Portable Office

Micro Express Debuts Notebook

Irvine, Calif.-based Micro Express has introduced the NP1000A, the company's high-performance multimedia notebook PC. It measures 11 inches x 14 inches x 2.2 inches and weighs 9.25 pounds. It offers a 15.1 SXGA TFT active matrix display driven by a 16 MB ATI Rage Mobility video card, and runs an Intel Pentium III 1000 microprocessor.

It is configured with 256 MB of RAM, a 20 GB Ultra DMA hard disk, a built-in 8x DVD drive, a 56 V.90 FAX/modem, built-in 10/100 Ethernet interface, and Windows 98 SE operating system. Its lithium-ion "smart" battery holds a charge for three hours.

The floppy disk drive can be swapped with either a ZIP drive or second hard disk; the DVD drive can be swapped with a 4 x 4 x 20 CD-RW drive.

Information: Reader Response no. 242.

STORAGE DRIVE

Pocket CD-RW

The Pocket CD-RW storage drive, from Addonics Technologies, records data at 8x speed. It weighs 14 ounces, and reads CD-R and CD-RW discs; video, music and photo CDs. Recorded CD-RW media can be played in a DVD player or multimedia CD-ROM player.

Information: Reader Response no. 243.

AUDIO PLAYER

Panasonic e-wear

The Panasonic SV-SD75 e-wear SD audio player is a small, wearable device that weighs 1.5 ounces, without batteries. It includes a CD-ROM with the RealJukebox software. The software allows users to create playlists that can be transferred to the device's postage stamp-size 64MB SD memory card via the included USB reader/writer that connects to a PCs USB port. The audio player comes with one AAA NiMH rechargeable battery along with a charger, as well as clip-on headphones and an extra headphone extension cord, a neck strap, armband and multi-purpose clip.

Information: Reader Response no. 244.

DIGITAL CAMERA

Toshiba PDR-M65

The Toshiba PDR-M65 digital camera is a compact unit that offers USB downloading and five-mode automatic flash system. It includes a 3x optical zoom that can be combined with the camera's 2x telephoto mode when playing back images, resulting in a maximum 6x zoom magnification. Other features include an 8 MB Smartmedia card and USB cable (PC/Mac).

Information: Reader Response no. 245.

PROJECTOR

Canon Microportable

The LV-5100 microportable LCD projector from Canon U.S.A. Inc. weighs less than six pounds and offers 700 ANSI lumens. It offers ceiling and rear functions that reverse the projected image accordingly for either ceiling mounting or for use with a rear projection screen, the company says.

It supports HDTV and DVD components inputs, reproduces images with minimal blurring of colors, and supports regular and wide screen aspect ratios.

Information: Reader Response no. 246.

VOICE RECORDER

Olympus DS-320

Olympus Optical Co. Ltd. has released its DS-320 digital voice recorder. The recorder weighs 2.5 ounces, including batteries. It uses 16MB of built-in Flash memory which can store up to 320 minutes of audio in digital speech format.

An LCD display is provided to check remaining recording time, the date and time, voice activation mode, play mode, and battery status.

Information: Reader Response no. 247.