Monday, June 16, 2003
Clio Swing-Top Design May Live Again
Posted by Jason Dunn in "OFF-TOPIC" @ 03:00 PM
"The Pinax Group, Inc. today announced the availability of worldwide licenses for its patented SwingTop® design utilized by the awarding-winning PC companion, Clio®. The SwingTop® industrial design is protected by numerous globally-registered patents. “The Pinax Group is presently in various stages of discussions with several companies worldwide to license our intellectual property related to the exciting SwingTop® industrial design,” said Robert Sowah, The Pinax Group’s Chief Executive Officer. “Our clients have been asking for the next generation Clio® in both a traditional ‘thin client’ format as well as in Windows® XP tablet, Smart Display, and PDA versions. The availability of the Clio® design presents an immediate opportunity for our partners and licensees to introduce mobile computing products that are clearly differentiated from the current convertible product. I am confident that loyal Clio® customers will be very excited to see the next generation of Clio®-inspired products expected to be produced in the near future.” "
For those of you that remember the Vadem Clio, it was an amazing device for it's time, but ultimately is was crippled by a weak operating system, lack of applications, and poor hardware. So what was there to like about it? An amazing industrial design! The "swing top" design is incredibly brilliant, and I think it's a far more suitable design for Tablet PCs than the current "swivel hinge" solution. I would love to see the Clio resurrected in some fashion, because with Windows CE .Net on it, a StrongARM CPU, and 64 MB of RAM, this would be a very functional and slick device. I still mourn the loss of the HPC platform as a whole...it was so promising, but the OEMs making the devices kept trying to keep them in a price zone that made them too near the price of a laptop.
For those of you that remember the Vadem Clio, it was an amazing device for it's time, but ultimately is was crippled by a weak operating system, lack of applications, and poor hardware. So what was there to like about it? An amazing industrial design! The "swing top" design is incredibly brilliant, and I think it's a far more suitable design for Tablet PCs than the current "swivel hinge" solution. I would love to see the Clio resurrected in some fashion, because with Windows CE .Net on it, a StrongARM CPU, and 64 MB of RAM, this would be a very functional and slick device. I still mourn the loss of the HPC platform as a whole...it was so promising, but the OEMs making the devices kept trying to keep them in a price zone that made them too near the price of a laptop.
