Eighty years ago this month, former American President, Herbert Hoover’s 1928 Presidential Campaign Slogan was “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”. Today, political leaders are promising a PC for every child. It’s not a trivial pursuit either: Studies by the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) show that, on average, students learn 30% faster in computer-assisted learning environments than in traditional learning environments. And, according to the 2003 National Telecommunications & Information Administration’s National Online Study, a large proportion of young people are now using computers both in and out of school, with 84% of 5-to-9 year olds reporting computer use. Even so, the ratio of students to computers in elementary schools in the US is a mere 4:1 in the best of schools.

Our cover article, “ARM Powered Technology Helps Develop Young Minds” might well present the solution: a handheld device dubbed Teachermate, which sells for a mere $50 (less than the cost of 2 weeks worth of school lunches). The device, strong enough to handle the abuse metered out by your average 5-year-old is detailed in the article “ARM Powered Handheld Switches Kindergarten Kids on to Technology” on page 70.

PCs are not the only device available to everyone in the new age of technology: The article “ARM Helps Take Patient Care Where it is Needed” (page 74), details the use of the world’s first portable ultra-sound device, Sonsonite’s M-Turbo. The device is available to patients anywhere a doctor can take it – providing of course, there is a car in his garage.

From education to medicine and communications, ARM is changing lifestyles, which incidentally, is the topic of our exclusive interview with Toshio Miki, the Sr VP and Managing Director of the Communication Device Development Department at NTT DOCOMO, Inc. The interview (page 14) by ARM KK’s Takafumi Nishijima is titled “Digitization and 32-bit Support Drive ‘Lifestyle’ Mobile Phones”.

Changing lifestyles is a theme that runs through much of the issue, with two more articles on mobile phones and Mobile Internet Devices (MITs). “Openmoko Takes the Wraps off Neo FreeRunner Cell Phone (page 72), a Linux-based phone made to be opened and reprogrammed by developers and consumers alike. “OMAP 3 Platform Mobilizes the Internet Experience” (page 28) with Mobile Internet Devices, a cross between notebook PCs and mobile phones. Medicine makes another entrance in “The Sky is Falling in the Medical World” (page 38), an article with a foreboding title, but an uplifting remedy called Telehealth, which is becoming available to an aging, but techno-savvy population.

There are a dozen other articles in this issue, which are too numerous to detail here, but offer informative and entertaining reading. Speaking if information and entertaining, you will notice that this issue is published with another publication bound upside down in true old science-fiction paperback style. That publication is the ARM Developers’ Conference Show Guide. The ARM Developers’ Conference, October 7-9 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, is the one show not to miss all year! Hoover promised “A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”, and if you attend the ARM Developers’ Conference this year, I promise a selection of classes with an ARM processor-based solution for almost every application – including the car presently in your garage!