Writing a review for an iPad is a very hard task, especially after the wonderful reviews put in by Stephen Fry and Walt Mossberg, but here’s my attempt:

It’s such a brilliant device that I can’t imagine how I lived without it till now.

It is the electronic device I have been waiting so long for someone to invent for me.

It is a truly personal device. You can curl up with it in bed, you can carry it along with you to boring meetings, you can relax on the sofa with it, you could even carry it to the loo (though I haven’t dared to till now).

I had to wait a long interminable week after it was launched to see it getting delivered to me in all it’s glory. The un-boxing ritual that you undergo with most Apple products was hurried and frantic (but well captured for posterity), as I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it’s luminous screen.

The moment I switched it on, I had fallen in love with it for the umpteenth time.

All those glowing reviews not withstanding, I had been apprehensive that the moment would come and go and I would be underwhelmed. But the iPad had other plans for me.

Let’s go over the few things I can talk about in a coherent manner:

* Browsing – Like Steve Jobs said – It’s the internet in your hands. Believe the guy. Nothing can prepare you for the moment that you take it out and start browsing the web with it. The entire world ceases to exist. You find yourself lost in the interweb. The device itself functions as if it was created to make the web more personal.
All the normal sites you visit have no need to re-skin themselves for tiny screens anymore. Your sites render in their full versions, and are very usable from the get-go. The iPhone paradigm of tap to focus/zoom works as expected, but you don’t have to use it as much with the bigger screen. Scrolling, changing orientation etc. is so smooth and fast, you wonder how the device can do it while sipping minimal power.
On the negative side – when using multiple windows, it does annoy the hell out of you to switch windows and then revisit your previous ones to see them getting reloaded again.

* Apps – In sheer numbers, the apps store is disappointing, but there are more apps coming up as I write.
A few personal favourites are -

• iBooks (Free) is of course a no-brainer. The store-front and shopping experience is great, but the collection unfortunately isn’t. Apple says they are working on it. The reading experience is good (notice I did not say great). With the right levels of brightness, you can even read semi-comfortably at night with the lights off, though with the backlit iPad, it does strain your eyes a bit more than a Kindle would. This can easily be overcome, and I found myself enjoying the experience.
• With the app supporting the open ePub format, you can get non-DRMed books from multiple places to read on it.
• It also has some nice features like double tap to select, look up in dictionary, change the font, background light etc.
• Kindle (Free) – The bookstore with the most books in it is a must-have. The wide collection of e-books in their (unfortunately) proprietary format gives you the option to leave your tomes behind. The app though, is quite pedestrian. The features included are not enough, and it doesn’t seem like they tried to go any further than the Kindle device itself can manage.
• Amazon needs to rectify this fast. They have to realize the irony – the iPad is the best Kindle in the market. It is what the Kindle itself should have been.
• Epicurious (Free) – Huge database of recipes with the right search functions. For people who love to cook, this is a must-have.
• NYT Editor’s choice, WSJ, Bloomberg, NPR, USA Today (Free and paid upgrades) – Great news apps. Mostly US centric.
• Sundry Notes(was School Notes Pro) (Free) – Nice utility to jot notes, draw stuff, record memos etc.
• Tweetflow/Twitterific (Free) – For twitter fanatics, these should be good stream readers, as they allow for opening links in their own application, thus maintaining their state. I had tried Tweetdeck too, but found it too buggy in it’s initial versions.
• Games – Harbor Master, Table Checkers, Labyrinth, Sudoku Tablet, Air Hockey Gold (Free and paid upgrades) – These are the ones that have been able to amuse me for a week.
• Voice Memos for iPad – The essential recording utility which was surprisingly missing from the base OS.
• Comic Zeal ($7.99) – For anyone who has a large collection of CBZ/CBR comics, this is an easy choice. With iTunes syncing you no longer need to view compressed images anymore. You can see your comics at their original level of detail and can zoom in to admire the artwork.
• Marvel Comics (Free) – A way more better app than Comic Zeal in terms of the way it has been thought out. To be fair, they have the rights to all the original comics and can re-format them for any medium. So for the iPad, you have the never-before option of reading comics one panel at a time, to admire the artwork as well as preventing the misfortune of knowing the suspense as soon as you turn the page.
• and a few other notable ones – Offline Pages, Cogs HD, Evernote, Dragon Dictation, Air Video and IMDB

* Form factor, feel – The iPad looks slim and sexy, as do all Apple products.

It also feels solidly built, with no flimsy parts.

