IBM Corp is developing three, maybe more, PowerPC-based personal digital assistant palmtops, according to US paper PC Week. IBM is not commenting on the report, however, the paper reckons two of the new machines will run a trimmed-down version of its Workplace technology, dubbed PDA OS. This will reportedly require 2Mb of RAM and 4Mb of ROM, so it is not that trimmed down. It is expected to be pen- and speech-driven; include a host of networking options; and have the ability to handle compute-intensive work. The paper is expecting a beta version of both hardware and software to appear and the running PDA OS might make an appearance at the Comdex trade show in November. The operating system is supposed to be hardware-independent; able to work on either PowerPC or iAPX-86 instruction sets. IBM is said to be hoping to license PDA OS to other manufacturers. As for the, third Personal Digital Assistant, the paper says IBM is negotiating with Apple Computer Inc to license the Newton operating system – which would be an interesting step, since the Newton currently uses Advanced RISC Machines Ltd’s ARM processor.
