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Technical Challenges for Designing Personal Digital Assistants

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Abstract

Personal Digital Assistants are battery powered portable computing devices that are targeted to the horizontal consumer market. These products contain more features than laptop computers in a much smaller form factor and with more intense price pressure. This paper will use the Apple Newton MessagePad and the Motorola Envoy to frame consideration of the design tradeoffs involved with Personal Digital Assistants. The issues considered include mechanical engineering and industrial design, analog I/O, display technology and power supply design. Each of these concerns is considered in the context of four key design criteria: low cost, small size and weight, advanced features, and long battery life. The MessagePad and Envoy indicate that a range of engineering choices exists and effective system design requires closely integrated optimization across multiple engineering disciplines.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical Engineering University of California at Los Angeles, USA

    William H. Mangione-Smith

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  1. William H. Mangione-Smith
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Mangione-Smith, W.H. Technical Challenges for Designing Personal Digital Assistants. Design Automation for Embedded Systems 4, 23–39 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008806216234

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008806216234

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