The biggest drawback is of course the weight. It doesn’t strike you as an issue until you have held it for a while. Especially for night-time reading. I guess Apple ended up compromising on the weight to provide the superior battery life. The weight of the device is essentially that of the batteries.

* Battery Life – 10+ hours is an understatement if you set the screen to glaring brightness. I have managed to get more than 14 hours regularly.
Many users have reported 11-12 hours of battery life with it’s Wifi on, video playing the whole time, and a mid-level brightness setting.
Moreover, the opt-in battery replacement program that Apple runs for the iPad is truly innovative. They will replace your iPad when it cannot retain it’s charge anymore.

* Limitations -
Flash free -
The much ballyhooed issue with Flash not being supported is not much of an issue for me personally, but I can see it being a huge issue for people whose lives are incomplete without games like Farmville. Major game developers (including Farmville’s creator Zynga) have said they are looking at creating iPad compatible sites, but the wait could be a long one.
Most of the sites hosting videos (including YouTube) have created flash-free versions of their sites.

For me, Flash has mostly been associated with intrusive ads, and I am not too upset to see it banished from my screen.

Virtual Keyboard -
Lots of people have apprehensions about using a virtual keyboard for all sorts of input. Though I can imagine it being a limitation for a phone sized device like the iPhone; for the larger screen that the iPad provides, the keyboard is surprisingly usable.

In portrait mode, I could do a hunt and peck to type quite fast, and with practice, I believe I can soon touch-type in the landscape mode.

Multi-tasking -
know, I know – someone’s going to talk about the multi-tasking and how it’s a pain to have only one application running at any point of time (except for the music app which can run in the background).

iPhone OS 4.0 is on it’s way to fix multi-tasking, but believe me when I say – The experience is nowhere as annoying as it is on the iPhone. With the larger screen, Apple has come up with a few tricks of it’s own to make it a trivial matter while doing normal stuff like browsing multiple windows.

* Accessories -

Apple doesn’t ship any accessories with the iPad, not even headphones!
The iPad Case accessory is something everyone should get. My only complaint with it is that it hides the great looking aluminium back of the iPad. It is also cumbersome to get the iPad in and out of the case. But the case does have a few essential benefits:

• It allows you to use the on-screen virtual keyboard in a comfortable fashion while sitting
• You can watch videos on the iPad by making a stand from the case
• Gives access to all essential buttons
• and most importantly, it protects your iPad from accidental damage and careless storage

I haven’t tried out the other accessories, but the Keyboard Dock or Camera Connection Kit (which has just started shipping) did not enthuse me.

I have an Apple wireless keyboard, and it was child’s play to couple it with the iPad. Since that keyboard is usable both with my regular iMac as well as the iPad, it was an easy choice to stay away from the keyboard dock.

Conclusion - It truly is an awesome device, and I can see it taking over the role of a laptop for a large number of users who use their laptops primarily to consume media. It’s a great device to use on the commute, boring shopping trips, and going anywhere that involves waiting, twiddling your thumbs.

In a statement, the company said:

Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Reactions from the Net are rife with speculation behind the reason for the exit. Is it because of a fall in share prices? Or is it a Steve Jobs tantrum? Some may call it prophetic what with expectations rising with every year and sooner or later, it had to happen that Apple couldn’t keep bringing out mindblowing products every January.

To be fair, though, Macworld without Apple is like Christmas without the tree. Is this the beginning of the end? With more and more vendors starting to make Apple’s components (there was Intel first and now nVidia), this could be a time that Apple may well go the Windows way licensing the OS and other software to rack up profits at the expense of hardware quality — something that Steve Jobs and co. have thus far fanatically controlled or commanded.

What it pans out as remains to be seen but this sure is a change of guard. Perhaps Jobs is on his last legs as Apple boss?

No… we don’t quiet mean in the “sell and go home” way, but more in the “sell out” way. There were rumours and much heartache ay my end when Apple announced the 3G iPhone at just $199. But, as it turns out, that’s a bit of a smokescreen especially for those who will be buying the phone outside the US. And also within:

…”These prices require two-year contracts and are available to the following customers,” said AT&T, citing “iPhone customers who purchased before July 11, customers activating a new line with AT&T [and] current AT&T customers who are eligible, at the time of purchase, for an upgrade discount.” …

Furthermore, the prices in India will be around the $599 mark as the PC World article explains. In India, no service provider as of now is offering “two-year contracts” or the like to subsidize any phone. While this remains open to speculation, Vodafone and Airtel have started accepting pre-booking of the iPhone in India.

