thePipeline

The ruggedly handsome type

Itronix Corp. officials are introducing the GoBook III, a ruggedized notebook computer that they say puts state-of-the-art computing power into a tough package.

The ruggedized computing industry is "always making excuses for why we're not state of the art," said Matthew Gerber, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and business development at Itronix. "There are no excuses for this one. It's the latest

and greatest."

The computer features an Intel Corp. Pentium M processor running at 1.8 GHz, 2G of memory and a removable hard drive of either 40G or 80G. It also has built-in wireless capabilities and Global Positioning System and optional biometric authentication features.

The removable hard drive allows workers on different shifts, such as in law enforcement or combat, to share a computer without sharing hard-drive data.

The GoBook III comes with an ATI Technologies Inc. Radeon Mobility video engine with 64M of dedicated video memory to ensure that the video performance is fast and clear, he added.

Company officials will begin shipping the computer in late September, Gerber said.

Increasingly, information technology departments are becoming involved in purchasing decisions, he said, which gives technology such as Itronix's an edge. When a decision comes down to a head-to-head comparison between computers, he said IT managers will find that Itronix offers a powerful computer and a damage-resistant package.

Complete disaster

Iomega Corp. officials have a new backup system for disaster recovery. The REV SCSI drive, available in 35G and 90G configurations, is designed to replace entry-level SCSI-based tape and other backup devices used with servers.

SCSI, which stands for small computer system interface, is a standard used for peripheral devices. It delivers faster data transfer than standard parallel or serial port connections.

The drive, which attains a 25 megabyte/sec transfer rate, replaces older Iomega products, said Lake Price, product manager. There are other REV drives available using other standards, he added. The REV family uses a small disk that can hold 35G of data.

The new REV drive includes a software bundle that provides for full system backup and recovery, and data compression. n