The Communicator is AST's newest addition to the Advantage line of personal computers. The Advantage 9312 comes with a 28.8 kbps DSVD modem (Digital Simultaneous Voice and Data), Digital Camera, and a varitiy of software programs that let you interact with friends, family, or people on the otherside of the planet. This is where the 9312 picked-up its nickname the 'Communicator'.
The modem and its phone capabilities are what truely sets this computer apart from the rest of the personal computers. The 28.8kbps DSVD modem lets you talk on the phone at the same time you're using the modem features. It also works with the Intel analog video camera, which plugs into a video-capture card in the pc and can transmit pictures at up to 12 frames per second. And it also comes with Intel's Video Phone software, which lets you use that camera to see both yourself and the person at the other end of the line on the screen (this is assuming your conversation partner has the same type of hook-up.
English: An old 8 bit Sound Blaster card seated in...
Sound Blaster Live! Value / Compaq / Intel / IBM /...
Intel Pentium II processor with MMX technology 350...Another advantage of the Communicator is AST's LifeLine which is a standard component of their technical support. This simultaneous telephone and data support, which makes use of Radish Communications' TalkShop software and the Advantage's DSVD modem, allows technicians to take information directly from your computer as soon as you authorize them to do so. Which means no more reading line after line of cumbersome configuration files, instead, the technician can download the files directly from your computer, make the appropriate changes and return them to your system in just a few seconds.
The Advantage 9312 uses a 166-Mhz Pentium processor which makes it fast and reliable. The 166Mhz processor has 64-bit Data bus and is capiable of dynamic branch prediction, data integrity, error detection, multiprocessing...