The Avigo 10 (the only model of Avigo ever produced) is a

Personal Digital Assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA) is a multi-purpose mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. Following a boom in the 1990s and 2000s, PDAs were mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of more highly capable smar ...

("PDA") that was marketed by

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

from the years 1997 through 2000. It was sold as a lower-priced competitor to the

Palm Pilot The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics, later 3Com). These devices were launched on March 10, 1997. Accessories and pricing Pa ...

Technology

Like the Palm Pilot, the Avigo has a touch-sensitive

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...

LCD A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not em ...

screen, and can synchronize with a host PC using either a docking cradle or an

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

wireless connection. Unlike the Pilot, it has no built-in

handwriting recognition Handwriting recognition (HWR), also known as handwritten text recognition (HTR), is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwriting, handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens ...

capabilities; instead relying on the " T9" brand

predictive text Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the physical numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a ''prediction'' rather than r ...

entry software, in addition to an on-screen keyboard. Physically, the Avigo is larger than the Palm Pilot series, but smaller than the earlier

Apple Newton The Newton is a specified standard and series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Computer, Inc. from 1993 to 1998. An early device in the PDA categorythe term itself originating with the Newtonit w ...

, measuring 5.5 in. × 3.25 in. × .75 in. The casing is plastic, with a charcoal-gray matte texture. It has a hard flip-cover to protect the screen when not in use. Electronically, the Avigo has relatively modest computing power for a device from that era. The

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

is a modified 8-bit Z-80

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

running at eight

megahertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base ...

. It uses bank-switching to exceed the 64

kibibyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

memory restriction; a stock Avigo is equipped with one

megabyte The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Its recommended unit symbol is MB. The unit prefix ''mega'' is a multiplier of (106) in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one megabyte is one million bytes ...

flash memory Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...

with 680

kilobytes The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix '' kilo'' as a multiplication factor of 1000 (103); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standar ...

available. The device is primarily powered by two AAA cell batteries, and uses a CR2025 lithium cell for

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

backup. Some of the features of the Avigo that distinguish it from competing devices produced at the same time are: * The aforementioned T9 predictive text input * Support for running programs in the "

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

" orientation, in addition to "

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...

" * A larger screen than the Pilot, with no silk-screened writing area * A built-in

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

application * A slot for a memory expansion card (which expands the flash memory capacity to two megabytes)

External links

Archive of software for the Avigo

SDK for Avigo

Texas Instruments computers Personal digital assistants