Sharp intros Transmeta-powered 'Sharp Kitty' notebook

PERENNIAL Hammacher-Schlemmer and Sharper Image vendor Sharp Electronics has announced a small notebook that will feature a wedge-shaped format and a Transmeta Crusoe CPU, reports InfoWorld.

The Mebius Muramasa PC-MM1-H1W will be tagged as the cute "Sharp Kitty" in advertising and stores, and we think that's a smarter product name and evidence of good marketing judgement. This mid-size notebook will be 13.7 mm thick at the front and 19 mm at the back, and will contain the TM5800 Crusoe 867 Mhz processor, 256MB DDR RAM, a 15GB hard drive, one PCMCIA slot, two USB 1.1 ports, a built-in 802.11b wireless network adapter, and a 10.4 inch XGA LCD screen. The price is projected to be about $1,375 with availability in Japan October 26 and in the US some time in Q1 2003. No word on distribution in the UK and Europe yet.

Aimed at business travelers and SOHO users, the Sharp Kitty will have a battery rated at 3.2 hours. An extra battery will be available for up to 9.5 hours of use. Innovative docking will allow data synchronization while the notebook is in hibernate or suspend mode, which is unusual.

The Transmeta Crusoe CPU is noted for its unique "code-morphing" technology that translates X86 (and other) instruction sets on-the-fly and optimizes code to run faster for later interations: very slick.

The name certainly is cute, but their marketeers certainly wouldn't have called it a dog, now would they? µ

L'Inq
InfoWorld article