Mobile Computing Systems Offers New HOPE!

To paraphrase the most basis tenet of retail sales, the three most important things in a successful mobile computing deployment are applications, applications, and applications. And herein lies the catch-22.

While most developers would likely prefer to use their existing tools under Windows, doing so limits their choice of hardware platforms to a certain class of machine. Alternatively, selecting a novel hardware platform often means overcoming a new and indeterminate learning curve. There must be another way.

Burlingame, California-based Mobile Computing Systems thinks so. The company has released a new tool to convert applications written using Microsoft’s Visual Basic for execution on GEOS-based Casio Zoomer PDAs. The software, dubbed HOPE!, lets developers use most of the standard Visual Basic controls, such as forms and buttons, to created pen-based applications that can be deployed on a device smaller and less expensive than any Windows-based portable computer.

HOPE! consists of two products: the professional utilities and a user module, which enables program conversion and run-time application support on the target platform respectively. The software provides all the features required to manage the graphical user interface, memory management, and file I/O functions of the Visual Basic application. On a Casio PDA, the HOPE! system coexists with GEOS enabling access to both the regular and custom applications on the PDA.

HOPE! 1.5 Professional Utilities is priced at $459, with a getting-acquainted version of the software, entitled HOPE! Lite, available for $26.50.

Mobile Computing Systems Corp.
P.O. Box 4426
Burlingame, CA 95157
(415) 696-1293
Kathy Ecoffey
[email protected]
[email protected]