Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uupsi!sugar!jasona
From: jasona@sugar.hackercorp.com (Jason Asbahr)
Subject: Portable Unix box!
Message-ID: <1991May10.005215.7074@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Keywords: sony, news, etc
Organization: Sugar Land Unix -- Houston, TX
Date: Fri, 10 May 1991 00:52:15 GMT


Greets!
 
Earlier today I was mucking about at the Offshore Technology Conference
in Houston (where else?) and came across a most interesting piece of
hardware (no, not the salesgirl in the jumpsuit!)...
 
It's smaller than a cube but thicker than a station -- it's Sony's answer
(read as market niche) to the NeXT...the NEWS 3250 laptop.
 
From their brochure:  "...a high performance, full-functioned RISC laptop
workstation that can be taken anywhere.  The heart of this 17 lb miracle
is a 20MHz R3000 processor, which together with a R3010 floating-point
accelerator, delivers 17 MIPS and 1.8 MFLOPS.  Equipped with up to 24MB of
main memory, and a 240 or 406MB hard disk, the NEWS 3250 can handle any
job expected of a desktop workstation..."
 
The display is a back-lit LCD 11" monochrome at 1120 x 780 resolution.
A mouse is included (how nice of them - smirk) and X Windows and Motif
are bundled.  The drives are 1.44MB and can read MS-DOS and Unix formats.
 
"In similar mode to the rest of the NEWS workstation line, a high-quality
audio capability is included.  16-bit/8-bit stereo or mono, with sampling
rates up to 37.8kHz, is supported via the built-in speaker and external
input/output audio jacks."
 
SCSI, Ethernet, serial, and parallel ports available in the back.
 
The 406MB version goes for $11,000.
 
Oh yes -- no battery power either.  
 
I must really be out of touch, because seeing the NEWS laptop at the OTC
was a mild shock.  If Sony can put out a laptop, so can NeXT!  :)
 
          -Jason Asbahr
           jasona@sugar.hackercorp.com
           jasona@nuchat.sccsi.com
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