Thursday, March 18, 2004
Toshiba at CeBIT 2004: Gadgetey Goodness Galore!
Posted by Pat Logsdon in "NEWS" @ 10:45 AM
Toshiba rolled into CeBIT with several interesting prototypes this year. None of them were Pocket PCs, but some of the technology displayed could certainly find its way into that line in the near future.
Winning the prize for Product That Looks Most like a Pocket PC: The Mobile Viewer!
"A highly-portable "Mobile Viewer" allows anytime viewing of high-quality moving and still images with sound on a 3.5-inch LCD. The built-in 1.8-inch, 20GB HDD can store up to 80 hours of QVGA-quality video at 15 frames per second (fps), equivalent to 512kbps of video data with audio, or 40 hours of QVGA video at 30fps, equivalent to 1Mbps of video data with audio--much more capacity than any digital video camera."
The SD Card Viewer sports an OLED display that's almost exactly the right size for a Pocket PC screen (3.45 inches):
"The SD Card-based video and digital image viewer not only confirms the increasing capabilities of flash memory, it also showcases the superb performance of the Organic LED (Light Emitting Diode), a next-generation flat panel that provides much brighter, sharper, higher contrast pictures and a wider viewing angle than any of today's LCD panels."
And finally, how about a fuel cell that can power a laptop?
"The DMFC (direct methanol fuel cell) runs on a methanol-oxygen fuel mix, and generates and supplies power directly to the PC. With an energy density up to five times that of a typical lithium-ion battery, the DMFC delivers much longer continuous operation."
So we've got a PDA-sized device sporting a chip that can handle high quality, full motion video, a next generation OLED screen that's just about big enough for a Pocket PC, and a not-too-huge fuel cell that can power a laptop longer than a traditional rechargeable battery. It seems to me that some of these innovations are just about ready to be rolled into production units. What do you think?
Winning the prize for Product That Looks Most like a Pocket PC: The Mobile Viewer!
"A highly-portable "Mobile Viewer" allows anytime viewing of high-quality moving and still images with sound on a 3.5-inch LCD. The built-in 1.8-inch, 20GB HDD can store up to 80 hours of QVGA-quality video at 15 frames per second (fps), equivalent to 512kbps of video data with audio, or 40 hours of QVGA video at 30fps, equivalent to 1Mbps of video data with audio--much more capacity than any digital video camera."
The SD Card Viewer sports an OLED display that's almost exactly the right size for a Pocket PC screen (3.45 inches):
"The SD Card-based video and digital image viewer not only confirms the increasing capabilities of flash memory, it also showcases the superb performance of the Organic LED (Light Emitting Diode), a next-generation flat panel that provides much brighter, sharper, higher contrast pictures and a wider viewing angle than any of today's LCD panels."
And finally, how about a fuel cell that can power a laptop?
"The DMFC (direct methanol fuel cell) runs on a methanol-oxygen fuel mix, and generates and supplies power directly to the PC. With an energy density up to five times that of a typical lithium-ion battery, the DMFC delivers much longer continuous operation."
So we've got a PDA-sized device sporting a chip that can handle high quality, full motion video, a next generation OLED screen that's just about big enough for a Pocket PC, and a not-too-huge fuel cell that can power a laptop longer than a traditional rechargeable battery. It seems to me that some of these innovations are just about ready to be rolled into production units. What do you think?