The reason behind this could be to estimate the volumes they need to order from Apple. But on the other hand, they too could be possibly working out offers for the early birds, registrants or the whole bunch depending on volumes.

Despite all the confusion in India, though, globally, the iPhone continues to attract much attention. However, Apple seems to be selling out to the service providers. There was a time when Steve Jobs had proudly announced that the iPhone would change the mobile telephony world. Barely a year since the phone first launched, however, he seems to be totally under the service provider’s spell. While on the outside it may seem like he is calling the shots, the price variation and AT&T’s decision to offer unlocked phones may be an indication of reducing clout.

There are also rumors that Apple is indeed working on a physical keyboard for future releases of the iPhone but one shouldn’t believe that until the Big J says so himself! For the Indian (and perhaps all non-US) wannabes, the iPhone may remain a costly option. At $599 (about Rs 27,000), one can pick up the BlackBerry 8800, 8320 or just about any other premium phone with a decidedly better feature set. And the lock with a service provider is just something that won’t go down too well with Indian users.

I, for one, don’t want to change service providers just for a handset. My phone number is just too precious! Thankfully, I may have this option!

I am not going to gloat over the advantages and benefits of having an iPhone (these guys do it far better!) rather wonder about what do I do now? It’s like that situation where I’ve fought battles and gone across the world to save my lady love and when I do get to her, I find out she’s with someone else. Uh-oh! Of course, I am referring to the new 3G iPhone that was announced earlier this month. At $199, it costs about one-third of what I paid for my iPhone.

There is the silver lining that it will be officially in India later this year. But Airtel and Vodafone are the two bringing it home. And that doesn’t impress me. (I am struggling to get Vodafone to get me a BlackBerry connection as I write this). I am on Idea (in Pune) and they don’t have BlackBerry, never mind the iPhone!

So I’m stuck with a Rs 26,000 iPhone when the Indian version could well be available for Rs 18,000 (including 100%-plus duties and what-not) when it does become available. Considering the phone will have Apple Enterprise Cloud and I will have a Vodafone number, perhaps moving to that service with the iPhone may work. On the whole, though, I am not very pleased with the situation as it stands now.

But what are my options? None of the service providers look inviting… Idea included. Any suggestions?

“Samsung continues to be dedicated to providing consumers with the best, most cutting-edge technology, blended with superb styling to suit their lifestyles,” said Tim Baxter, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Samsung Electronics America. “These numbers are purely a reflection of the fact that we’re hitting the mark and consumers are voting for the Samsung brand in one of the hottest consumer spending categories.”

Leadership
Samsung’s LCD and plasma HDTVs demonstrate the company’s commitment to remain at the forefront of consumer electronics. In 2007, Samsung released a number of revolutionary features to improve picture performance, including the application of LED backlight to its critically acclaimed LCD TVs, and the employment of FilterBright technology to its stunning plasma TV line. This year, Samsung introduces a new line of HDTVs that enhances the use of the TV from a simple video playing device to a command center of a digital entertainment system that pulls content from the Internet, mobile devices and more.

Samsung continues its dominance in the DLP HDTV category through its concentration on design, performance and lower cost of ownership. The company’s technology prowess has allowed it to stay on top with feature innovations like 3D-viewing compatibility and the brightest, long-lasting and energy-saving LED light engines.

Finally, Samsung is one of the few remaining manufacturers of quality CRT TVs for those looking for the best of a tried-and-true technology. It is because of all these things Samsung is able to offer choice, value and design beyond that of its competition.

Design
Inspired by the clean, modern designs in the automotive and fashion industries, select models of 2008 LCD and plasma HDTVs will bring a “Touch of Color” to consumers. For the first time, a manufacturing technique, previously used only for smaller A/V devices and luxury car interiors, is now used by Samsung to create a distinctive TV that stands out in a sea of black offerings. The new look is achieved by infusing a hint of amber coloring to the translucent cabinet to produce a clean, glass-like finish. The manufacturing process behind this unique design feature is called TOC (Touch of Color).

Connectivity
Samsung is also redefining the role HDTVs play in the home by integrating a variety of advanced connectivity features into more models than ever. Many of 2008’s entry-level and premium sets have side-mounted HDMI and USB 2.0 ports, enabling consumers to easily connect their digital devices for viewing images and video on their HDTV. The more advanced models will be able to receive select RSS feeds, as well as streamed Web content and PC files via an optional digital media adaptor, transcending what traditionally has been a “viewing-only” device into a truly interactive media hub. Additionally, Samsung is building on the success it had debuting the company’s first line of 3D-ready DLP TVs last year by expanding the same capability to select plasma HDTV models.

