Casio to ship Crusoe-powered notebook

CASIO COMPUTER HAS announced details of its long-awaited Crusoe microprocessor-based notebook PC. The Cassiopeia Fiva, which was first previewed at the Comdex Fall show in Las Vegas in November of last year, will go on sale in Japan from March, according to a company statement.

Powered by the TM5600 Crusoe processor from Transmeta, Cassiopeia Fiva boasts a small size and light weight among its main selling points. It measures 8.8 inches by 7.8 inches by 0.83 inches and weighs in at 34.9 ounces, Casio said in the statement. Additionally, it features an 8.4-inch TFT (thin film transistor) LCD panel capable of 800-pixel-by-600-pixel (SVGA) resolution, Fast Ethernet and IEEE1394 networking ports and slots for PC Cards and Compact Flash cards.

Two versions of the notebook PC will be available. The MPC-205 is based on a 500MHz version of the processor and has 96MB of memory and a 10GB hard disk, while the MPC-206 model features a 600MHz processor, 128MB of memory and a 20GB hard disk. Both include Microsoft's Windows ME operating system.

Pricing information was not available.

Transmeta's processors have gained attention in the notebook and portable computing industry for their low power consumption, which in turn means longer battery life. Casio said the Fiva has a battery life of 4.5 hours on a standard battery.