EMate 300

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The correct title of this article is eMate 300. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

Apple Newton eMate 300 open.

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 $800 and was discontinued along with the Apple Newton product line and its operating system on February 27, 1998. ^[1]

1 Features
2 Design
3 iBook
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

[edit] 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.

[edit] Design

The eMate 300 featured a green-colored translucent durable case designed for intense use in classrooms, in addition it also featured a small handle joined to the main casing. 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. ^[2]

[edit] iBook

The iBook's design was similar to the eMate 300's.

Main article: 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.