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Jor-not-a Pocket PC? 112

Posted by emmett from the busted dept.
Bool writes: "HP was wrong when they claimed that the Jornada 540 series has a 16-bit color display. It was Jason Cluts who pointed out that the supposed 16-bit display was actually a 12-bit display. HP has issued an erratum on the subject that you can read here. You can find more details at this Web site." Apparently, the USB is slower than it should be, too. Has anyone else played with one of these things?
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Jor-not-a Pocket PC? More

Jor-not-a Pocket PC?

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  • I bought one of these things and found it was great except between conflicts between the HP Dialer and the MS Dialer. They were both tempermental where one would work then stop and the other would work and stop and so on and so forth. I gave up on it when I found i couldn't FDISK the thing and reinstall the o/s. (Most MS Problems are caused by the vendor not the user)
  • I think the answer's obvious, but let me say why I think it is.

    Simply, as you said, with something that small there's really not much of a point to color. With the kind of information you'll generally be storing on your PDA, color won't really be a useful addition (grayscale can be handy, but beyond that, color doesn't really improve things much). About the only thing it's really good for is for playing SimCity for Palm (yes, there's really such a thing - I can't find the URL, but I have seen it).

    So yes, I'd say it's technology just for the sake of technology... I don't really think it'll be particularly practical. (One reason when buying a Palm, I skipped the IIIc in favor of a Vx.)

  • oops! (Score:4)

    by tcd004 ( 134130 ) on Sunday May 21, 2000 @06:31PM (#1057478) Homepage
    HP also forgot to mention it doesn't fit in your pocket either.

    tcd004

    Here are my Microsoft [lostbrain.com] and AICN [lostbrain.com] parodies, where are yours?

  • I believe that it was called the E-mate. From what I read about it, it was a newton with a keyboard and a clamshell case. I'm not sure that Apple ever actually made this product. Anyone know any differently?
  • Not to flame, but how does this merit a score of 5 as insightful? It merely points out that the HP knew about the problem before hand. In my opinion, that's not too insightful. It's informative at best. This is exactly what all the dicussion in the last article's forum was about. Entries that are good enough to merit a three or four get boosted up to a five (which they don't quite deserve) due to poor moderation. (Sorry if I offended you, Mr. Cluts)


    --------------------------------------------

  • My side of the story (Score:5)

    by jmc ( 4639 ) on Sunday May 21, 2000 @06:37PM (#1057481)

    I'm Jason Cluts, the one who supposedly pointed out to HP that the display is only 12-bit.

    I just wanted to note here that I wasn't necessarily the one who pointed out to them the Jornada was only 12-bit. I think we can all assume that HP knew this well before I brought it to their attention. All I did was rant on a public message board about how the display was obviously not 16-bit.

    According to someone I spoke with at HP, it was only after reading these comments that they looked into the matter and discovered the Jornada was only 12-bit. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's what I was told. Personally, I think they realized they weren't going to get away with marketing it as 16-bit after reading my comments.

    Of course, that's probably just a small part of the whole story. If nothing else, the story I was told by them was just a convenient way to own up to a rather embarrassing situation. Maybe we'll get some further insight into the whole matter when HP makes their official statement tomorrow. I somehow doubt it though.

    I still have the Jornada but I'm relatively sure that I'll swapping it in for a Palm in the coming weeks. HP will have to come up with something really good to keep me from dumping the thing.

  • I've used a Psion series 5 for quite a while, and have just upgraded to a Casio E115 Pocket PC. Overall, I'd say I prefer the PocketPC. It all depends how you work. I miss some stuff from the Psion, but the Casio makes up for it with other stuff, and it's a bit smaller. And it's color. And it can play my MP3's, etc.

    thenerd.
  • How often does netscape segfault in linux?

    Um, that's not the kernel's fault. That's Netscape writing a buggy application. Netscape on Windows has crashed a considerable number of times for me as well.

  • No harm, no foul.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • I'm sorry, but you're entirely wrong about Windows/MSIE being better than freenix/Netscape because of stability. Internet Explorer has had dozens of _known_ security vulnerabilities. It may seem more "stable" but it's certainly not coded by people who know what they're doing. With regard to crashing, ask your J. Random User whether {,s}he would rather have the computer lock up or crash completely or have to restart the web browser.

    It's pretty stupid that people would want to use Windows rather than a freenix because of Netscape. Netscape is nowhere nearly as unstable as these people think; the last time I've had it crash was trying to view a page with very, very evil CSS/layers/etc. It wasn't kosher stuff...

    Anyway, if I really wanted, I could be writing this in IE in Windows 98 in VMWare, which I set up yesterday. Guess what, though? I'm using Mozilla, and IE is total crap ESPECIALLY when I can compare them side-by-side.

    --

  • palm [...] has 2 bit color

    Take a look at the colour Palm IIIc and colour Palm OS. 3Com (wisely) stayed away from colour until they could do it without compromising battery life too much, but the colour support in the OS is good, stable and not hard to re-engineer onto existing apps.

