NCR Ready To Roll

High-end, high-powered pen-based system ready to ship

Aiming to be the first out of the gate with an 80386-based stylus system, NCR Corp. (Dayton, OH) will officially launch its System 3125 at PC Expo in New York next week with mass distribution slated for August. Although other companies — most notably Grid — have made 8088-based stylus computers available for quite some time, the 3125 is the first entry into what’s expected to be the high-end of the pen-based computing race.

Built around Intel’s 20 MHz 386SL CPU, a version of the 80386 designed for portable computers that among other features provides intelligent power management facilities, the 3125 provides up to 6 hours of battery life, depending on whether the system is configured with solid-state storage or a more power-hungry hard disk drive. (For more details on the 386SL, see “Hardware Hurdles,” Pen-Based Computing, Volume 1, Number 1.) Initially, the system will support either a 20-Mbyte hard disk (with 19ms access time) or 20 Mbytes of RAM. For non-hard disk systems, slots for IC memory cards will be available.

Less Than Four Pounds

Weighing in at slightly over 3 pounds, the 3125 box is about 10 by 12 inches and 1.2 inches thick. It is powered by 5 C cell NiCad batteries, sports a 6:1 contrast high-resolution VGA screen (16 gray scales), has connectors for external drives, keyboards, monitors, and Flash erasable programmable ROM, which will be used to run the hardware interface to the operating system (DOS or PenPoint). Built-in is a Hayes-compatible data and Fax modem.

Although the waterproof 3125 will initially use the Wacom digitizer pad/pen, a NCR spokesperson told us that the company is working on a patented technology that will combine the LCD/digitizer into a single component, thereby reducing both the system’s weight and cost.

Recognition in Silicon

One of the most interesting aspects of the 3125, however, is that it uses a silicon-based handwriting recognition engine developed by NCR and Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC, Menlo Park, CA). NCR and CIC claim that their recognition engine offers faster and more accurate performance than the engines supplied in Go’s PenPoint and Microsoft’s PenWindows. The NCR/CIC engine takes full advantage of the modular nature of both PenPoint and Pen Windows by overriding and replacing the default recognition engines.

3125 Supports Both PenPoint and Windows

While the demonstration provided to us used Pen Windows to demo Borland’s ObjectVision, Software Publishing’s Professional Write Plus, and other applications, the system will support both PenPoint and PenWindows. According to NCR’s Kim Warnock, the company will demonstrate the 3125 running both PenPoint and PenWindows at the unveiling at PC Expo.

Aggressive Pricing

There’s no question that NCR will be aggressive in its sales and marketing of the 3125. For instance, although the initial list price of the machine will be around $4400 (depending on configuration), the street price is expected to be about $3000. To get the 3125 into customers hands, NCR has already trained a direct sales force of over 60 people — an unusually large number for a new product, according to sources close to NCR.

Customers Wanted a Hard Disk

In spite of the race to be first on the market, NCR has incorporated features into the 3125 and refined the product definition based on early feedback from potential customers. NCR changed the color from black to a softer, more friendly off-white (similar to the color of PC desktop systems), put more emphasis on hard disks (these were much more important to customers than NCR originally thought), and the company incorporated the high-contrast LCD (high-contrast was very important to customers).

We’ve used the pre-release 3125s in demonstration sessions with NCR and we are impressed. The system is fast, easy to read, attractive, and responsive. NCR is on its way to setting a standard at the high-end that other vendors will have to match.

Contact:

NCR
Dayton, Ohio
1-800-544-3333

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The following editors’ note ran in a box on page 1, alongside this lead article:

Note From the Editors: We’re providing you with this special edition of Pen-Based Computing because of the recent flurry of product announcements in the pen-based computing marketplace. As we predicted in our first issue, the world of stylus systems will be exploding over the coming months as early developers begin launching products, corporations and individuals begin adopting them, and more and more developers jump into the fray. We’ll follow up in our regular edition with in-depth analysis of many of the stories presented here.