Boston, MA, September 4, 2001 InHand Electronics, Inc., a leader in creating ultra-portable handheld device platforms for OEMs, today announced at the Embedded Systems Conference the availability of BatterySmart 2, the next-generation of its power management software. The new BatterySmart 2 software suite leverages the original BatterySmart hardware/software, and adds a series of features that provide developers with unprecedented power consumption visibility and control for their handheld device designs.

"InHand recognizes that as more companies are incorporating handhelds into their IT infrastructures, it is important that their Windows Powered devices offer maximum performance," said Keith White, senior director of the embedded and appliance platforms group at Microsoft Corp. "By incorporating BatterySmart 2 into its Windows CE 3.0-based handheld platforms, InHand is able to provide OEMs with a rich offering that will enable them to ship smart PDAs which offer the battery life and power businesses demand."

BatterySmart 2 provides developers of handheld devices based on Intel's StrongARM and XScale CPUs with three new features to control power consumption:

Dynamic clock-scaling: taking advantage of StrongARM's run-time clock-switching capabilities, the new BatterySmart software driver can automatically and unobtrusively detect periods of low and high performance and double clock-speed or cut it in half. Developers and end-users have total control over this feature, optionally enabling it under various CPU load conditions.

Reduced power peripherals: an improved resource manager and software drivers allow StrongARM peripherals such as serial ports to achieve significantly reduced power consumption while simultaneously improving system performance. As compared with handheld devices created with conventional sample software drivers and reference designs, power consumption during run-time I/O operations can be reduced by 10-30% with a similar reduction in CPU bandwidth requirements.

Improved analysis tools: to provide developers with a deeper understanding of the effects of power consumption, improved run-time analysis and logging tools offer real-time performance and power consumption tracking. These new tools allow developers to easily see the effects of various software and hardware modules on handheld power consumption and performance.

"BatterySmart 2 continues our commitment to providing handheld device developers with the lowest possible power consumption," said Andrew Girson, InHand's CEO. "With the new features of BatterySmart 2, OEMs have even greater control over the performance and power consumption of their handheld device, and the new analysis tools allow a better understanding of the factors that affect power consumption and performance."

BatterySmart 2 for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows CE 3.0 will begin shipping in September and will be included free on all Elf and Fingertip Development Platform starter kits. It also will be a standard part of all production platforms and will be included in all IP licenses.

A revised white paper describing BatterySmart 2 and detailing specific power consumption numbers under a variety of operational scenarios is available here: Using BatterySmart to Interpret and Regulate Handheld Device Power Consumption.

About InHand Electronics, Inc.

InHand Electronics, Inc. is an ultra-portable handheld platform provider to Original Equipment Manufacturers. The company provides commercial off-the-shelf developer's kits that are industrial-strength and power-efficient, for uses in the military, medical technology and telecommunications industries among others. The platforms accommodate standard wireless, data storage and acquisition plugins. Fingertip, Elf and OmniMeter are built on the industry's leading technologies including Intel's StrongARM and XScale RISC chips and the Windows CE operating system. The company's headquarters are in Rockville, Maryland. For more information please view the company web site at www.inhand.com.

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