Tadpole Computer's New Comet 12 Secure Wireless Ultra-Thin Client Wins 'Best o FOSE' Award

15 April 2005

Tadpole Computer announced today that its newly launched Comet 12 secure wireless ultra-thin client won a
"Best of FOSE" award at last week's FOSE trade show in Washington, DC. Government Computer News, owned and operated by PostNewsweek Tech Media, reviewed hundreds of products at FOSE, the largest government information technology conference, and selected Comet 12 as the best product in the portable PC/notebook category.

The annual Government Computer News "Best of FOSE" awards recognize the most innovative and groundbreaking products and solutions in the government IT industry. Technologies are judged and awarded onsite at FOSE. The 2005 FOSE was held April 5-7 at the Washington Convention Center, where Tadpole
exhibited its award-winning Comet 12 ultra-thin client.

"The Comet 12 was a real shining beacon on the show floor of FOSE this year, drawing in a lot of interested federal users to take a look," said John Breeden, Lab Director and Senior Technology Analyst for Government Computer News. "With no local processing, you don't have to worry about loading software or keeping it updated on your client, and your system won't crash. Everything is handled at the server level, which makes it a secure system that makes sense for a lot of agencies."

"We are honored to be recognized by Government Computer News for this prestigious award that highlights the most innovative information technology products for the government market and displays them at FOSE before the largest audience of government IT buyers," said Mark Johnston, president and CEO, Tadpole Computer. "Government customers with thousands of notebooks know how painful it is to keep them updated, protected from viruses, and backed up, and how unhappy government users are when a notebook dies, is lost or is stolen. Comet 12 solves all of these problems for government users and lowers their total cost of ownership."

"Congratulations to Tadpole Computer on the Comet 12's 'Best of FOSE' award. This award is further evidence that Tadpole continues to be a valued partner with Sun Microsystems in furthering the award-winning Sun Ray ultra- thin client architecture," said Mason Uyeda, product line manager -- Sun Ray ultra-thin clients, Sun Microsystems. "Tadpole's Comet 12 has all the advantages of the Sun Ray in a wireless laptop. It is the perfect solution to satisfy government requirements for secure, seamless, mobile access, with zero administration and no chance of the client getting a virus or being compromised by a hacker."

"Congratulations to our partner, Tadpole Computer, on the Comet 12's 'Best of FOSE' award. The Comet 12 combines complementary best-of-breed technologies, resulting in an elegant solution," said Janet Kumpu president
and chief operating officer of Fortress Technologies. "Fortress Technologies' secure wireless gateways support a broad range of devices -- DOS, WIN, CE, Palm & Linux -- so our support of Tadpoles' Comet 12 ultra-thin client with Sun architecture is a natural fit."

The explosion of bandwidth and wireless networking has facilitated newfound freedom for government laptop users. But it has also added new security risks for those government agencies using Windows PCs. Comet 12
performs as well as traditional notebooks, but without any local data to be lost or stolen, and has session mobility with smart cards, and is a secure wireless solution that interoperates with Fortress Technologies' family of
security gateways which are FIPS 140-2 certified. In addition, Comet 12 has a day-long battery life.

With a 12" display and weighing less than 2.5 pounds, Comet 12 is an ultra-compact notebook version of the Sun Ray(TM), an ultra-thin client with no user operating system, memory or local storage making it virtually immune
from virus and worm attacks. Comet 12 runs any Windows, UNIX or Linux application on one terminal over NSA-certified wireless networks, and is the only commercially available solution that can provide this level of security
to multi-platform desktop applications with performance similar to running on dedicated desktop PCs.

Total cost of ownership for Comet 12 is significantly lower than for a managed and distributed PC environment. Major savings result from reduced system administration requirements where many PC systems managed by large
numbers of IT personnel are replaced by a single or very small number of UNIX/Linux system administrators. List price for Comet 12 starts at $1,295.

About Comet 12 and Security
Comet 12 is the desktop component of Tadpole's deployable, secure network access platform. The secure wireless networking improves dramatically the speed of deployment and mobility for rapid response teams and groups with a need to be highly mobile by eliminating lengthy set-up times for complex wired networks and all the ancillary equipment needed to support them.

Users of the Comet solution also gain improved usability through simple user authentication via CAC SMART cards, username/password and or bio-metric devices to gain immediate access to data and applications with no long start- up or boot times. Users can seamlessly roam their sessions between other Comet or Sun Ray ultra-thin clients on the same network by re-authenticating on another system. Faulty systems are simply removed and replaced with a working system with zero configuration of the client required -- users simply continue from where they left off.

Even if a battery dies in use, there is zero data loss. Simply replace the battery and users can pick up where they left off. All security policies and access privileges for users' access to information is managed on a few central servers instead of many distributed clients making for much simpler and more secure system administration.

About Tadpole Computer
Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Tadpole Computer is the leading provider of 64-bit UNIX, Linux and thin-client notebooks to the federal government, enterprises and end-users in technical markets. In the mobile computing market Tadpole works closely with Sun Microsystems as a Sun iForce(TM) OEM Technology Partner to design, manufacture and customize products and services that are complementary and compatible with solutions
from Sun Microsystems. Information on Tadpole and its products can be obtained at http://www.tadpolecomputer.com.

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