  • When reading HP's erratum, this is the bit that really cracked me up:

    HP apologizes for any inconvenience and confusion caused as a result of this unintentional error.

    One wonders what other kinds of errors HP makes.

  • There is only publicity, not bad publicity.

    Tell that to Battlefield Earth, the movie.
  • It's called an eMate.

    http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/newton.html
  • ... before you go spewing off rhetoric about what you think you know.

    MS are banning *all* software sales on EBay, regardless of whether it's a prepackaged, fully licensed, valid version, or not.

    Idiot.
  • Have you ever tried it? Probably not, just like most other Slashdotters. I find that /.'s are quick to react to articles they never read, software they never ran, and products they never tried.
  • MS had nothing to do with the Jornada color SNAFU. Why are you trying to blame MS for HP's problems? Slashdot is in full effect here ...
  • This is no more an obscure story than some minor development rev number for some little-known Linux application.
  • It's pretty sad when all we have to do is complain about the difference between 12 and 16 bit color. Can you tell the difference by looking at it? I have both the new 545 and the old 430. They both look great. And even though the pocketPC version is another Windows CE box. This one is a lot less windows-like and much more suited for the handheld platform. Well it is Rev 3 right??
  • Re: WinCE 1.xx had some serious problems, and Microsoft has learned from these problems and has made what I feel is the most stable OS in their product line.

    That's just too funny
    ___

  • Apple is great at product design. Their products look cool and have really cool features. That being said, the "coolness" can't make up for missing functionality so I won't be buying one just as soon as I won't be buying a VW Bug. It's cool but cool is just not enough for me.

  • huh? (Score:1)

    by delmoi ( 26744 )
    I heard that directly from microsoft. Wince uses a giant registry, instaid of a normal filesystem. How much do you know about the WinCE filesystem? idiot.
  • Pollmastah has a sid Pollmastah has a sid here [slashdot.org]

  • Only when someone accuses his opponent of being a Nazi. Simple mentioning 'nazi' does not count.
    Actually... to quote the Jargon File [slashdot.org]'s entry [tuxedo.org]: "[Usenet] 'As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.' There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups."

    You haven't been around long enough to tell the difference, it seems.
    I'll just let the quote above respond to this one...
  • . I have a LaserJet 2100N - leaving the almost useless JetDirect managent software aside, it FOLDS OVER the top of pages when I'm trying to print double sided (and jams every 6 or so). OK on single pages, but why use twice the paper? I don't have the room for a full-duplex printer.

    Use better paper.

    Then there's my external CD-RW drive, a 7200e with driver software by Shuttle - utter shit. The only way I made that lemon useful was to take the drive out of the enclosure and put it in a machine as an IDE device. The early 620LX CE machine had hinge problems, and keyboard that felt DEAD. It's a long, long list, and a sad one when you remember the quality of earlier products, like their calculators and older printers (wish I had my 6MP back).

    Those are OEM'd by HP, they are actually made by Mitsubishi.

    As for the overall quality of those products though, you get what you pay for, the market HP is going after with those level of products is joe average home pc user, not a user that needs real industrial strength.

  • And to think that I was considering buying a Jornada a while back...

    On a related note, and not to start a flame war, what's the deal with color on the PDAs?

    I mean I've seen the color Palm, the Jornada, the Casiopeea, and although I liked the way they looked, I couldn't find any real use for it.

    The screen is still too damn small for any interesting graphics to be displayed (imagine viewing an image from digitalblasphemy.com and you'll understand). And what else would you need color for?

    Some people said it makes some information more readable, or make certain parts of it stick out, but I can't agree. I've been using my monochrome Palm for a long time, and it's been more than enough....

    So Why color? Is this technology for the sake of technology, or is it really useful, and I just don't see it?

  • Use better paper. I disagree. A good printer should be able to accept all paper that the manual says it can, and then some (within reason), without mangling paper. I would rather pay more for a printer that takes any normal kind of paper you feed it than pay less for a crap printer so I can pay more for certified HP brand paper and supplies. I shouldn't have to get paper that fits some kind of very exacting tolerances if it can take a variety of thicknesses, take label paper, iron-ons, transparencies, etc, basically what HP tries to sell the average joe. Some printers (actually, most of the ones I've seen) can't handle the slightest amount of curl properly. Also, the Deskjet that I have mangles the last sheet in the tray and won't quit printing unless I pull the power to pull out the ink-soaked munched up piece of paper. Unfortunately HP seems to make the best printers in their price ranges. I wish someone had the resources to show them how to make a better one.
  • Hey man, normally I would agree with you. I mean who really cares about a 4 bit color difference in a product that most of us don't (and will never) own? But hey, Its Sunday night and not much else is happening in the world (Hopefully most everyone here is talking about the good X-Files Ep tonite, but I digress). I'm just glad to have something to read before I go to bed.

    There'll be better stories tomorrow, I promise.

    Pete

  • Looks like HP made a mistake. I wonder what if anything the buyers of these PocketPCs will ask for, or if any will want their money back.

