Rugged Portable Offers Application Customizing Flexibility

ACME Portable Machines, Inc. (Azusa, CA) has announced the FLP-200, arugged portable computer about the size of a chubby attaché case andwith sufficient interior room for application-specific customizing.

The FLP-200 features a 2GHz Intel T2500 Core Duo processor and aminimum of 512MB of memory (expandable to 2GB). The FLP-200, accordingto the company, is designed for such applications as testing datalogging, and video recording for seismic, flight line, in-flight, andfactory floor environments. As well, the company believes that itsruggedness makes it also ideal for fire, police, emergency medicalresponse, construction, trucking, and off-road applications.

The FLP-200 offers two full-length internal slots for 32-bit PCI cardsand one mini-PCI connector. Because of ACME's open-systems engineering,the FLP-200 enables you to tailor unit for a specific application suchas you would a desktop workstation, this portable does not make you addan expansion chassis or a bulky case. Once the unit is set up as youwant, you can use run that application in the field for extendedperiods on battery power alone. According to ACME, the FLP-200's duallithium ion batteries provide a total of 100 watts of output power and190 watt-hours of capacity. This is approximately three times thecapacity of a conventional notebook, according to ACME. Additionally,the batteries are hot-swappable for continuous operation. The FLP-200can also use and 120v/220v power when available, which also servesrecharge its batteries.

The FLP-200 comes with a 100GB hard drive, and space is available foran additional pair of hot-swappable 100GB RAID drives that size. Otherfeatures of the base unit include a DVD-RW drive; FireWire, four USB2.0 ports, and Ethernet connections up to 1000 base Tx forcommunications; a full-size keyboard; and a 15-inch anti-glare LCDscreen.

The FLP-200 measures 12.75 x 16.5 x 6.5 inches (325 x 420 x 165mm) andweighs 20 pounds (9kg) with the standard dual batteries. A 512MBFLP-200, with a single 100GB disk and a dual-battery pack, costs $3,999.

To go to the FLP-200 page on the ACME Portable Machines website, click here.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.