Doro’s design team has combined natural organic shapes with the crisp, contemporary principles of Swedish design – to develop a range of stylish, comfortable and accessible handsets. Each handset comes with two decorative ‘skins’ – which can easily change the appearance and style of the phone. This allows the user to personalise their phone and coordinate it with their interior colour scheme. The NeoBio™ skin designs are the work of upcoming Swedish illustrator Lina Ekstrand and were inspired by the natural Scandinavian environment.

“Our ambition was to create an appealing home telephone that’s pleasing to look at with a design that can be changed to match the home’s interior. In developing NeoBio™ we have succeeded in coming up with a product that’s both stylish and comfortable to use. More importantly it doesn’t cost the earth. NeoBio™ makes hi-design accessible to the masses.” says Fredrik Forssell, Doro’s European Marketing Director.

The NeoBio™ range is available in a number of options to ensure there’s a stylish phone that suits every home. Additional extension handsets can be bought and added to a base unit separately. Chris Millington, UK country manager at Doro commented: “The concept of NeoBio™ is all about providing high-end inspired design at accessible prices for UK home makers. We’ve focused on delivering the functions that consumers need from their home phone, in an organic and comfortable design.”

Sample of Doro NeoBio™ handsets
NeoBio™ 10: caller ID, 20 position phonebook and redial
NeoBio™ 15r: 20 position phonebook, redial and integral answer machine
NeoBio™ 20: backlit display and keypad, caller ID, speakerphone and skins
NeoBio™ 25r: answer machine, backlit display/keypad, speakerphone and skins
NeoBio™ 40: colour display, polyphonic tones, 100 position phonebook and skins
NeoBio™ 45r: answer machine, 100 position phonebook, colour display and skins

“As broadband connectivity becomes more ubiquitous, users are demanding – and frankly should expect – a high-quality, high-definition video experience on the Internet,” said Mike Afergan, chief technology officer, Akamai. “Delivering premium HD content is a critical way for our customers to attract and delight their audiences in today’s highly competitive media environment. We are just at the beginning of a very exciting market opportunity for delivering premium HD content. Consumer demand exists, broadband is ready, and businesses are looking for ways to maximize the value of their high-production HD content.”

Technical Criteria for delivering HD

HDTV is defined by the industry to be video with significantly high pixel resolution of 1080i, 1080p or 720p. In the broadcast world, the industry is undergoing a series of transformations that are standardizing the delivery of high-definition video to the home. For the Internet, Akamai is making the HD web possible by continuing to refine the infrastructure required to bring the HDTV experience to online audiences. Additionally, Akamai will continue to lead this effort with new service launches, device integration, and partnerships with technology vendors, expected in the coming months.

Akamai has architected its platform to comply with the following technical criteria that content owners must leverage to successfully enable an HD web. Akamai believes that it is the first and only platform to meet these technical requirements which include offering:

• Technology and an operational model to operate serving devices in the largest high-throughput networks around the world (servers need to be physically in the networks, as that is where the capacity lies)
• Established relationships with the largest high throughput networks
• Support for delivery, storage, and management of files greater than 2 Gigabytes
• Support of VC-1 and MPEG-4 video standards, achieving visual parity with other broadcast video networks
• Support for files with resolutions of 720p, 1080i and 1080p
• Client-side technology that is deeply integrated into its delivery system to be deployed as appropriate

Industry studies have proven that without meeting these criteria, online audiences will become impatient, tune out, and find premium HD content that works elsewhere. By ensuring these requirements are met, content providers are able to avoid slow or delayed downloads, the inability to serve HD content in its entirety, download interruptions, limited audience reach, and overall poor end-user satisfaction, which often accompany the download of large files. In addition, multi-player compatibility is crucial to meet the needs of a diverse end user community.

The Market is Ready

“As broadband video viewership has escalated, consumers have raised the stakes by demanding better and better content experiences,” said Will Richmond, president and founder of Broadband Directions LLC, a market intelligence and consulting firm specializing in broadband-delivered video. “To deliver against these requirements, media and entertainment companies need to offer higher bit rate files with enhanced online fidelity of video and audio files. Doing so in a scalable and cost-effective manner requires that the necessary infrastructure to support high definition content must be deployed.”

