[12.6] Hardware Trends of the Late 1990s

• Palmtop (handheld) computers -- Small portable computers weighing one pound or less.

• Personal digital assistants (PDAs) -- Palmtop computers with handwriting recognition and wireless infrared communications designed to adapt to the user's style of working. They lack keyboards and standard electrical connections of desktop computers.

• Network computers -- New simpler designs without massive operating systems designed specifically for Internet access, e-mail, and video game playing.

• RISC (reduced instruction set computing) processors -- New powerful microprocessors with fewer and simpler instructions but still capable of performing complex tasks by combining simple instructions and reducing processing time.

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