Start-up merges cell phone and PC into a handheld

CNET News.com writes that startup DualCor Technologies plans to unveil next month "the cPC, a full-fledged handheld Windows XP computer that also comes with a built-in smart phone that runs Windows Mobile 5.0." According to the company, the "cPC is 6.5 inches long, 3.3 inches wide, 1.2 inches thick and has a 5-inch diagonal screen." Reportedly, "the cPC's battery lasts long enough to let users run applications simultaneously for eight hours or more, uses Windows XP Tablet operating system, a 1.5GHz C7-M processor from Via Technologies and 1GB of DDR 2 memory. The cell phone aspect of the device has Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC phone edition, a PXA communications processor from Intel, 128MB of DRAM and 1GB of flash memory. Both the computer and cell phone share a 40GB hard drive.

Packed with a lot of features, the device will cost $1,500 which could be a problem according to Roger Kay at Endpoint Technologies. He said, "There are a lot of subsidies out there in the BlackBerry world, so people aren't used to paying a lot of money for them. Notebooks are going down in price. I don't know where the magic number is, but it is somewhere in the mid-hundreds."

Kay added, "It pushes the envelope on what devices can do. It will certainly get a lot of raised eyebrows."

I'm personally having a hard time imagining what this monstrosity looks like. Sounds like overkill, but I'm sure it will attract a lot of attention among the early adopter gadget geek crowd....