Credit Card-Sized Hard Drive From Cms Boosts Pda Capacity - Product Announcement

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, July 2, 2001

CMS Peripherals has unveilled Fire & Forget, a Type II PC-Card hard drive (HDD), designed to give PDA users an additional 2GB of storage capacity.

This credit card-sized HDD requires only a single PC-Card slot to operate. Weighing less than two ounces, CMS' Fire & Forget has a data transfer rate of up to 20MB per second, with an average seek time of 15ms.

Fast enough to stream video and MP3 files, Fire & Forget expands the reach of the PDA enabling users to explore applications typically reserved for higher capacity notebooks. For sharing large files, the Fire & Forget easily bridges the gap between the desktop, notebook and hand-held PDA using CMS' USB to PCMCIA Converter (MSRP $89).

Compatible with Windows 95B/98/Me/2000 as well as Windows CE (now called Windows for Pocket PC), the Fire & Forget adds 2GB of additional storage to any hand-held PDA equipped with a PC-Card Slot and running Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system, such as the Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC, or the hand-held HP Jornada.

Typically, these machines come with a scant 16MB to 64MB of RAM memory, making applications utilizing graphic intensive files, mixed media files, or any of the capacity-hungry programs difficult to integrate on a permanent basis.

Often PDA users much chose which programs, applications and files they will need for the day, and off-load others to make room.

With Fire & Forget, users simply insert the Fire & Forget drive into the PCMCIA slot in the PDA, and files can be quickly stored in native file format for fast, easy retrieval. Plugged into a non-host system, all of the user's files, applications, etc., are accessible from the Fire & Forget, which appears as an additional drive.

No installation of additional software is required and files can be accessed directly from the Fire & Forget drive. Fire & Forget requires no additional cables or power support, only the PC slot.

"With the rapid growth of the PDA market, many users are quickly discovering the application limitations of having access to only 64 MB of file space," said Ken Burke, President of CMS Peripherals. "Even adding Compact Flash memory will only provide users with a maximum of 512MB at an expense of over $600.

"In addition, more and more people are relying on their PDAs to store their latest file revisions, important data, schedules and contact information without a convenient way to back up that information when away from the office. Fire & Forget combines high capacity, ease-of-use, speed of operation and data protection in a hard drive no larger than a credit card."

Compatible with Windows 95B/98/Me/2000 as well as Windows CE (now called Windows for Pocket PC), the 2GB PCMCIA Type II hard drive is now shipping with a one-year warranty. Solutions are available through major distributors, corporate resellers, mail order and direct from the company's website, www.cmsproducts.com.

With more than three million CMS storage solutions installed in over 90 countries, the complete line of CMS mass storage products includes backup products for notebooks, notebook hard drive upgrades and data transfer kits as well as high capacity desktop hard drives.