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From: asmith@acorn.co.uk (Andy Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Don't Panic - a dream
Message-ID: <7444@acorn.co.uk>
Date: 6 Jun 91 12:17:04 GMT
Sender: asmith@acorn.co.uk
Distribution: comp
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England
Lines: 21


I once had a dream, It consisted mainly of taking a manufacturer,
Encyclopaedea Brittanica, TimeLife books and Douglas Adams; then rolling
them all together to work on a project. The project was a small hand held
computer with a colour screen, the whole of the en. Brittanica, all of the
TimeLife books, detailed maps of the world, spell
checker/dictionary/thesorus and a powerfull calculator all built in.
Inscribe 'Don't Panic' in large friendly letters on top, then market it as
the first earth version of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy...

Now I know more about what goes on, I know that this is not (yet)
technically possible, we're talking 116Gbytes with real time image
decompression and a 640 x 400 pixel 3" colour screen. However if HP were to
take the 95LX case, install the 48S as a calculator, then using current
4mbit EPROM/ROM technology put a compressed version of the Brittanica in
with a dict/spell chk/theus (about 32Mbyte), they could produce something
that would be very useful to many people. They may even be able to get
Douglas Adams consent to inscribe 'Don't Panic' in large friendly letters on
top...

Any one think this would catch on?????