    I do wonder what one really needs with 16 bit color on a tiny palmtop screen. Ok, I can see the advantage of color and LCD backlighting and all that stuff, but for the applications now used in these things, is it really necessary? The popularity of the Palm series is proof that you do not need colors to make an incredibly useful and easy to read product. Color screens have lots of problems like higher cost, much higher battery consumption, etc. Palm has recently introduced a color model [palm.com] of the Palm, but it has the same price and battery limitations, which means that it probably won't be as popular as the really nifty looking and lightweight Palm V [palm.com].

    I've used and tried a lot of PDAs before (all the way back to a Tandy Zoomer that came out something like 5 or 6 years ago). To me, there's a much smaller niche for PDAs that try to do everything (PocketPC) than those that are really quick, efficient and easy at simple datebook/contactmanager/notes (Palm).



  • Please pardon me for asking this obviously ignorant question -

    What is "Pocket PC"?

    Is "Pocket PC" a newer version of Windows CE?

    How does it compare to the (older versions) of Windows CE? Is it blated?

    Is "Pocket PC" slim and elegant? How does it compare with other embedded OS, such as pico-BSD and RTL (Real Time Linux)?

    Has anyone ever did any comparison (feature and/or performance) on "Pocket PC" versus other embedded OS ?!

    Can anyone please reply?

    Many thanks in advance.

  • The Newton isn't the only promissing thing they've orphaned.

    What was the name of that ruggedized mini-laptop that Apple released? It had a weird contoured screen and was smaller than a laptop but larger than a Win-CE device. Supposedly, it was aimed for sale to schools. I saw a kid with one on a bus and thought it was the coolest looking thing.

    Anyway, I guess my point is that Apple is famous for innovations they let wither and die.

  • I've had the displeasure of working with the earlier Jornadas in both the handheld and palm varities. They are nothing but a large headache. Conversely, I've found both the Palm III, and especially the Palm VII to be handy, useful, and fun. The problems with the Jornadas are multifold. First of all, Windows CE 2.0 is an embedded disaster. The only functionality it provides which is slightly cool is the sound recording interface built in to the Jornadas. Along with this feature though comes a physical footprint that is unwieldy. Add to that the ridiculous fold down plastic lid and you have something that would only fit in the pocket of the baggiest beach shorts you own. It remains to be seen whether or not color is useful in a PDA. When more of them use quality bitmap images, perhaps this will prove to be a necesity. Until then, using color isn't terribly useful. For the additional cost, there isn't enough value added for my money. Skip the cost and buy a Palm VII which has cool remote Internet capabilities. HP and Sony (Casiopeia) need to rethink their PDA strategy. Microsoft hasn't proven to be an automatic win in this arena, and doesn't look good anytime soon. The "Windows powered" stuff looks promising... but then so did CE before I started working and programming in it.
  • Okie. Thanks.


    --------------------------------------------
  • Also, use *fresher* paper, that can help. (Yes, there's 'best-before' type quality on printer paper, especially those used for laser printers).

    Paper that has been sitting around in the open for several weeks absorbs moisture, which distort its characteristics. This can cause the paper handling mechanism to jam on it a little bit.

    Personally, I've seen very abused printers printing perfectly, simply because they print so much, they run through a ream in a day, but no creases, no paper jams (except user-created ones [i.e., opening the printer while a page is still loaded]), etc. Because that ream of paper is in the printer for only one day.

  • Wonder if they'll learn from this, that their most stable OS happens to be the smallest..........Naaaaaaaaahhh!


  • I wouldn't be surprised if a registry is hidden somethwere under there, adding even more bulk and hp requirements.

    Actualy, from what I've read wince has nothing but a registry.
  • Pathetic devices, those. They cost $800, way to much, really. And they were ugly to. My highschool got some.
  • well, i can see a use for color. just not right now. when your PDA is connect to the net, wirelessly. viewing maps or browsing the net, could use color. and yea, some games. but untell i can view maps via the net. i dont see the point.

    and yes, i have tryed some mapping software for the palm. bus route loose meaning if you can't tell witch is red, or green.


    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • My girlfriend has a journada (she is a pharmaceutical sales rep...and thats what they give them for signatures and whatnot...)...

    From what I have heard/seen....those thing have a ways to go...there were a lot of problems when her company tried to transition to them and those things are horribly undurable for being so transportable. I have droppped my palm down 11 concrete stairs (not on purpose I assure you) and not a problem. Hers fell off her bed on to the carpetted floor (while it was closed) and was busted.

