Portable CD-ROM Drive Among New Hardware at Expo
 
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
WASHINGTON DC (Microbytes Daily News Service) --- Portable CD-ROM
drives, claims of faster drives, and services for producing discs
were among the highlights at this week's CD-ROM Expo. CD
Technology (San Jose, CA) introduced a battery-powered portable
drive that can work for about an hour of intermittent use on a
charge and is rugged enough to go through the airport luggage
ordeal. CD Technology also showed a transportable computer that
contained a CD ROM drive, a 20- or 40-megabyte hard disk, and a
3.5-inch floppy drive. The machine resembles a Compaq Portable
III.
 
Two exhibitors at the show, both major manufacturers of CD-ROM
drives for personal computers, Toshiba (Irvine, CA) and Hitachi
(Compton, CA), were both claiming to have the faster drive.
Toshiba said its drive is 20% faster than Hitachi's. Hitachi
said its drive is an unspecified percent faster than Toshiba's.
Neither company was willing to say exactly how fast their
drives are, or how that was measured.
 
Several companies offered services needed to produce a disc,
including software for converting data to a format usable on a
CD-ROM, disc manufacturing, and software for data retrieval.
One company, Knowledge Access International (Mountain View,
CA), introduced a package service that covers everything from
the initial software through disc production for $5294.
 
                              --- Wayne Rash and Jan Ziff
 
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