PenPad Dips Its Pen in U.S. Waters

Amstrad’s PenPad Hits the U.S.

Sometime next month, a small, relatively unheard of Arizona company hopes to start making waves in the personal-digital assistant (PDA) market with its U.S. release of the Amstrad PenPad PDA. At 4.5 by 6.25 by 1-inch, the PenPad (which is manufactured by England’s Amstrad and distributed by Scottsdale Technologies) is slightly smaller in size and price (at $499) than both Apple’s Newton MessagePad and Tandy/Casio’s Zoomer. The PDA weighs just under 1 pound.

According to Scottsdale director of development Gary Gear, the PenPad’s affordable price is due in part to a hardware design based on the low-cost, readily available 20-MHz Z80 microprocessor from Zilog.

Two additional microcontrollers are also used: one to attend to character recognition, the other to system overhead, with the Z80 taking care of application processing. The combined controllers provide the performance of a 16-MHz 80286-based system, Gear claims. Three AA batteries provide up to 40 hours of power. The screen is 2.88 by 3.62 inches with a 240 by 320 resolution.

In addition to low-cost processors, the system is designed to be flexible. Instead of building in a modem, for instance, a mini-serial port enables connection to an external modem. The communication software then resides on a PCMCIA Type I card.

The PenPad comes with standard-fare applications — a calendar, phone book, to-do list, and notepad — which are accessed by tapping the stylus on the appropriate screen icon. (As mentioned above, communications software is available via PCMCIA cards).

Of course, handprinting recognition is a key component for the pen-based computer’s notepad and other applications. To this end, Amstrad licensed proven handwriting technology from Texas Instruments for the Penpad. This technology is based on character by character recognition instead of the more common word by word recognition. Gear claims that this approach makes it easier to decipher a user’s handwriting because the recognizer doesn’t confuse one word with another (one of the major criticisms of the Newton’s recognizer, by the way).

The Amstrad operating system is a proprietary object-oriented system with a notebook-like user interface, similar to PenPoint. Applications are distributed on PCMCIA cards.

To support U.S. software developers, Scottsdale will launch a developer program for vertical, horizontal, and in-house developers. The program will offer technical support to vertical developers, while horizontal application developers can receive assistance in the publishing and marketing of their software. In-house corporate developers will have access to special forms-based, graphical tools for fast prototyping and development. In addition, the developer program will include a C compiler, cross compiler, and linker, a forms tools, PCMCIA development tools, and a subscription to the Scottsdale Technology electronic bulletin board. The PenPad will be available at major consumer electronics outlets.

Scottsdale Technologies
7590 E. Gray Road Suite 103
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
602-998-7300