Philadelphia Area HP Handheld Club Meeting

Monday, November 8th, 1995 - Drexel University

Two Omnigo Products

In early October, Hewlett-Packard showed two Omnigo products at the Telecom '95 show in Geneva, Switzerland. The first, the model 700, is a combination of the HP200LX with built-in modem and a connector to mechanically ally attach a Nokia digital cellular phone to the outside case. As far as we know, the built-in software is the same as its predecessor. This unit will list for around $1400. but be available only outside the U.S. until there exists a single digital cellular data comm standard here. The Omnigo 700 uses the GSM (European) standard currently.

The second model, introduced here on 10/16/95, is the Omnigo 100 - a new unit both mechanically and in the applications area. This clamshell device resembles an LX model physically, but its LCD reduced from 640-by-200 to 240-by-240, with a touch-sensitive surface. The CPU is the same as the LX models, but the speed is doubled to 16 megahertz. The keyboard does not contain a keypad like the LX and the operating system is now GeoWorks 2.0 versus DOS 5.0 in the LX models. Check out the additional materials elsewhere in this handout. Price will be around $350. here, which compares favorably with the Sharp Zaurus' $499. price.

TI-92 versus HP48

The Texas Instruments' TI-92 was supposed to begin shipping on November first, but nobody has seen them yet. A handful of Usenetters have prototypes and have been comparing this unit's math features to the HP48 in several ways. Although the TI-92 outperforms the NATIVE HP48 in algebra and calculus, it does not fare nearly as well when compared to the HP48 running either of the recently-popular math packages ALGB or ALG48. These both are recently-developed freeware libraries which increases the HP48's capabilities in math in several ways. In some cases, the HP48 will outdo the TI92 in speed as well as capabilities. The ALG48 program is machine code while ALGB is pure System RPL. A writeup on each is included in this handout.