April 11th, 1995 - Creative Labs, the leading provider of multimedia products for PCs, today announced a family of 3-D wireless pen and mouse devices based on Creative's patented FreePoint infra red technology.

Available in the UK from the end of April, AeroMouse and AeroPen will each retail at £74.99 (exc. VAT) and AeroDuet will retail at £99.99 (exc. VAT).

"Like our voice-enhanced offerings, the Aero family is ideal for users at home and at work," said Dave Askew, Creative Labs' UK sales and marketing manager. "As 3-D and virtual reality applications become common place - for education, entertainment, graphics and publishing - the Aero products will be as integral to the desktop as today's keyboard and mouse."

Aero Product Features
Central to each Aero product is a 3-D receiver unit which connects to the serial port of a PC, much like a traditional mouse. The receiver module processes the infra red signals from the AeroPen and AeroMouse hand held transmitters, calculating the x, y and z axis location. This allows the Aero transmitters to operate above the desktop in a true 3-Dimensional workspace and take advantage of a new generation of 3D enabled graphics and entertainment software.

The Aero Control Panel Software enables the user to customise the virtual work area and configure the product for maximum productivity.

The user can switch from mouse to tablet mode, set for auto detection so that the system knows which device is in use, scale the work area size, and set the cursor size and performance characteristics.

The user can also switch from a traditional horizontal mode to a vertical 2-D mode for presentations and PC generated slideshows.

AeroMouse and AeroPen contain no moving parts and require no wires or tablets to transmit the signal to the 3D receiver, meaning greater reliability and freedom of movement. The hand held units operate on two AAA batteries and feature an advanced 'touch sensitive' power management system for maximum battery life.

FreePoint Packages
AeroPen and AeroMouse will be sold individually, and AeroDuet, which features both AeroMouse and AeroPen, will be sold with a powerful software bundle. Titles included with AeroDuet will be Fractal Design DabblerT, a Natural MediaT painting and drawing program for the electronic artist; HSC's Digital MorphT image morphing and warping software; Kai's Power ToolsT, which adds 33 plug in filters to further expand Dabbler's features; and Adobe's Gallery EffectsT, which features additional plug-in filters for Dabbler.

About Creative...
Creative Labs UK is a subsidiary of Creative Technology, the world leader in the development, manufacture and marketing of multimedia products for PCs. Best known for establishing its Sound Blaster system as the industry standard for PC audio - with over 6 million users worldwide - Creative also leads the market in multimedia upgrade kits, video boards and voice recognition technology.

Creative Technology was founded in 1981 and is based in Singapore. The company's subsidiaries include Creative Labs in China, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and the US. The European head office is based at Ruscombe, near Twyford. In January 1994, Creative opened its technical support group in Dublin, which provides telephone support to French, German and English-speaking customers across Europe. Creative's stock is traded on the NASDAQ exchange, with record sales in 1994 of $658 million - a 126% increase on 1993.