PenPad

PenPad

The Amstrad PenPad was an early personal digital assistant with handwriting pen input, and a competitor to the Apple Newton. It was an attempt by Amstrad, a UK electronics firm with a history of successful involvement in personal computing, to corner the handheld market in the UK and Europe.

PDA600

The PenPad, also known by the "PDA600" model reference, was commissioned in 1993. The project manager, Cliff Lawson, had helped developed Amstrad's previous computing products. The Eden Group delivered the underlying operating system. For its time the PenPad had a relatively successful handwriting recognition system, where the user would 'train' the PenPad with his own handwriting.

The device was bulky when compared with modern PDAs, but it was very functional with the standard PIM and offered expansion. It featured a calendar, address book, todo list, jot pad, world time, multiple alarms, calculator, and unit conversion on the ROM.

It had a memory capacity of 128Kb, a grey-scale screen, a folding hinged cover that protected the screen when not in use, a PCMCIA type I slot for expansion, as well as a serial port to link to a PC.

Eden Group also wrote bespoke software for the PDA600 that run on PCMCIA memory cards, in addition to the standard PIM applications. The PDA600 could be 'hot-synced' with Windows via the optional extra "PC-Organiser for Windows".

Development

Development of end-user applications was possible but required investment in a card-writer in addition to the forms software from Eden Group, which restricted end-user development.

Being discontinued

The PenPad, like the Newton, struggled in a time where these early PDAs were expensive to produce and did not manage to capture enough interest and eventually production was discontinued. The remaining UK units being sold off to Tandy Corporation who retailed the stock through their chain of stores at £50 per unit, half the price they had cost Amstrad to build. It wasn't until the launch of the Palm Pilot 1000 in 1996 that the first truly successful PDA relying on pen input was born.

Amstrad did invest in R&D for a successor to the PDA600, called the "PIC700", but with the end of the PenPad it never saw the light of day.

External links

* [http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cliff.lawson/penpad.htm Cliff Lawson's PenPad page]
* [http://homepage.bg.bib.de/~bibhot/pda600/pda600.faq PDA600 FAQ]
* [http://www.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/~kseiner/pda600.html Amstrad PDA600]
* [http://homepage.bg.bib.de/~bibhot/pda600/welcome-eng.html Thomas Hommes' PDA600 Page]
* [http://members.lycos.co.uk/marksdavies/ Mark Davies' PDA600 Page]


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