Cell Phone & PC Combine For New Handheld Device

It's a cell phone. It's a computer. It's the two invaluable companions of the modern executive in one.

DualCor Technologies next month will unveil the cPC, a full-fledged handheld Windows XP computer that also comes with a built-in smart phone that runs Windows Mobile 5.0.

The cPC is 6.5 inches long, 3.3 inches wide, 1.2 inches thick and has a 5-inch diagonal screen. It will be aimed at sales representatives and executives who travel extensively, said CEO Steven Hanley, who joined the company seven months ago.

There are signs of demand for such a device. A small but growing number of white-collar workers have begun to trade in their notebooks for BlackBerrys and other handhelds.

Sony and start-up OQO have already introduced full-fledged handheld Windows computers. Customers, however, have not snapped up these devices, in part because of short battery life and limited performance.

Through some engineering and design advances, the cPC's battery lasts long enough to let users run applications simultaneously for eight hours or more, he said.

"We seemed to have cracked the code," Hanley claimed.

The cPc jams two devices into one package, Hanley said. The computer part of the equation consists of Windows XP Tablet operating system, a 1.5GHz C7-M processor from Via Technologies and 1GB of DDR 2 memory.

At first, I'm thinking, this is just another attempt at the so-called "smart phone." However, the gigahertz chip used indicates that this has some real PC level processing power. Unfortunately, at the $1500 price tag, this device better be able to replace your notebook, as it is priced more than many of them.