CeBIT 2000: Toshiba shows off techno-toys

Will Knight ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 25 Feb 2000 17:32 GMT

Electronics giant Toshiba has gone gadget mental at this year's CeBIT technology show in Hannover, Germany, showing off a paraphernalia of toys for geeks including a laptop, a wearable MP3 player and even computing binoculars.

These may be "prototypes", but a spokeswoman for Toshiba says that we'll definitely be seeing some of these wacky devices on the streets in the next two to three years.

The "conceptual laptop" at Toshiba's CeBIT stand consists of little more than a screen that can be bent and even rolled up. It has a polymer-based display that is currently being developed by British company CDT. Toshiba says that when fully developed, the display will feature telephony and handwriting-recognition.

The MP3 player, which is small and light enough to be clipped onto clothing, is just one of a number of prototype devices featuring Toshiba's new SD (Secure Data) chip. The ludicrous sounding binoculars are, in fact, designed to read video data stored on a SD chip.

The chip was developed by Toshiba, Panasonic and SanDisk, and is designed to prevent illegal copying of data. The chip won't launch for another year, and although it will only be able to store 64MB of data, the spokeswoman says that within two years its capacity will be increased to a whopping 2GB.

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For full coverage see ZDNet UK's CeBIT 2000 special.