Scribbles

Aironet Wireless Communications—While everyone is keeping their eye on wireless, general interest today still seems to be more lukewarm that hot. However, Aironet Wireless Communications, a subsidiary of Telxon, Inc., is feeling the market heat up a bit.

The company shipped over 70,000 wireless products including radio modules and Ethernet access points in the 1994 calendar year. This included shipments of their ARLAN 630 and ARLAN 640 wireless Ethernet access points and bridges respectively. On top of that, Aironet points to research that expects the wireless LAN market to grow an annual rate of 40 percent reaching $1 billion by the year 2000. For more information, contact Brian Becker of Aironet at (216) 665-7370.

PEN PAL Associates, Inc.—The maker of high-level pen-based development tools has decided to see what being on the other side of Palo Alto feels like. The company recently completed its move from lowly Los Altos to Menlo Park, California, closer to excellent bookstores, fancy shopping, and an even fancier university, Stanford.

PEN PAL’s new address is 120 Independence Drive, Suite 124, Menlo Park, CA 94025, (415) 462-4888, (415) 462-4899 (fax).

Palm Computing—Building on its traditional strength in handwriting recognition, Palm Computing now claims to have the number one selling add-on application for Apple’s Newton MessagePad PDAs.

The program, Graffiti, uses a simplified alphabet to improve the recognition rate for most users.

Graffiti now supports all leading stylus-based environments including Geoworks’ GEOS, General Magic’s Magic Cap, Apple’s Newton, and Microsoft’s Windows for Pen Computing. For more information, please contact Cathy Cain of Palm Computing at (415) 917-3331, or at [email protected].

Casio, Inc.—The premier manufacturer of Zoomer-class PDAs has decided that its time for the price to drop. Winner of a couple of best product awards, Casio’s Z-7000 is a full-featured PDA that offers excellent battery life in a handheld package.

However, by lowering its price to retailers enabling them to sell the device at a retail price of $499.95, Casio still has a way to go to match users’ price versus utility expectations. Even with street prices hitting about $399, Casio should take note of the interest generated when AST recently liquidated its Model 2390 Zoomer for $160.

Sharp Electronics Corp.—Though the damage following the January earthquake in the Kobe region was severe, Sharp has reported that its LCD and other component factories suffered no apparent damage.

Based in nearby Osaka, Sharp has factories in the Nara and Okayama prefectures. For more information, please contact David White of Young & Roehr Inc. (PR) at (503) 222-0626.