Pentop Computer

They spent $100 million developing this device for children. It seems to have a lot of potential applications. For $100, it may sell well this holiday season. I'd like to see a more adult version though.

"There's something a little odd about the term "pentop computer." Terms like laptop, palmtop and desktop tell you where you use the computer - but you don't use the Fly on top of a pen.

Instead, the Fly is a pen - a fat ballpoint pen. (The company says that its focus groups found the term "pentop computer" infinitely sexier than "pen computer." Nobody ever said consumers are logical.)

The Fly is so fat because it contains an AAA battery, a computer chip, a speaker and, mounted half an inch from the ballpoint tip, a tiny camera. For all of its educational, interactive tricks, the Fly pen requires special paper whose surface is imprinted with nearly invisible micro-dots. As you write, the pen always knows where it is on the page, thanks to those dot patterns and the camera that watches them go by.

Logitech and other companies sell exactly the same technology to adults, but it's never caught on. Those pens simply store what you write - not as text, but just as a frozen graphic - and later transfer it to a Windows computer.

But Fly's maker, LeapFrog (maker of LeapPad, the popular interactive book reader), has much greater ambitions. In its incarnation, which is aimed at "tweens" (8 to 14 years old), no PC is required or desired; instead, you get crisp, instantaneous audio feedback from the pen's speaker."

From the NY Times.