    Forget about durability...and the thing is still a lil pos. I guess I just have too big of hands...and too unsteady of hands..but the thing was hard to do anything on and hard to see. portability can only go so far...when it becomes eye straint to use it...forget it. if all her company wants is signatures that thing would be great...but they expect her to use it as a call tracker too...what a pain in the ass. I say give her a palm device and a laptop. Usability and portability can only go so far...until the monitors inside eyeglasses and stuff like that come more prevalent.
  • I just wanted to say I didn't use the palm looking model...it was the flip top model with the lil keyboard and all...
    So I apologize since my comments may not be as relevant

  • DOH! (Score:1)

    by 348 ( 124012 )
    Leave it to /. readers to once again find the errors that others apparently miss.
  • I have a Compaq Aero 2110 that has rechargable batteries. It can handle two or three days of heavy use without recharging. If your habit is to put the device in its cradle every night or so as mine is then you never, ever have to worry about batteries. It's not an issue.
  • Now things are getting really confusing. I've got a Jornada, and Slashdot is wrong; it does have a 16-bit display, with a full 65,536 colors.

    Apparently, the HP erratum is actually an error; it was the result of miscommunication between management and several systems analysts. The original specs are correct.

    Yu Suzuki

  • I though with the new CEO and new management over at HP, this sort of bad PR would go away. Guess things slip in a big company, but it makes one wonder about quality control . If they are having trouble with validaing a single products architechture before it goes to press, what else is slipping through?

  • I own a PalmVx, and I can tell you this. Simplicity is a good thing when it comes to a PDA. Also, I get about 2-3 weeks battery life on my palm. So all I have to say is. PALM > POCKET PC
  • I thought I saw someone earlier pose the question:
    "How many different colours can a human see?"

    Anyone??
  • Wake me when I can get a pocket device, running on two AAA batteries, with a back-lit truecolor display.
  • I seem to remember that the IIIc can only display 4096 colors out of its 16bit palette at one time as a reflection of the technology of the LCDs.
  • I agree!
    i started with a nino 300, then got a 500, and now got a jornada 545
    Wince 3 is *very* nice, much better then palm, IMO
    i like it a lot and it helps me organize my crazymadhectic life ;)
  • To clarify,since you have one, allow me to ask a question.
    right now, as you hold the HP PDA in your hand, how many colors do your eyeballs see?
    ___

  • Re:DOH! (Score:2)

    by 348 ( 124012 )
    I'm sure microsoft would want to be first in line. :)

    Seriously that's not a bad idea as long as you had your ducks in a row first. Things like insuring licensing was under GPL and the product, if hardware had full *nix support.

  • Hrm... I agree that a lot of people seem to comment too quickly about NT crashing/BSOD'ing. I've worked in environments where they had big-ass NT server boxen, and they stayed up 24/7. I've also found 2K damn stable running SMP on a BP6 (which ain't exactly renown for it's SMP stability, oc'ed or not), with video card drivers being the biggest stability flaw. I've had hard uptimes of 3 weeks easy, with virtual uptimes (where I manually rebooted to upgrade something) of around 5 weeks+. My Linux NAT/server box (vanilla RH install) used to spontaneously reboot more often than my 2K box did too...and my room-mate's X server used to crash fairly often on him... Not trying to pick a fight, but I think a lot of people need to consider their opinions more carefully. I've only ever used Solaris for a coupla hours tops on workstations, so I don't feel qualified to comment on it's abilities/stability, I think a fair number of /.'ers should consider applying a similar policy to the much-despised M$oft.

  • CE is a failure (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I recently bought a Casio E-105 PDA for $599 (the standard running price at the time), on the box and in the documentation it says clearly that its "upgradeable". I was previously a Palm III user, and was intensely dissatisfied with the display and resolution, and the relative lack of cpu power in the Palms. I started coding for CE stuff, the interface was horrid and bloated, although powerful. It was clearly a desktop computer to pda hack. Casio promised speed, power and easy synching. What speed? the thing is slow as molasses in a freezer, granted, it has power, you can do a lot with them, easy synching? nothing could be farther from the truth, the synching process (AS3.0) was completely unreliable, and most of the time didn't work properly. No matter, I could bear with it til the next CE upgrade... About a month after I bought my Casio, the PocketPCs came out, and along with that came Casio's announcement that they were not going to offer upgrades for the Casio e-10x series. Needless to say (and i hope this doesn't get moderated down), I was severely fucking pissed off, and out of desperation to reclaim as much of my hard earned cash i could, i decided to sell it on Ebay, but now looking on Ebay the going rate for the E105s has dropped drastically. I am now the happy owner of a nice new shiny Palm IIIc, I now remember why I so clung to my pda, as a reliable store of information, a friendly reminder of appointments, etc. Thanks Palm, and you can count me as a buyer when those StrongArm palms come out. To Casio: fuck you! what you've done to your customers is virtually fraud. hope you and your company rot in hell for duping so many folks out of quite a sum of cash. To the DOJ: rumour has it, you're looking at going after Palm next, for anti-trust. I have to ask: Why? Becuase they offer quality products that do what they say? pshaw! Palm Ubers Alles! Signed, Your Happy Born Again Palm Owner, jakob@absent.org PS: I have a nice Casio E-105 for sale, including a Rhinoskin 2000 case, and an MS Press book on CE 2.11 coding, e-mail me at the above address and make me an offer.
  • Come on mods, it's sort of /. on topic. There was a related story earlier on the potato computer, and this poster at least made the effort to port it to an otherwise lame thread.

