The Information Week Daily published on 08Oct98 has a top news story entitled "Microsoft Unveils CE 2.1--Could Handhelds Do Notebooks' Job?" written by Tom Davey. ZDNET is also publishing a similar PC Week story entitled "Microsoft gets Jupiter in alignment" with details about Microsoft's new "Handheld PC Professional Edition" specification.

In summary, Microsoft's "Handheld PC Professional Edition" specification includes:

• Windows CE 2.11 operating system with Windows CE Services 2.2
• weight under 2 pounds
• price range is around US$1000
• instant-on
• keyboard is big enough to type on
• 9.5-inch SVGA screens (800 by 600 pixels)
• color resolution up to 65,000s
• support for Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports
• standard memory sizes between 16 to 32MB

The following companies have announced new hardware related to Microsoft's "Handheld PC Professional Edition" specification:

• Eclipse International
• Socket Communications
• Silicom
• Integrated Technology Express
• Sharp Mobilon TriPad
• NEC MobilePro
• NEC Electronics' VRC4171A
• Iomega Clik! Mobile Drive & Clik! Flash Memory Readers
• Hewlett-Packard
• Hitachi's SuperH RISC processor
• Vadem
• NTS' DreamWriter I.T.
• Sierra Wireless' AirCard CE
• Samsung Electronics' "The Eco-Note"

The following companies have announced new software related to Microsoft's "Handheld PC Professional Edition" specification:

• Communication Intelligence Corporation's (CIC) Jot Handwriting Recognition System, CIC Speller and QuickNotes
• Inso Corporation's "Outside In"
• FutureSoft's "DynaComm Connectivity Series"
• IndustryWeek
• Puma Technology's Intellisync
• Odyssey Software's CEfusion Enterprise Edition connectivity suite
• Traveling Software's LapLink CE
• EnCompass Globalization
• Spyglass Device Mosaic Web browser
• ParaGraph's CalliGrapher
• AvantGo's AvantGo 2.0
• Advanced Recognition Technologies' (ART) ARTrecognition
• InstallShield Software's InstallShield

-Steve Holden (sholden@pencomputing.com)