It may not be able to avoid airport metal detectors, but Colby Systems hopes that its new Mac portable will be less obtrusive than other entries in the portable market. The new portable from Colby is based on a motherboard from one of the compact Macs, the Mac Plus, SE, and SE/30. Standard on the Stealth (a tentative name still), will be a keyboard with function keys, trackball, battery, and double-supertwist LCD display with fluorescent backlighting (the screen alone sounds like a gymnastics routine). The weight depends on various options, of course, but a user can separate the 3.5 lb screen, keyboard, and trackball unit from the main CPU unit for lap usage, although it won't help in carrying.
Options include a 20 meg 'floptical' drive from Insite Peripherals, 20 or 40 meg 2.5" hard drives, and a 2400/9600 modem/send-fax modem card. Stranger and more intriguing options for the Stealth include an internal voice recognition system from Articulate Systems for $799. An extra $200 will add fax-modem capabilities to the voice recognition board. The final option is the Private Eye virtual-display, which is a head-mounted screen that produces an image of the screen floating in space before the user's eyes. For more information on the Private Eye, search for "Private Eye" or look through the articles in the 23-Apr-90 section of the TidBITS Archive.
Colby Systems -- 415/941-9090
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MacWEEK -- 08-May-90, Vol. 4 #18, pg. 4