“The capacity to deliver high throughput files already exists at the ‘edge’ – leveraging the massive build-outs occurring in hundreds of individual networks. The challenge comes from how you tap into that capacity. The only way to solve this problem is to deliver from within these networks,” continued Akamai’s Afergan. “For example, on our distributed platform, we serve more than half of all the files, 500 MB or greater, at more than 1.4 Mbps, and this is only increasing. This demonstrates that, by leveraging the right architecture, there are already a large number of end-users capable of downloading higher quality content. This technical capability coupled with the market demand is exciting for the industry.”

Akamai’s Unique Architecture for High Throughput Media

To realize this same vision and fidelity in the online world, a 2-hour feature-length movie would need to be encoded at a bit rate of at least 6-8 Mbps, which would result in the file being a size of 5-8 GB. This presents numerous technical challenges to deliver such a high-quality, large file. For instance, delivering a file encoded at 6 Mbps to an audience of one Nielsen ratings point (1,102,000 households) would require 6.6 Terabits of sustained bandwidth, and that doesn’t even take into account latency and network congestion.

The availability of very large, last-mile bandwidth connections does not always mean that an end user will be able to completely leverage that access. A critical factor to enable high bit rate delivery of very large HD files is the proximity of the end-user to the server sending the file. As the distance from the server becomes greater, throughput dramatically decreases. Even a seemingly small distance can result in lost throughput due to lower throughput, higher packet loss, and increased latency.

As an example, the only way to achieve 10 to 20 Mbps throughput for typical PC end-users is if the server is less than 20 milliseconds away. The more latency, the longer it takes to download the file, which interrupts the viewing experience and results in a poor end-user experience. Compared with other centralized models, the results that Akamai’s network offers high quality content are unmatched on a global scale.

Broadband subscribers are guaranteed to have a faster download, and enjoy a quality HD experience, when downloading content from servers nearby the request. With servers distributed in over 750 cities, Akamai addresses these technology requirements with its unique edge delivery model that reduces latency to levels necessary for a quality HD experience. Because distance matters for high-quality large files, all content, whether it is frequently or rarely requested, must be served closest to the end user. Akamai’s unique technology automatically and instantly spreads popular content on-demand for better scalability.

In addition, many large HD videos are not always watched in their entirety. It is therefore optimal to locally cache only the portion of a file that is most requested by end users, which on average is the beginning of the file or movie. This partial caching of HD video enables both popular and less popular, long-tail content to be served from the edge to guarantee optimal performance.

“Akamai’s goal is to be able to support 100 Terabits per second of traffic. Our flexible and distributed architecture uniquely positions us to realize that vision and we are aggressively progressing toward that goal,” said Afergan. “We are also committed to the long-term objective of building an ecosystem linking content owners, network providers and video platform players to ensure a superior HD web experience wherever last-mile infrastructure permits.”

The Philips factory in Germany, where the world’s first CD was pressed, belonged to Polygram – the recording company, which Philips owned at the time. The first CD to be manufactured at the plant was “The Visitors” by ABBA. By the time CDs were introduced on the market in November 1982, a catalogue of around 150 titles – mainly classical music – had been produced. The first CDs and CD players – including Philips’ CD100 – were introduced in Japan in November, followed by a US and European market introduction in March of 1983.

As early as 1979, Philips and Sony set up a joint task force of engineers to design the new digital audio disc. Many decisions were made in the year to follow – such as the disc diameter. The original target storage capacity for a CD was one hour of audio content, and a disc diameter of 115 mm was sufficient for this, however both parties extended the capacity to 74 minutes to accommodate a complete performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. In June 1980, the new standard was proposed by Philips and Sony as the “Red Book” containing all the technical specification for all CD and CD-Rom standards.

Piet Kramer, who at the time was a member of the optical group at Philips that made a significant contribution to the CD technology, commented on Philips’ and Sony’s collaborative work: “When Philips teamed up with Sony to develop the CD, our first target was to win over the world for the CD. We did this by collaborating openly to agree on a new standard. For Philips, this open innovation was a new approach – and it paid off. In the late 70s and early 80s, we never imagined that one day the computing and entertainment industries would also opt for the digital CD for storing the growing volume of data for computer programs and movies.”

As music industry sales of CDs started to take off in 1983, more than 1000 different titles were on the market. In 1985, one of the most famous bands in the world, Dire Straits, adopted the CD. The infamous album “Brothers in Arms”, as one of the first fully digital recording (DDD) to be brought to market, went on to become the top selling CD at the time, and the third greatest selling CD of the decade. The joint collaboration with Philips entailed Philips and Dire Straits jointly promoting the sound quality of the CD to consumers, making “Brothers in Arms” the first album to sell over one million copies in this new format, marking the success of the CD as the emerging format of choice for music quality.

