The man from IBM corporate communications was anxious to explain one thing about the wearable PC: It wouldn't be just a gimmick; it would have real, practical uses, even for journalists.
"Suppose you're dictating to the computer and someone else in the pub is behind you, shouting," said Mr Rory Caren, conjuring up in just a few words the essence of a newspaperman's daily grind. "The voice-recognition software will only respond to your voice and will filter out other voices," said Mr Caren.
For professions less vital to the welfare of the nation, there were other applications, he pointed out. Airline engineers could use it to call up wiring details as they worked, security personnel could dictate passport numbers and the computer would flash up details of the true bearer.
In fact, it can do anything a normal computer does. It has a 233 MHz chip, 64 MB of RAM and a tiny, exquisite, 340 MB hard drive. And it weighs just 450 grammes - less than a half pint.
Mr Caren's colleague Mr Tomoaki Hatta had brought the prototype straight from the lab in Yamato, Japan. He ruled out filling the world's Christmas stockings with the first wearable computer, but promised it would be available in Ireland by next October, at around £1,400.
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