Personal computing devices are based on three conceptual models: the stand-alone computer, the networked stand-alone computer, and the network interface computer. Surprisingly, the third model was first conceived not in the U.S. but in Japan, where the TRON Project began work in the mid 1980s on the BTRON-specification operating system, a real-time human-machine interface to a hypernetwork of interconnected computers and devices.

Unlike the U.S. "network computer" model, which depends on company LAN servers and huge browsers running on large operating systems, BTRON is compact yet powerful. The same BTRON3-specification source code runs in both PDAs and IBM-PC/AT compatibles. The commercial implementation by Personal Media Corporation, called B-right/V, adds a spreadsheet, scripting language, e-mailer, Web browser, and a World Wide Web-like hypertext filing system.

B-right/V R2 requires minimal hardware—an Intel 486DX microprocessor, 16 megabytes of main memory, and a few hundred megabytes of disk space—yet for the first time in personal computing history it implements a true multilingual environment allowing approximately 130,000 characters, mostly kanji, rendered in outline fonts.

B-right/V was first marketed in Japan on July 18, 1998. R2, released November 12, 1999, implements the true TRON Multilingual Environment with multiple 48,400-character planes switched via language specifier codes—31 planes defined, handling 1,500,400 characters in total.