EMate 300

The eMate 300 was a personal digital assistant designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer to the education market as a low-cost laptop running the Newton operating system. The eMate was introduced March 7 1997, for US$800 and was discontinued along with the Apple Newton product line and its operating system on February 27 1998.

Features

The eMate 300 featured a 480x320 resolution 16-shade grayscale display with a backlight, a stylus pen, a full-sized keyboard, an infrared port, and standard Macintosh serial/LocalTalk ports. Power came from built-in rechargeable batteries, which lasted up to 28 hours on full charge. In order to achieve its low price, the eMate 300 did not have all the features of the contemporary Newton equivalent, the MessagePad 2000. The eMate used a 25 MHz ARM 710a RISC processor and had less memory than the MessagePad 2000 which used a StrongARM 110 RISC processor and was more expandable.

Design

The eMate 300 featured a green-colored translucent durable case designed for intense use in classrooms. The eMate 300 featured a dark green-colored keyboard similar to that of PowerBooks of the same era. Purple, red, and orange colored eMate prototypes were produced especially for show only and were never put into mass production.

iBook

The eMate's unusual design eventually influenced the first iBook series, which also featured durable plastic casing with a handle. However, the iBook featured a broader range of features and used the Mac OS, enabling it to run more software. The original iBook series, introduced in 1999, featured 300 MHz PowerPC G3 processors compared to the 25 MHz ARM 710a RISC processor used in the eMate.

See also

• Apple Newton
• Personal digital assistant

Notes

References

• Owen Linzmayer, Apple Confidential 2.0, pages 191-206, ISBN 1-59327-010-0 (2004)

External links

• Everymac.com - eMate 300 Specifications
• The Apple Museum - Newton eMate 300
• Applefritter - eMate 300
• IGM - eMate 300 review
• Compare the eMate and iBook
• Overclocking
• "Apple Gets An 'A'" at BusinessWeek
• Salon.com's review
• STREETtech.com's review
• Retrospective review at the-gadgeteer.com
• Byte Cellar: Newton eMate 300 As A Serial Terminal