    Moderation Totals: Funny=1, Off-Topic=1, Showed a little effort=2, Insightful=1, Total=5

  • I quote,"...Microsoft OS. WinCE 1.xx had some serious problems, and Microsoft has learned from these problems and has made what I feel is the most stable OS in their product line." Ok, I'll bite. I have several friends that develop under WinCE and have for several years. As I recall the only thing they complain about is how M$ says WinCE can do/does do something and it simply doesn't or has not yet been completed. Yet it was sold has being able to do it. Now as for the most stable OS...I have NT 4.0, Linux (SuSE and Red Hat), 64-bit HPUX 11, Solaris. Individually the Unix and Unix-like and combined have a significantly higher level uptime compared to the NT Servers. I can also serve web content faster with a Compaq 1275 (32MB, 333 PII) running Red Hat than I can with a dedicated NT Server with (512MB, PIII 500). Put that in your marketing. Did I mention...the Compaq is a laptop =D Through the years I have found it amazingly difficult to do many things with any particular OS I was using. I am not so much concerned with one OS being better as I am with is functioning to spec. I have issue with M$ because many more things than ususal do not function as spec than other OS's. One the other hand M$ systems really help some of our clients how require ease of use products on the low end. That said...Long live Palm OS! Everything else is just gingerbread!
  • Unless the iPaq is a designation for an entire line of computers. The iPaq is a cheap iMac ripoff that sucks. I'm sitting on one right now. It's nice and small, but the CD-ROM drive is NOT a standard option. (Yes, that's right, NO removable media at all!), and it only has Ethernet, no modem.)
  • Use better paper

    I should have mentioned - I have HP-branded, specific-for-LaserJet, $2 more than other brands paper.

    Those are OEM'd by HP, they are actually made by Mitsubishi

    No, the drive itself is a Philips. And even if HP didn't make every nut and bolt like a hi-tech Unabomber, it says, right on the front, "HP". When you place your name on a product you wear the reputation it creates.

    the market HP is going after with those level of products is joe average home pc user,

    Silly me. I must not have read all those advertisements closely enough.

    (click click)

    Ah, there it is - on the HP web page - all of my products have "*Does not actually work. Choose a more expensive product to receive basic functionality."

  • You're right. Casio has successfully managed to alienate a huge potential market share due to their decision on the upgrades to PocketPC. Casio has a problem that's plagued them since the 80s: Good quality products originate in the Japanese market and then are brought over here. THings happen, though, and you want customer service at your access when they do. Casio's US customer service is some of the worst I've ever seen.

    If you do further research, you will find that other companies who produce CE-based PDA units are offering upgrades at reasonable rates. I don't have actual monetary amounts at hand right now, but costs run in the range of anywhere from a free downloadable upgrade to ~$50 and on up to $99 in one instance.

    I'm sorry you've been burned by Casio. I know I was and have promptly sold off my E-100 in disgust at what they've done. Don't blame Microsoft for this decision though. The manufacturer is the culprit.

    crisis
  • This doesn't at all suprise me that there was some catch with the 540. I messed around with one as well as some previous Jornada products, and I was particularly interested, but due to it being an HP product, forget it. I bought a ScanJet 4100C scanner about a year ago, and I wanted to look for drivers for it, other than Win98, and lo and behold, HP has canned it, and no longer plans to support it. It is a really decent USB scanner, too. All this says to me, is that if I was to buy one of these devices, I would simply have to chose another company, or really consider getting the Saint Song espresso, or perhaps their next generation product (if there is one).
  • One viewpoint...

    My mom "upgraded" from an HP 200LX (DOS based) to a HP 320LX (WinCE). Very soon she was having all sorts of difficulties with it crashes, being unable to sync, behaving erratically. So when WinCE 2.0 came out she immediately got HP to send a new base ROM.

    In the end, she ended up going back to WinCE 1.x...
  • DO you have hte same model of Jornada?

    I have a 680 (With a keyboard and 640x240 screen) for which you could download a 16-bit (64K) color driver, though it was originally only 256 colors. The change was very obvious, though I don't have any real good way to ascertain it IS actually 64K colors, but since it wasn't listed in the errata, it may just be this particular model (548) that isn't actually 16-bit.

    Of course, if that IS your model, you might be right...

  • Different types of 12, 16 bit displays (Score:3)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Sunday May 21, 2000 @09:47PM (#1057537) Journal
    I've used a variety of limited-color-choice displays over the years. Remember CGA? Or 8-bit displays on Suns? Some of the limitations really matter, some don't. The big difference is between true-color displays (which are a bit lame with a limited number of bits) and table-lookup displays (which give you a lot more choices, but tend to flash around when different processes mess with the color tables.) With true-color displays, 12 bits means 4 bits per color; 16 bits usually means 5 bits per color and do something with the leftover bit. That's not a big difference for color photographs, but it's an immense difference for handling gray-scale pictures - 16 grays vs. 32 grays vs. 64 grays makes a lot of difference, though it's less important once you've got at least 64 gray levels (6 bits). I used to work with satellite images, and it made a lot of difference having >=64 gray levels - things went from banded-looking to continuous-looking around that level. The real data was originally from 12-bit A-to-D converters, but usually quite processed by the time we got it.

