Wireless publishing pad

One of the more intriguing products unveiled at Macworld Expo was Motorola's version of the Newton MessagePad.

Dubbed Marco, the significant difference between the Newton and Motorola's offering is a two-way radio modem that allows connections to Motorola's Ardis wireless network.

The Ardis network covers 10,700 cities, which Motorola says is 90 percent of the country's business areas and 80 percent of the population. When Motorola's RadioMail is added to the mix, Marco becomes a hand-held device with access to Internet mail services.

Marco uses much of the same software as the Newton, and is much alike internally: 1 megabyte of RAM, a 20-MHz Arm 610 processor, a similarly sized non-backlit display and Version 1.3 of the Newton operating system.

There are other differences from the Newton as well: the radio modem doesn't take up the Pcmcia slot, so other peripherals can be added (in the original Newton, there was one slot, which didn't have enough power for a radio modem); the screen is more readable than the Newton, and the device comes with a rechargeable battery.

Motorola says the rechargeable battery pack is good for eight hours, but early users have said it runs much longer on one charge.

A device such as Marco would be perfect for use in wireless publishing (see The Cole Papers, December 1994).

-- dmc

From THE COLE PAPERS, February 1995, Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved.