Taking (Digital) Pen in Hand

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt/Foster City

For a field that thrives on breakneck innovation, the personal-computer industry has not come up with a lot of fresh ideas of late. Since the introduction of the desktop computer in 1977, the laptop computer in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984, there have been quite a few additional improvements but precious little that has been truly new and different. Progress, as they say in the business, has been evolutionary, not revolutionary.

That is why a product introduction scheduled to take place this week in San Francisco has sparked so much interest. After nearly 3 1/2 years of top-secret development, a start-up firm called Go, in Foster City, Calif., is set to unveil a radically innovative small computer. It offers a new way of interacting with computers -- one modeled not on the typewriter, as most conventional machines are, but on the standard paper notepad.

The 2-kg (4.5-lb.) device is about the size and shape of a clipboard. In place of a keyboard and an electronic mouse, there is a large liquid-crystal screen and a small electronic stylus. Want to draft a note? Just write directly on the etched-glass screen as you would on a piece of paper; the writing is transformed into letters that appear as if by magic. Want to change a word? Just circle it. Want to cross out a sentence? Just scratch it out. Want to add a phrase? Just draw a little caret under the insertion point and start writing. Capitalizing on 30 years of research in handwriting recognition, the system can identify carefully printed letters, numbers and punctuation marks and turn them into clean, crisp computer-readable typescript.

Go's goal is to create a tool as simple as a pencil or a postcard but with the power of a computer behind it. If the product succeeds, the company could open up a vast new market for those millions of factory workers, sales representatives, inventory clerks, construction supervisors, police officers, claims adjusters and other mobile workers who might benefit from computerization but who either have never learned to type or just do not have the time to sit at a keyboard. Says Richard Shaffer, editor of the Technologic Computer Letter: "This is one of the most exciting opportunities that the computer industry has seen in years and years."

Go is not the first company to build a clipboard computer, but earlier versions were limited in their uses. Grid, a division of Tandy, has sold 10,000 of its $2,370 GridPads to people who have to spend a lot of time filling out forms, including pharmacists, pollsters and bridge inspectors. Sony and Canon have been selling similar devices in Japan, and virtually every & other computer manufacturer is working on one of its own.

But Go seems particularly well positioned to benefit from the budding market for battery-powered, pen-based computers. Rather than make the machines itself, the company hopes it can license its elegant control software, called PenPoint, to computer manufacturers who would in turn pay Go royalties. Among the firms that are expected to begin shipping PenPoint models within the next six to 12 months: Grid, NCR and the biggest computer maker of them all, IBM. The machines will probably sell for $4,000 to $6,000. Microsoft -- the software giant based in Redmond, Wash., that has supplied IBM's operating systems in the past -- has ideas of its own, however. It is set to introduce a competing system, Pen Windows, next month.

Software developers are betting that the market will be big enough to accommodate both systems. They are working on programs that would allow users to receive, alter and send faxes on the handy computers. With a cellular-phone hookup, lawyers could dial in to a legal data base and search for precedents without ever leaving the courtroom. With new word-processing software, editors could revise text using their familiar copy-marking symbols, although keyboards will still be better for extended composition. That is, until the next big idea comes along. Several companies are developing computerized voice-recognition systems that are capable of taking dictation faster than most people can type.