    Table lookup display drivers give you a lot more choices (the 12 or 16 bits can be a lot of gray levels plus a reasonable number of colors, and even 8 bits is a good start as long as you don't mind the non-active windows being all the wrong colors because somebody else has the color table right now.

    There are also several different Jornadas - one's Palm-shaped, one's large-Psion-shaped.

  • Now *THIS* is news:

    http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory&sid=200 0/5/19/165146/255

    Dunno why it hasn't made its way to Slashdot yet, other than lameness.
  • I run NT4 on an Abit BP6 with dual cpus and NT has *never* crashed or blue screened. It locked up when I was pushing the limits of overclocking, but in all it has never crashed. Sure occasionally an app will hang and need killed, but it will never take down the OS. How often does netscape segfault in linux? According to stastistics linux is near last on the unix list of uptimes. FreeBSD and all the real unixes rank pretty high. Don't knock something you have no experience with. At work we have win95/NT boxes with many days of uptime, they're not servers but do have high cpu usage. We use them for data acquisition and control. I admit that NT does not handle high server loads well, but with good hardware and drivers it can be as stable as linux.
  • Funny thing about HP. They always crap on about 'HP reliability' as if its a good thing. If you want a good example of a HP product that they'd rather sweep under the carpet and forget about, try finding a HP 4020i cd burner that works for longer than 3 months before having to be replaced.

    HP quality my ass...


  • I should have mentioned - I have HP-branded, specific-for-LaserJet, $2 more than other brands paper.

    I've found out that the best paper to use is the cheapest paper I could find.
    With HP-branded paper you've bound to get paperjam's.
    I've serviced lots of 5si, 4MV's, 5000tn's and other HP-printers.
    The only reason they've got constant paperjam's was HP-branded paper.
    After switching over to cheap 80grams A4 paper no more paperjam's.
  • Also, on modern PC graphics hardware, 16-bit is often R5G6B5, i.e. there's five bits of red and blue, but 6 bits of green. This is done because the human eye is supposedly more sensitive to green, so it's worth giving the extra bit to it. Hmmm, this discussion sort of reminds me of the Amiga's HAM (for hold and modify) mode, which with the help of some hardware magic squeezed 4,096 colors out of a 6-bits-per-pixel framebuffer. Aahh, those were the days! ;^)
  • Come on, what the hell is going on with /. lately?

    How did this qualify as a frontpage story?

    Or is this just another chance to bash microsoft/windows ce and say how cool palm is cause it has 2 bit color? (yes i know you can hack on grey scale, i own a palm myself).

    I bet all these arguments against pocket pc will fall away when slashdot decides to do a story on the fat linux based PDA.
  • Compaq is also 12 bit colour, although Casio's is 16-bit.
  • If HP refunds the four bits, does that mean they owe their customers fifty cents each?

  • ...Only high-resolution images viewed using specialized graphic software such as Sierra Imaging's Image Expert CE and Microsoft Internet Explorer will be affected.

    OK, so I'm playing with semantics. And it's early, and the coffee isn't working yet, but still...

  • As with all HP products, the HP Jornada 540 Series Pocket PCs come with the same high quality and reliability expected by customers.

    Yeah, except that's not what was bought, and furthermore how can they claim yadda yadda yadda high quality on the Jornada 540 if they spec'd it for 16 bit and it came out 12 and nobody noticed?

  • ...to notice how hilarious it is for a color palette screwup to have been noticed by Jason CLUTs?
  • I have a scan-doubler on my Amiga which reads the RGB video output to the RAMDAC into a separate frame-buffer from which it generates a higher frequency display. The video output should be 24-bit, but the frame-buffer is 16-bit (R5G6B5). This can result in weird-looking greyscales - if you try to get more than 32 grey levels then some of them will be greenish.

  • Retarded (Score:4)

    by Foogle ( 35117 ) on Sunday May 21, 2000 @05:14PM (#1057550) Homepage
    This is so retarded. I don't mind being moderated down here, but doesn't anyone else think that this is just a stupid story? Aren't there better things to post?

    I've been told that Slashdot will only post so many stories during one day -- that means we lost a potentially interesting story for this one: a stupid nitpick about a product that is continually made fun of on /. anyway. What gives?

    Rusty's experiment with Kuro5hin seems to be working out alright - why doesn't Malda swallow his pride and learn from somebody else how to implement story moderation... Slashdot is going down the tubes.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • I'm the AC that posted the message to which you replied. I agree with several of your points, and the crux of the matter is basically that what I want in a PDA are:

    -size of a Palm V
    -battery life of the Palm III (on AAA PLEASE!)
    -screen size and resolution of a WinCE machine (but I definitely don't need color)
    -processing power of a WinCE machine or better (battery life AND processing power can both be had, see StrongARM)
    -OS with simple and to-the-point GUI more along Palm lines, not like WinCE with its 3D shaded controls, eating away precious pixels practically (ouch, unfortunate alliteration there) mandating 320x200 resolution
    -I think of all the OSs I would probably prefer Epoc32, which has all the power of Win32 with much of the leannes of PalmOS
    -some expansion, CF is ok but a bit small for some kinds of hardware, SpringBoard approach might be preferable
    -any other doodaahs they can fit in without bloating the price or significantly decreasing battery life (ie sound, modem, etc)

    Since this is still a pipe dream, overall I prefer the long Palm battery life along with its limitations over the kitchensink approach of WinCE with its nanoseconds of useful battery life.

    Maybe the Palm form factor of the new Symbian devices will give us most of these. I've always liked the Psion platform except for the form factor--clamshell doesn't do it for me. If they can make something close to the size of the Palm V, I think that would be hard to beat.

    Uwe Wolfgang Radu
  • I'm not surprised. The HP doesn't compare to the Casio offering and they know it. Still, 12-bit color is better than nothing, right?

    I'd like a color Rex Pro with voice input. Or, thinking near term, a Psion series 5mx in color.

    -S

    http://students.washington.edu/steve0/ [washington.edu]
    steve0@u.washington.edu
  • They sure have been having a tough run of it over the past few years. They put out generally good product, then this sort of stuff hits the trades and the one "Oh Shit" clears away the last 100 "At-A-Boys".
  • I think the knockers that keep harping about BSODs haven't actually used NT much lately. I have uptimes of MONTHS doing development and generally heavy use. Incidentally, I have been on W2K for about five months now (since RC2), and the same holds for it. A bloated pig, yes, but quite stable. Then again, X11 + Netscape * n isn't exactly a model of efficieny either.

    The main things that bring Windows down are drivers, drivers, and drivers. Some drivers are so bad they BSOD when you look at them. I had an Oki 4W LED printer with an NT driver that BSODed at every fifth printing or so. I booted that one out the door. Once you tune up the system with good drivers, stability is very decent.

    Linux certainly is no different. If there's one thing that can bring the whole thing crashing down it's immature drivers. No simple killall there, it'll coredump and all.

    Overall I still prefer IE5 over Netscape. Whoever mentioned that the Netscape programmers knew what they were doing never actually had a look at the source code. It's a bloody mess, no wonder they started from SCRATCH with Mozilla. The one major thing I hate about IE though is its contrived "integration" into the OS. This means that every time IE craps out, the Windows shell craps out with the ridiculous "Explorer restarting". And of course, all the system tray icons disappear. Happens still even under W2K. That's one thing that definitely needs changing. A crappy web page or a failed transfer shouldn't bring down the GUI no matter what.

    Uwe Wolfgang Radu
  • With the distributed readership of Slashdot, you'd think folks would want a free audit of a product prior to it hitting the market.
  • "*Does not actually work. Choose a more expensive product to receive basic functionality."

    LOL!

  • Sorry Foogle, I should have proofread. I didn't bastardize your account name on purpose.
  • There is only publicity, not bad publicity.
  • WTF Is up with the mods? Haven't you heard, Bitchslapping is now in vouge and Rob is having fun nuking anyone who mods a troll up. Hope you like posting permenantly at -1
  • 'Jornada' may well be Spanish for time (in the context of 'jornada completa'), but in this case it seems you're getting 'nada' for your 'dinero'
  • There is an upgrade program for the E-105:

    http://support.casio.com/tradein.htm

    "For our E100 / E105 customers, Casio will offer a choice of two exciting programs that will allow you to get all of the latest features of the Microsoft Pocket PC Operating System. You can either send us your device and we will upgrade the ROM for you or you can Trade-In your E100/E105 and get a new 32MB Pocket PC for $199 (plus tax)."

    * Valid for US Models and US Residents Only

    You've got to love anything that annoys Canadians :-) Joke! Joke, OK! Stop throwing moose!

  • Re:Bah (Score:1)

    by ^_^x ( 178540 )
    Well, the GameBoy color runs on 2 AAA batteries, and has a reflective 50-some (52?) color display. (granted, you can't see it in the dark, but I've never seen another device that uses reflective color LCDs)
  • The Newton had all the features that we now associate with PDA's (and many more)...but, of course, everybody _STOLE_ them from Apple. They shoulda sued.

    Yeah, yeah... maybe IBM should have sued Apple for making personal computers? And with a BEIGE case too? They're just ripping off the PCs like the e-machines/i-Mac case!

    (actually, I don't want to go and trace back who really made the first one, but you get my point, right? PDAs were bound to happen whether in a LCD notepad, or a celphone, or an MP3 player, or a mini-notebook, or...)
  • Yes, the Kodak Cameras for the palms are around, I saw them in Circuit City, but thier Palms are out of juice, so i couldnt see how it worked.
  • Although I'm sure they've fixed this by now, I actually bought a Psion Sienna a few years back to replace my original Pilot 1000.

