The future of electronic products - Japanese style

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1990 by Lance G. Paavola

The annual International Business Show in Tokyo offered a prime look at the latest electronics and computer products on the Japanese market that might--or might not--arrive on U.S. shelves next year. Among the eye-openers:

* Sony's Data Discman, a handheld encyclopedic reference guide that you feed with small CD-ROMs;

* color laptops from Epson and Sharp with strikingly vivid and detailed displays;

* color fax machines with output that rivals the quality of the original color photograph;

* an extensive line of Sharp Wizard derivatives and plug-in cards of all descriptions;

* a fun, highly interactive Japanese-language-learning program with voice synthesis, designed by Pacific Educational Systems for English speakers;

* the Da Vinci digital-printing camera from King Jim Company, a high-tech, all-electronic version of the Polaroid concept;

* IBM's PS/55, with monitor, disk drives, and CPU combined into one Macintosh-like compact unit like its PS/2 Model 25 . . . but containing an 80386 SX processor instead of the Model 25's lowly 8086;

* laptops with RISC processors, which are used in this country only in very high-end desktop workstations; and

* heavy-duty laser printers/copiers in one unit from an unusual alliance: "Fuji Xerox."

On the same trip, a visit to Maxell's magnetic-media plant yielded even more glimpses at emerging technology, especially in storage media, including

* flexible disk shutters on Maxell's new Super RD line of high-density floppy disks that don't scratch the plastic shell the way a standard metal shutter does;

* floppy disks designed to withstand the extremes of temperature and humidity in a typical car (from -40 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit at 8 percent to 95 percent relative humidity) without losing a single bit of data;

* credit-card-size integrated-chip cards with embedded microchips that can be used throughout an entire "intelligent building" . . . for security, library checkout, cashless cafeteria purchases, and medical records;

* small, high-density memory cards used as disk substitutes in the Poqet, Atari Portfolio, and similar "palmtop" computers (the most expensive hold up to 3MB);

* every variety of tape for computer backup, including the compact digital-audiotape (DAT) format about to enter the U.S. audio market in force; and

* floppy disks of every size, description, and density, including 3.5-inch floppies that hold 12MB of data.