Franklin PC Card PDA due March in UK

To be sold under the Rolodex Electronics brand here, the Rex-3 is a credit-card sized 1.4-ounce organiser that sucks information from a host PC with a Type II PC Card slot. The device houses a glare-free LCD and 256Kb RAM; enough to hold about 3,000 contacts with five fields, according to the firm.

"The beauty is you can take a piece of your computer away with you," said Tim Ives, product manager for European consumer electronics at Franklin.

Franklin has already sold out over 100,000 devices since the US release in November 1997.

"Franklin had no idea of how the product was going to go," said Ives. "We sold out inside three weeks."

The Rex-3 will be available in two versions from mid-March: the Rex-3 (£129 + VAT) and Rex-3-DS (£169 + VAT) with docking cradle for connecting to PCs without PC Card slots.

Perhaps surprisingly, 97 per cent of sales have been with the cradle.