device or desktop can be emailed over wireless and wireline connections, as well as fully edited, recognized, stored and printed from a PC. riteMail integrates with all popular corporate and personal email systems and is used in over 100 countries, in more than 50 languages. -- Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Taiwan ships nearly half of all PDAs
According to the Taiwan-based Industrial Technology Information Service (ITIS), Taiwanese companies will ship about six million PDAs this year, which accounts for 46% of the estimated 13 million units that will ship in 2003. The report suggests that Wistron OEMs PDAs for Dell and Casio, HTC for Hewlett Packard; Compal for Toshiba and Acer, and Mitac for NEC. -- Posted Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Blackberry connectivity on Pocket PC?
RIM, the maker of the popular Blackberry wireless email handhelds, and Taiwanese PDA maker HTC announced that they plan to make Blackberry connectivity available on Windows Powered Pocket PC and Smartphone products. RIM's Blackberry Connect licensing program will allow HTC Pocket PCs to connect to the Blackberry Enterprise Server using its push-based wireless infrastructure. -- Posted Monday, March 17, 2003

Toshiba e750 Pocket PC released
Toshiba announced the e750 Pocket PC with a 400MHz Intel XScale PCA255 processor, a total of 96MB of memory (including 32MB NAND Flash for critically important apps and data), built-in 802.11b wireless and a larger 3.8-inch transflective display. Retail price is US$599. Toshiba also announced that according to the Gartner Group it is the second leading Pocket PC vendor in the US in 2002. -- Posted Tuesday, March 11, 2003