The EO was an early commercial tablet computer created by AT&T, released in April 1993. Officially named the AT&T EO Personal Communicator it was more similar to a large personal digital assistant with wireless communications, and competed against the Apple Newton. The unit was produced in conjunction with the Matsushita, Olivetti and Marubeni corporations.

Among the EO customers AT&T claimed were: The New York Stock Exchange, Andersen Consulting, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, FD Titus & Sons and Woolworths.

EO, Inc., 52 percent owned by AT&T, shut down operations on July 29, 1994 after failing to secure the funding to continue.

Hardware specifics

Two models, the Communicator 440 and 880 were produced and measured about the size of a small clipboard. Both were powered by the AT&T Hobbit chip, created by AT&T specifically for running code from the C programming language. They also contained a host of I/O ports - modem, parallel, serial, VGA out and SCSI. The device came with a wireless cellular network modem, a built-in microphone with speaker and a free subscription to AT&T EasyLink Mail for both fax and e-mail messages.

Perhaps the most interesting part was the operating system, PenPoint OS, created by GO Corporation. Widely praised for its simplicity and ease of use, the OS never gained widespread use.

External links

• EO 440 and 880 specs
• The EO 440 And EO 880
• EO 440 receives one of 1993 Byte Awards