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Dana - the new Sinclair Z88?

All praise to Intel for what it has done in the last year with Centrino - to reduce power consumption on the average PC notebook - but can any of them reach 25 hours of continuous use? Dana can ... and it's got spreadsheet, word processor, email, e-book reader - and costs $400.

The trick is that this is a Palm OS computer, not a Wintel machine; and it has a small display - 560 by 160 pixels in horizontal viewing mode and 160 by 560 in vertical viewing mode. Where the typical PC notebook has 256 megabytes minimum memory, this has a total of eight megabytes.

And where a PC notebook has a minimum 20 Gigabytes of disk, this has none - but it can take plug-in Secure Digital units.

Nobody who sees this machine can fail to remember a remarkable pioneer in the portable computing market. Way back in the mid 80s, Sir Clive Sinclair launched a small notebook called the Z88 - thin, light, and capable of running for a month on ordinary AA cells.

Like the Dana, it was hard to sell into a market which wanted PC compatibility - but Dana is almost certain to follow the Z88 in attracting a loyal and enthusiastic - if relatively small - following.

AlphaSmart, Inc normally makes education technology solutions but describes Dana as "an affordable alternative to a laptop.

Dana has a full-size, integrated keyboard and a touch screen - like all Palm machines can have - that is approximately 7-1/2 inches wide and 2-1/4 inches high.

That's its main limitation; it can't replicate a PC display, or show a screen as it would appear on a PC. But for taking notes, for editing Word or Excel documents, and for email, this isn't important.

What it needs - and there are rumours that this will be provided - is a Web interface.

Dana by AlphaSmart can be purchased online at www.alphasmart.com or through the online Palm Educational Store at http://educationstore.palm.com . It can also be purchased by calling AlphaSmart's toll-free number, 1-888-274-0680 (for customers inside the United States), or by calling AlphaSmart at +1 408-355-1000.

The retail price of Dana is $399, and it includes Quickoffice spreadsheet, word processing and charting software in addition to education-specific software.

David Nagel, ceo at PalmSource, often preaches the advantages of the "small footprint" of the Palm architecture, compared with rivals. "The Dana by AlphaSmart shows the potential for innovation with Palm OS and further establishes the platform as an industry-leading standard in the education market," was Nagel's response when AlphaSmart launched this product.

Dana is designed with a high degree of flexibility. Students can use either input method - keyboard or stylus - interchangeably. Settings can be changed easily to accommodate individual requirements - such as whether they are left-handed or right-handed, how hard they press the keys, whether they prefer a QWERTY or DVORAK keyboard layout, or which fonts and font sizes they wish to use for applications.

In addition, the screen image can be rotated ninety degrees in either direction, allowing applications and content to be viewed vertically or horizontally.

Dana's design for flexibility includes accommodations for disabilities. These accommodations include the option for left-hand only or right-hand only keyboard usage, the ability to use large fonts on the screen, and support for sticky-keys (enables typing of combination keystrokes without having to press the keys simultaneously) and slow-keys (a mechanism for filtering unintended keystrokes that is helpful for individuals with unsteady hands).

Users can print their work directly to a USB or an IrDA-enabled printer, synchronize information with a PC or Macintosh computer with just a standard USB cable, or beam information to and from other IR-enabled devices. Finally, it can be powered by a rechargeable battery, AA batteries or with an AC power adapter.

Software Included with Retail Version of Dana by AlphaSmart

AlphaWord writing software, a full-featured word processor with font support, formatting, spell-checker and thesaurus.

Quickoffice from Cutting Edge Software, which enables viewing and editing of Microsoft Excel and Word compatible files on Dana.

Aileron Mail, email messaging solution for mobile computing.

Palm Reader, with wide-screen support for reading eBooks.

PrintBoy from Bachmann Software, which supports printing to IrDA and USB printers.

FontBucket font management software, from Hands High Software.

Dana weighs two pounds. It is twelve inches wide, nine inches deep and one inch high. It has two expansion slots for adding memory or Secure Digital (SD) or MultiMediaCard peripherals. http://www.alphasmart.com