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IBM Goes to WorkPad

Handheld unit promises highly portable e-mail and basic applications.

By Nancy Weil, IDG News Service and Tom Spring, PC World   

The WorkPad z50 targets desktop users who are chained to their desks most of the time, but travel or work outside the office occasionally and need some PC functions. It is not designed to handle large spreadsheets and "heavy workhorse stuff," says Adalio Sanchez, general manager of mobile computing for IBM.

Selling for $999, the device weighs 2.6 pounds and is 1.2 inches thick. Its keyboard is 95 percent of the size of a standard ThinkPad laptop keyboard, Sanchez says.

The WorkPad z50 is powered by a 131-MHz processor and has 16MB of RAM (upgradeable to 48MB), 20MB of ROM, an integrated 33.6-kbps modem, a serial port, a speaker, a microphone, and an infrared port for wireless transmissions. It uses TrackPoint for pointing and has an 8.2-inch screen.

IBM's first Windows CE device, the WorkPad z50 will compete to some degree with IBM's own pocket-size WorkPad PC companion, which uses the Palm operating system.

PC companion devices are about the size of a shrunken laptop and are typically CE based. Most weigh 3 pounds or less and offer long battery life and nearly instant boot-up.

Hewlett-Packard has jumped into the CE device fray with its Jupiter handheld PC. However, so far other top-tier vendors have been slow to bring such devices to market.

Some $6.4 million worth of handheld devices will be sold worldwide in 1999, according to International Data Corporation. That's up from about $4.6 million in 1998 sales. By 2002, IDC expects the handheld market to be worth $14 million.