The SR-A1001M, by SII, has a 4” grayscale display, weighs 145 grams and is about 12 centimeters wide. A pointless item, for most of us, but in its form lurks a future generation of wireless pocket PCs and fat smartphones.
I wonder what the next acronym will be for these things? UMPC and MID are poster children for weak branding efforts.
Ultra compact and Ultra Limited Pocket Size Electronic dictionary from SII [Akihabara News]
No acronym, they’re called a “Wordtank” in Japan. Though much like ‘netbook’ Wordtank is a trademarked term owned by Cannon who’ve been making these things forever and it’s become a generic term for the ubiquitous pocket dictionary that virtually every business person and high school kid has.
In fact looking at this one, except for the four color grayscale, it’s pretty low on features. A cheap one will have a Japanese dictionary, thesaurus and kanji lookup, as well as a bidirectional English Japanese dictionary. High-end ones play mp3′s, read words to you, have 16-bit color displays, a full animated encyclopedia, technical references and a bunch more languages (to name a few features).
And the size and even the design isn’t really much to look at compared to what’s generally available. The only noteworthy thing is that it’s limited edition.
Everyone in Japan has something like this. Has for years. Doubt if they’ll get popular in the West. Our language is pretty insular and people rarely forget how to write letters of the alphabet.
I’ve seen tons of electronic dictionaries like this in Asia. What is the novelty in this one?
what #1 says. that is all.
theres probably three various thingies like this in my house right now.
Rob’s point was that soon enough there will be PCs in this form factor. He was wondering what they will be called. Hence the sentence: