How and Why a 1998 Windows CE Device Found a Place in One 'Book User's Bag

A funny thing happened while cleaning out the garage.

Like all stories, this one started out with a daunting task (cleaning the garage), involved personal struggle and obstacles to overcome, and ended in an exciting climax of action and discovery.

You see, I have boxes full of junk, and as I went through some of them, I found one of the many answers to long-forgotten technological needs.

1998 Technology

What I am talking about is an HP Jornada 680 from around 1998. This is a "Jupiter" Handheld PC Pro, which is another way of saying Windows CE 2.11 with some pocket versions of Microsoft Office applications added on.

This nifty device is about the size of a MacBook battery and weighs about the same as well. In this tiny form factor is a half-height VGA screen (640 x 240) that has 256 colors (I remember there being a 16-bit color hack), both Compact Flash (CF) and PC Card slots, infrared, and a keyboard about half as wide of one in a laptop.

Sticking slightly out the back of mine is the extended capacity battery; I can't find the standard capacity one that is slimmer and lighter. This trim and fairly lightweight device will run for a full 8 hours on a charge, and it turns on and off instantly.

Not Obsolete

Looking at this thing in the context of 2006, there are some areas where this piece of technology was completely left behind. In other ways, however, it's remarkably current. In fact, I'll be bringing it with me to a legal conference in Texas for the single reason that I'll get into below.

I recently wrote an article about laptop power issues, Power Strategies for Using Your 'Book in the Field: Batteries and AC Adapters, and how with three batteries and an external charger I'm ready to go almost anywhere. This is true, but on the off chance that I can't get all of my batteries charged or that I use my laptop more than planned and run my batteries dry, the 8-year-old Jornada makes an excellent backup machine.

While it won't sync with OS X, as its too old to be supported by programs like The Missing Sync, it does have that magic CF card slot. With that I can save any writing I do on the Jornada to a CF card, then using a cheap CF reader I can download the documents to my Mac.

Another option is to email my writings to myself using the Jornada's built-in 56K modem, or even over WiFi through my Airport Express, which will function as a router while I'm in the hotel. (WiFi doesn't work on the Jornada at home, because the primitive CE driver and wireless client cannot handle 128-Bit WEP encryption, and that's what I have both at home and the office. I suppose if I reduced my security to 40-Bit WEP I could get the old Jornada online at home, but it honestly just isn't important enough.)

Taking Notes

Wait a minute, did I just say that I would take notes on the Jornada? While nowhere near as comfortable to work on a laptop, the Jornada is actually a lot better than something this small should be. The keys are small, and rapid typing takes some serious concentration, a light touch, and decent coordination, but with handwriting as bad as mine, it's the only option when the juice runs out - and it's a surprising decent option.

The trick to using a tiny keyboard like the Jornada's is not correcting your own typos, but just powering through. It's hard for me to keep typing when I notice the number 4 in the middle of a word, but the small keyboard and touchscreen navigation both are strong arguments in favor of editing the notes later on the Mac.

With prodigious typos, I'm up to about 35 words per minute on the Jornada, or 10 slower than I am on my PowerBook. That's not bad for a tiny device that runs for 8 hours on a charged 8-year-old battery.

A Worthless Toy?

I remember buying this thing thinking it was the answer to my wishes. My 1998 laptop weighed about 9 lb. and was a monstrous brick (Micron Transport Trek2), while the Jornada was about the same size and weight as one of its 90-minute batteries. My love affair lasted all of a month, when finally the reality of a crippled email client that only supported one account, extremely poor browsing, and a user interface with all of the ugliness of Windows 95 (and none of the convenience) sank in.

As a "worthless toy" in 2006, the Jornada can serve a niche as a decent emergency backup tool for taking notes and getting them to my Mac. But as the laptop substitute I hoped for in 1998, it's even further from the mark today.

In its favor, Windows Solitaire remains the greatest computer game ever, and the Word and Excel documents created on the Jornada open without any issues on the latest and greatest Office 2004 for Mac. As an added bonus, they open in AppleWorks as well.

I hope that I don't need to use my Jornada in Texas. It would be lovely if my batteries last the entire conference, but for those moments when the juice is dry and there's 30 minutes to go, I won't be missing out.

• Link: HP's Jornada 680: "The Best Little Handheld on the Planet!", Ed Zabrek, M.D., PocketPC Magazine
• Link: Hewlett Packard Jornada 680, HPC: Factor