“The Compact Disc has proven its significance in bringing the highest quality of music to consumers who wish to enjoy scratch free music. The enormous success of the CD over the last twenty-five years has opened many new opportunities for consumers to make the most of their music at home and on the move,” said Lucas Covers, Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer, Philips Consumer Electronics. “It has played a pivotal role in the shift from analogue music to digital, not least for the DVD as well in music, though moreover in helping lay the foundation for even new technologies such as Blu-ray quality today,” he added.

The Compact Disc, is the forefather of today’s extensive family of optical discs for a wide range of applications such as CD-Rom, CD-R and CD-RW, DVD, DVD R, DVD RW and Blu-ray. Philips estimates that over the past 25 years, since the first CD was pressed at the Philips factory near Hanover, Germany, over 200 billion CDs have been sold worldwide. Even though a single CD is only 1.2 mm thick, if all CDs ever produced were piled up, the stack of CDs would circle the earth six times. The compact disc, as well as the DVD disc, remain a very popular music/ video carrier, because of their digital quality, portability, and resilience to damage, and remain a very popular gift.

Read more about the CD

Piet Kramer, Head Optical Recording at the time of the founding of the CD, talks about the compact disc’s 25th anniversary.

Philips Anniversary Page (Includes photos)

Windows Vista accounted for 4.52 percent of all systems that browsed the Web in June, up from January’s 0.18 percent.

At the same time, Mac OS X is not adding too many users. So how much truth is there to the Acer boss Gianfranco Lanci’s allegations that the whole industry was disappointed with Vista? He was recently quoted by Financial Times Deutschland as saying:

Despite the long wait between Windows XP and Vista, the latest operating system still lacks maturity. Stability is certainly a problem. Users are voting with their feet, Lanci said, so that the Vista launch has had the smallest impact on PC sales of any version of Windows in the history of PC manufacturing. He added the situation didn’t look likely to change in the next six months.

Interesting times, but it also begs the question of Apple boss Steve Jobs when he says that the Mac is indeed getting more popular.

With Trimble’s Nomad handheld computer, users can easily collect, save and transmit data while in the field. Integrated GPS gives users location data for navigation. Users can also collect bar code information with the Nomad’s integrated laser scanner as well as capture color images for inspections and maintenance with the 2-megapixel digital camera. Plus, users can take advantage of the Nomad’s CompactFlash (CF) and Secure Digital (SDIO) slots to add more devices such as memory and RFID.

In addition to its standard built-in features and range of options, the Nomad handheld computer offers top-of-the-line performance with a 5200 mAh rechargeable lithium ion battery, up to 1 GB of Flash memory and a daylight-visible VGA touch screen display. The battery provides users with 15 hours or more of active use without a recharge. The Nomad’s VGA display is sharp and clear in sunlight, presenting maps and other graphic-intensive files in better detail than a typical QVGA display. It also comes with Windows Mobile(R) 6, the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system for mobile devices.

“The Nomad has several features — including the 800 MHz processor, a full VGA display and Windows Mobile 6 — that truly qualify it as best in class,” said Dale Kyle, rugged handhelds product manager for Tripod Data Systems, a Trimble company. “Combining the Nomad’s rugged design with these features makes it an ideal choice for field-to-office connectivity to increase productivity.”

The Nomad series of rugged handheld computers will be available in four configurations:

• 800B — the standard configuration with 512 MB Flash memory and Bluetooth

• 800L — 1 GB Flash memory, GPS, Bluetooth and 802.11g

• 800LC — 1 GB Flash memory, GPS, Bluetooth, 802.11g and digital camera

• 800LE — 1 GB Flash memory, GPS, Bluetooth, 802.11g, digital camera and bar code laser scanner

As with other Trimble rugged handheld computers, the Nomad series meets the MIL-STD-810F standard for drops, vibration and temperature extremes. It also comes with an IP67 rating, which means it is completely sealed against dust and can survive immersion in up to a meter of water for approximately 30 minutes. Weighing just 21 ounces (595 grams), the Nomad is shaped to fit comfortably in a user’s hand.

The Nomad 800B and 800L are available now. The Nomad 800LC and 800LE are expected to be available in August 2007. The Nomad series of handheld computers are priced from US$1,699 to US$2,499 MSRP.

Tags: Trimble, rugged laptops, outdoor tech