I wanted to take it away with me. This was my first reaction to trying out NCR Corp’s new stylus-driven notepad computer, the 20MHz Intel Corp 80386SL-based 3125. However at UKP3,200 for OEM customers, and without – until the beginning of next year anyway, Microsoft Corp’s Pen Windows and Go Corp’s PenPoint environments, although they were up and running on demonstration versions – it is unlikely to become the latest necessary accessory for the mobile-phone, notebook computer, message recorder, mini-television, Nintendo Game Boy, personal compact disk player-laden yuppie: yet. It is aimed at mobile workers salespeople, delivery firms and other data collection-data capture (form filling) professions. NCR reckons there are around 3m of these types in the UK, perhaps 20m worldwide. Initially the thing comes with NCR’s DOS for Pen Computing operating system software and ships from October in the UK. However when the full environment is available early next year, when OEM firms ramp up their campaigns and, in the future, when price and size both start to fall, as was indicted by officials, the concept – if not this particular machine – will win its place among, if not replace entirely, other traditional notepad and keyboard-dependent portable computer technologies. Many people have been waiting this portable, handwriting-based technology, for many years. The 3125 is roughly equivalent to European A4 size paper, is 1.2 thick and weighs 3 lbs 14 oz. The Nickel Cadmium battery five-pack, which provides four hours of continuous use, is housed in a handy cylindrical grip running up the length of one side. Think of a ring-bind folder without the outer cover, filled with a ream of paper and the ring-binders extended the full length of the paper – all as a solid structure – and there you have it. It uses what at first glance and touch seems like a standard ball-point pen, unattached to the pad itself because NCR says customers asked for it this way. The pen is in fact an digitising, inductive loop device with a coil and spring mechanism inside – no batteries – which reacts to a magnetic field across the 9.8, 680 by 480 VGA, monochrome LCD screen. Although pens have a tendency to disappear into that great ball-point park in the sky with alarming regularity and in vast quantities, the firm expects hardware vendors to be able crank them out fairly cheaply once the technology becomes more established. The 3125 connects to personal computers and Apple Computer Inc Macintoshes over local area networks – or can alight on NCR’s personal computer-based Docking Station, designed to take the notepad. NCR DOS for Pen Computing, Microsoft Pen Windows and PenPoint come with interchangeable handwriting recognition engines. With memory options going from 2Mb to 4Mb RAM, 16Kb cache, 2Mb to 8Mb flash memory – a 20Mb hard disk will be available in future, or to developers now – it is possible to run all three, complementary environments at the same time on the 3125. NCR is also offering Pen-DOS from Communications Intelligence Corp, Menlo Park, California enabling the pen to be used as a mouse – Motorola Inc’s built-in radio data modem for wireless networking and Scottsdale, Arizona-based Slate Corp’s PenApps software development environment. Go Corp has a range of application modules up its sleeve for PenPoint, including a free-form, note-taking add-on. The object-oriented PenPoint has no start-up procedures, and does not replace a sequence of events, it just runs. It is for people who don’t want to learn the desktop religion, says Go Corp’s manager of developer relations, Arjen Maarleveld. It connects and disconnects from a network when the user plugs and unplugs the cable, configuring itself automatically. You can train the 3125 to become attuned to your own handwriting peculiarities, and has a 70,000 word dictionary with which it will try to make sense of the illegible nonsense you write. A simple signature will get you in. – William Fellows
