GeoWorks Joins Tandy and Casio to Develop New Family of Personal Information Processors
LOS ANGELES — June 2, 1992 — GeoWorks Tuesday formally announced that it will join Tandy Corp., of Fort Worth, Texas, and Casio Computer Co., Ltd. of Tokyo, in the development of a new generation of personal, portable information devices dubbed "Personal Information Processors."
GeoWorks will supply GEOS (Graphic Environment Operating System), its award winning, graphical, object oriented operating environment to this new family of devices. The announcement was made on the first day of Lap & Palmtop '92.
"We are very excited about joining Tandy and Casio, two giants in the computer and consumer electronics industry," said Brian Dougherty, chief executive officer of GeoWorks. "Tandy is the leading consumer and computer electronics manufacturer and retailer in the U.S.; Casio is the world's leading supplier of electronic (digital) organizers and calculators. We couldn't have asked for a better endorsement of the capability and flexibility of GEOS."
"Our goal is to create a family of products that integrate various digital technologies into exciting and cost effective consumer products," said Howard Elias, vice president of Tandy Computers. "We envision a range of devices based on an open operating environment, easy to use software applications, and innovative input methods like pen."
"We specifically chose GEOS for the first of a new generation of small, low power and low-cost devices because of its efficient design, small code size and real time power management."
GEOS is a state of the art graphical operating environment. Its object oriented design incorporates preemptive multithreaded multitasking, a PostScript-like single imaging model for true "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) display and printing, and high performance virtual memory management. Additionally, GEOS supports both scalable and flexible user interface technologies which allow an application to have selectable levels of complexity (beginner to advanced) as well as multiple types of input devices (keyboard, mouse, touch screen, pen, etc.). GeoWorks recently announced support for pen-based applications in February at the Technologic Partners Pen Computing '92 Conference.
Minimum system requirements for GEOS are an 8088 (PC XT class) processor, 512K of memory, and 1MB of fixed storage.
"We designed GEOS with these hand held devices in mind," said Dougherty. "We believe the opportunity for this 'fourth wave' of computing dwarfs the current market for desktop PCs. However, in order for this market to ignite, compelling low-cost devices and applications must be in place. GEOS makes these exciting developments possible."
Among those developing GEOS-based applications is Palm Computing. Founded by Jeff Hawkins, formerly V.P. of Research at GRiD Systems, Palm is committed to the hand held and consumer palmtop market. Palm will provide applications software and its PalmPrint handwriting recognition software for the Tandy/Casio Personal Information Processors.
GeoWorks has over 500,000 customers of its GEOS-based GeoWorks Ensemble and GeoWorks Pro application suite, making GEOS the fastest ramping new graphical operating environment in the history of the PC industry. GeoWorks Pro is available in seven languages: Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
GeoWorks, located in Berkeley, Calif., is the developer and publisher of the acclaimed GEOS graphical operating system and GeoWorks Pro applications software. The company provides sophisticated and highly efficient systems and applications software solutions for business, home and school computer users. GeoWorks products are available worldwide through OEM and dealer channels.
Notes to Editors: GEOS and GeoWorks are registered trademarks of GeoWorks.
PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Inc.
CONTACT:
GeoWorks, Berkeley
Lee Llevano, 510/486-8655