PDAs
Casio PF-3000
A new digital calculator from Casio that does more than just add up your expense reports – it’ll also let you ditch your rolodex. The PF-3000 doubles as a personal organizer, and has 961 bytes of memory that can be filled with phone numbers, addresses, and notes. If you need the extra storage space, there’s also an optional 2K memory module available.
Cellphones
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X cellphone
From Motorola, the first commercial portable cellular phone to receive FCC approval. The DynaTAC 8000X, which weighs just 28 ounces, works on the new Advanced Mobile Phone Service that’s being rolled out, and has an LED display, memory to store thirty “dialing locations,” and enough battery life for 30 minutes of talk time and eight hours of standby. Retail price: $3,995.
Laptops/PCs
GRiD Compass 1101
First clamshell laptop compter. The Compass has a black magnesium alloy case, a gas plasma display, 384KB of memory, and for hacking while on the road, a lightning-fast 1200bps internal modem.
Home entertainment
Sony CDP-101 CD player
First digital music player, which instead of albums reads “compact discs” where the sound is encoded as digital bits rather than as an analog signal. Sony is billing these new compact discs as having “perfect sound forever”: they’re supposed to have higher fidelity than LPs and be immune to the scratches and warps that mar vinyl collections across America.
Digital cameras
Canon HOMIC
Prototype of new still video camera from Canon. The Horizontal MemoryChip Integral storobo Camera, or HOMIC, uses solid state memory to store its images, and was created by German industrial designer Luigi Colani.
Peripherals
The Microsoft Mouse
Microsoft takes a cue from Apple’s Lisa computer, and releases its first mouse, a new input device for graphical user interfaces. The Microsoft Mouse was created to work with their new Microsoft Word word processing software, and will set you back a cool $195.
Portable audio
Sony WM-10 Walkman
The smallest portable cassette player yet, Sony’s new WM-10 Walkman features Dolby noise reduction and is only slightly bigger than a cassette itself. Music isn’t going to get any easier to carry around than this.
