Toshiba Licenses PenRight! for Dynapad
IRVINE, Calif. — August 16, 1993 — Effective today, the Toshiba Dynapad T100X pen computer now supports PenRight! and the more than 600 applications currently available under the PenRight! operating environment.
The Toshiba Dynapad is a pen computer that combines the power and capability of a notebook with the ease of the intuitive pen interface. It was designed to be used in inspections, order entry, sales automation, claims estimating, medical record keeping and other mobile data collection applications.
"By combining PenRight! and the Toshiba Dynapad Toshiba can provide mobile workers with a multi-featured platform to run vertical applications," said Bobbi Burns, director of sales and marketing, software products in the vertical systems group of AST Research Inc.
Recent reports from industry analysts indicate PenRight! has captured more than 80 percent of the vertical pen-based market. In the last year, PenRight! sales have increased more than 200 percent.
"The large PenRight! developer community will provide access to key vertical markets for the Dynapad," said Kurt King, senior product manager for pen computing, Toshiba. "Furthermore, we anticipate many new customers will appreciate the small PenRight! storage and memory requirements."
The Toshiba Dynapad has been certified by PenRight! and now has the ability to run applications developed in the PenRight! environment for such industries as pharmaceutical, transportation, government, public safety, consumer goods, health care, oil and gas, and utilities.
The applications running in the PenRight! environment were developed with software development tools including PenRight! Pro, padBase, Power Pen Pal and dataNow. Toshiba is licensing PenRight! for resale to users wanting to run software under the PenRight! environment.
Toshiba now joins AST, Fujitsu, MicroSlate, NCR, NEC, Norand, and Samsung as currently licensed PenRight! OEMs whose systems have been certified to run applications developed with the PenRight! operating environment.
Weighing a mere 3.3 pounds, the Dynapad T100X pen computer features a 25MHz AMD 386SXLV 3.3-volt CPU, 4MB RAM (expandable to 20MB), 40MB hard disk drive, a 9.5" transreflective sidelit display, and two PCMCIA 2.0 expansion slots.
PenRight! is a DOS-based graphical user interface and handwriting recognition system for upper and lower case characters, pen gestures and international language support (U.S. English, U.K. English, French, French Canadian, Spanish, German, Italian, Danish, Swedish).
AST Research Inc., ranked No. 367 on the 1992 Fortune 500 list of America's largest industrial companies, develops personal computer products with technologies ranging from hand-held portable computers to superservers.
In July 1993, AST acquired Tandy Corp.'s PC manufacturing business. The acquisition makes AST the No. 4 U.S. and No. 6 worldwide personal computer company, according to the calendar year 1992 unit volume shipment data from International Data Corp. These figures include AST, Tandy, and GRiD brands manufactured by AST.
AST's award-winning product lines include desktop, file server, notebook and pen-enabled computers, marketed under the Advantage!, Bravo, Premmia, Manhattan SMP, PowerExec, GRiD, PenRight!, and Victor product names.
The company is represented in 100 countries and operates 41 international subsidiaries and sales offices. AST's corporate headquarters is located at 16215 Alton Parkway, P.O. Box 57005, Irvine, Calif., 92619-7005. Telephone 714/727-4141, 800/876-4278, Fax: 714/727-9355. Note to Editors: PenRight! is a registered trademark of AST Research Inc. DynaPad is a trademark of Toshiba America Information Systems. AST Research designs, manufactures, markets and services, notebook, pen, desktop and multimedia computers, pen-based software and networking systems. The absence of a "tm" or "r" in connection with the marks identifying products of other vendors does not indicate the absence of registration of those marks.
CONTACT:
AST Research Inc., Westlake, Texas
Lauren Baker, 817/491-5369