Corel PDA to Bundle Java Suite

Jon Pepper

Does the world need another PDA? Corel (Ottawa, Ontario) certainly thinks so. The company that has been successful where others fear to tread (taking on Microsoft in the office suite market, for instance) has an interesting offering on tap. The Corel PDA (as yet unnamed) will be powered by a RISC processor and offer a choice of either monochrome or color LCD screen. The hand-held unit will measure about 3 by 4 inches and should retail for less than $500. The company currently plans to release the device in the second half of 1997.

Corel plans to bundle in a suite of applications, including e-mail, a notepad, a contact manager and scheduler, handwriting recognition, and voice annotation. So far, this sounds like pretty standard stuff. But a major part of what s ets the Corel PDA apart from other PDAs is the fact that all the ap plications, including a built-in Web browser, will be programmed in Sun's Java language. Corel's Java suite is slated to ship in the first quarter of this year.

The Java approach provides a number of advantages, Corel says. First, Java applets are relatively efficient, so they make sense for the somewhat restricted PDA environment. It also means that Java applets downloaded from the Internet should run without problem on the Corel PDA. Plus, the platform independence of Java means that any Java application (e.g, Corel Office for Java) should work on just about any Java-compliant platform, including Java-based set-top boxes, network PCs, and other devices. Furthermore, Java should encourage a lot of development from third parties because of this potentially large market. Corel plans to provide a truly open operating system so that developers will be able to create add-on programs for the PDA. The OS itself will be embedded as a kernel into the PDA with the Java Virtual Machine running on top of that kernel.

The device will incorporate integrated communications, so that sending and receiving e-mail or fax messages and getting onto the Internet will not require you to buy additional options or software. The Corel PDA will have a unique keyboard/docking station that will let it synchronize the database with the desktop computer, work as a battery recharger, and give the user a full-size keyboard.

The Corel PDA is being designed to operate in either portrait or landscape mode. The former will be used to work with the PIM-based functions, and the latter for Internet and e-mail access.

As PDAs begin to mature, functional units like the Corel PDA that don't overreach may well rule the market. And with its inherent cross-platform nature, the Corel Java-based office suite may appear on thin platforms where today's resource-intensive desktop PC applications can't fit.

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We Be Java'n

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Corel's new office suite looks like the others, but it's written in Java.