Hitachi Software's StarBoards Selling Well in Europe

- Sales amount to over 2000 units, making StarBoard the company's third major strategic product, following its biochemical-related products and map systems. -

- StarBoard is rated top product over competitive products in U.K., winning the "Excellence Award 2000"*. -

StarBoard developed by Hitachi Software (President: Hiroyuki Kanekiyo, Headquarters: Yokohama) and launched on the European market in April 1999 is selling well, achieving sales of over 2000 units.

The product is a digital whiteboard capable of projecting the PC screen connected to it on its large screen and allowing users to enter text with an attached pen and the mouse.

D-Series model (front-projection type), currently sold in Europe, has the following features:

By connecting a PC to the projector, documents created by a word processor or presentation software can be displayed on the large board screen.

It allows users to write text directly on the board screen. Information written to the document on the board, corrections for example, can be saved and processed on the PC.

The StarBoard's advantages - effective presentation, easy operation, and easy hand-writing - are highly valued in Europe, and major companies and municipalities including DaimlerChrysler and Deutsche Telekom (in Germany) and Lyon city and Peugeot (in France) have introduced the StarBoard. The British government is investing large sums of money in computer education, and educational organizations such as colleges and boards of education have embraced this product. These have generated European sales of over 2000 units.

As a result of this activity, sales of StarBoard are increasing in England as well as other European countries, which led to StarBoard's winning the Excellence Award 2000 that is granted to excellent business equipment based on popular user vote. This award has a nine-year history, and voting is conducted annually by the major English magazine "BED."

Hitachi Software plans to launch the StarBoard R-Series model (rear-projection type) with a high-intensity, high-resolution LCD projector and a 70-inch screen.

*The companies and products nominated for the presentation equipment section of the Excellence Awards 2000 were:

1st - Hitachi Software's StarBoard

2nd - Stejes's PROJECTOR

3rd - Sony's Portable Video Deck & Projector

4th - Liesengan's Ultra-light Projector

5th - EFIUK's Digital Whiteboard