    I kept it for an entire week, sure that somehow, somewhere, there must be some way to make the thing create an @-sign for storing e-mail addresses. I called Psion's support line and the best they could do was, "gee, we're not sure..." I finally learned through back channels to Psion that the Sienna was intentionally incapable of storing e-mail addresses because they didn't want it to compete with the more expensive Psions which were supposedly aimed at a more tech-savvy market. Any company with an attitude like that deserves to fail.

    I returned the Sienna and bought the then-new PalmPilot Pro I still carry. (Although I'm itching for a new one now.) EPOC32 isn't too bad, but the Psion devices are too expensive to justify the marginal increase in capability, and they don't enjoy the broad software support the Palms have. There's no question I'd hang onto the PPP 'til the end if someone were to begin stripping me of my computers one by one.


  • There _is_ an upgrade plan for owners of Casio E-100 and E-105. For details, please check out this website: http://support.casio.com/tradein.htm

    Of course, the offer only valid for residents of United States. That means, everybody else got fscked !

  • But unfortunately there's no alternative for Netscape in Linux (I still don't consider Mozilla mature enough) and therefore the whole thing gets a lot less nice; Windows+MSIE crashes less often than Linux+Netscape. To me as an end-user that's what matters, not which part is the guilty part (I am not saying that that is not what you're saying :)).

    Coincidentally yesterday I asked on my irc-# what would be the single most important reason to use windows instead of linux and 4 people immediately answered NETSCAPE )#@*&#*&%

    Still using Linux by the way...and typing this in Netscape.

  • Thanks, will have to check them out...
  • The argument here always seems to be between the WinCEs and the Palms yet the best palmtops/PDAs I have come across are the Psion machines running the EPOC operating system.

    Have a look at the Psion web site.

    http://www.psion.com/

    The Psion palmtops really do put the WinCE competition to shame. From the tiny Revo to the Netbook, the machines are *designed* to do a job, they don't just have random feature X bolted on because the marketing department say they must have it.

  • Sure occasionally an app will hang and need killed, but it will never take down the OS. How often does netscape segfault in linux?


    You're conflating two completely seperate things here. First, you praise NT's uptimes, with allowances for applications that occasionally die. In the very next sentence, you criticize Netscape's stability under Linux. That's like me saying, "Linux is rock solid. Oh, sure, occasionally I need to kill -9 Netscape every once in a while, but it never takes down the OS. How often does IE hang on NT?"

    I don't doubt that "with good hardware and drivers, [NT] can be as stable as linux," but those hardware requirements are pretty discouraging when you're on a budget. And if you're not on a budget, you don't really need to use either.

  • Microsoft [...] has made what I feel is the most stable OS [WinCE] in their product line

    Yes, and Goering is my favourite Nazi.

  • This is almost an Ask Slashdot question, but it fits this topic so I'll ask.

    I'm a long time Philip Velo 1 owner, running WinCE 2.0. My employer uses Outlook and I use my Velo to sync with my work desktop. At home, I am a Linux user.

    I know I'll get flaimed by some for owning a M$ product, but back when I purchased my Velo it was the better handheld compared to the Palm. If it makes you feel any better I'm looking forward to a day when I can own a Transmeta based handheld.

    So anyway, I own a CE device and I had hoped to see SOMEBODY build an application to let me sync CE to my Linux desktop. I have found none.

    If I am overlooking the obvious and there is such a package out there would somebody please let me know?
  • before you moderate me down, click on Yu Suzuki's User Info. You'll see his posts being trollish most of the time.

    I'd hate to say it, but I suspect that Yu Suzuki just had his post moderated up, even though it's probably completely false. He's probably laughing very hard right now.

    Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)

  • So, false advertising, eh? Will the FTC handle slapping HP a penalty or will a class action lawsuit be necessary?

    If you look here [scottandmichelle.net] it appears that 12-bit color is not that much worse than 16-bit. Still, 65,536 colors does beat 4,096 colors. I wonder how much difference it makes on a small handheld screen anyway?

    The spec page [hp.com] now says it's a "240 x 320 pixels LCD rich color display".

  • CE, PocketPC, etc. (Score:3)

    by crisis ( 190121 ) on Sunday May 21, 2000 @05:25PM (#1057587)
    To all of you MS naysayers (i.e. 95% of anyone who posts to Slashdot), I suggest that you don't be so quick to slam CE or PocketPC devices simply b/c it being a product powered by a Microsoft OS. WinCE 1.xx had some serious problems, and Microsoft has learned from these problems and has made what I feel is the most stable OS in their product line. Granted, you need a good bit more fault tolerance for an embedded OS, but it's a good combination of ergonomics and actual function. And as for battery power, Casio has recently announced the development of a rechageable battery that will last for 76 hours on their E-11x and E-5xx lines of PDAs. I'm not stating that one OS/platform/etc. in the PDA market is greater than the other. I do think, however, that many of you will be surprised by what PocketPC devices are offering. Here is a good place to start: http://www.wincecity.com - crisis

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