How to find a decent portable for my needs!

[mbpark]

For the last several years, I have been searching for a portable computer that meets the following criteria:

1. Instant-on
2. Ability to take notes easily with a decent keyboard.
3. Connectivity to anything without major issues.
4. Good data entry program.
5. Somewhat easy to develop custom software for.

I have been through the following portables:

Compaq PC Companion C140 - Windows CE 1.0 Machine. This is a machine that had mostly everything, but lacks a decent keyboard. Even had a half-decent browser, IRC client, telnet client, FTP client, pocket Excel, pocket Word, and a contact manager. Unfortunately, Microsoft dropped support for it faster than anything else, and I will need a 2.0 ROM for it to use with ActiveSync and Windows 2000. Ouch. Not for a small keyboard. For sale if anyone wants it!

Philips Nino - Windows CE 2.0 Machine. This one had voice recording, a decent MP3 player, TONS of RAM, a decent contact manager, works with Windows 2000, and has the worst battery life I have ever seen in a handheld device. 6 hours for a palm-size PC? Give me a break!

Both CE devices have decent VB/VC++ development environments that I have at work. A little weird to develop for, but still cool. We like the Microsoft compilers better than the RIM and Palm ones, hands down. The only other development environments that were ever this good were Borland's old ones for DOS.

Handspring Visor Deluxe - No keyboard, good for quickly jotting notes down, 8MB RAM is more than I need for AvantGo, tons of notes, my contacts list, and all my mail synced from the Exchange server @ work (2 MB total for all of this!). USB makes having AvantGo practical, because it is usually a pain to DL all those pages to your handheld over a 115.2 serial link. USB is at least 10x faster with my Visor Deluxe.

The development environments for palm, speaking as someone who develops for it, suck ass royally. CodeWarrior 6 and 7 are the worst development environments I have ever used. Debug does not even work right. If you run the debugger on remote mode on a Windows 98 machine and do a heap dump, you WILL crash the machine. NT and 2000 are much more forgiving and will only crash the process. GCC is somewhat better. Unfortunately, the only way to really expand the OS is to put hacks in. WTF is up with that? Can't Borland make compilers again?

However, when one develops C++ code for a commercial PalmOS application as I have, they learn to hate all its development environments really fast. Next they learn what a S.O.S. the Palm API is, and why you can't do anything with dynamic API's (PiiRC is much better). You start wishing that AmigaOS was on there instead of PalmOS (and the scary part is that it would probably take less RAM to shoehorn Workbench, Intuition, and the needed libraries in). Why would I waste my time developing for an OS I strongly dislike?

On to the laptops....

Compaq LTE Elite 5000 486 DX2/50 with 28MB RAM, Ethernet, 28.8 modem, and 270MB HD. Also with 9" mono SVGA screen.

Yes, I installed 95 on this machine with floppies. It has no CD-ROM. I flashed the BIOS 2x to get it to even recognize the RAM I added on the Kingston card. It was kick ass getting it up and running. Suspend mode is in hardware and is better and faster than on newer thinkpads. More importantly, it has a working battery after 7 years. Office doesn't fit on it. Heck, you're lucky to get IE4 running on it! WHat got me for this one was the weird mouse on the side of the screen. If this one had one on the keyboard, I'd be happy and it'd be da bomb. Otherwise, a great machine with Notepad.

We now use it as the slowest machine capable of running IE 4.0 to test Javascript.

IBM ThinkPad 380D Pentium 150MMX with 48MB RAM, Linksys Fast Ethernet, 3.2GB HD, and 12.1" HPA SVGA screen.

This laptop ran at various times Linux-Mandrake 7.0, Slack 7, Mandrake 7.1, and Windows 98. It now runs 98. It's a good little machine. Suspend mode, even with a BIOS flash, is horribly broken to the point where 98 OR Linux will support it. It has Office 97 and Ethernet. Therefore life is good, but Office 97 is slow on it compared to anything else. Office 97 is a pig. Notepad is your friend with this laptop. However, it weighs 8 lbs and doesn't suspend.

We now use this machine as a test machine to test SW upgrades, because it runs Windows 98, the buggiest OS I have ever seen. I will put 95B back on it next image, because at least then it was somewhat stable. No instant on - NEXT!

IBM ThinkPad 380XD Pentium II 233 with 96 MB RAM, Xircom fast ethernet, 56K modem, 4.2 GB HD, 13" SVGA/XGA screen.

This laptop runs Windows 2000. Suspend mode works. Office 2000 works, syncs with Handspring over USB, slow as hell running latest MS OS. Is heavy and thick as a brick. Tons of good data entry programs, of which Office is best. Development environments I can use abound, ranging from Perl for Windows to Visual C++ to Visual Basic to even Delphi or Fujitsu COBOL. Nice little machine, but breaks back after a while with extreme weight. Suspend mode doesn't work all the time.

IBM ThinkPad 770X Pentium II 300 with 128MB RAM, Xircom Fast Ethernet, 56K modem, 8.4 GB HD, 14" SVGA/XGA screen, DVD-ROM, Windows 2000, Office 2000, and everything else.

This is another 2000 laptop. It plays DVD movies quite well (Star Trek: First Contact and American Pie were my test ones). It has a decent keyboard, VERY good backlit screen, SecureCRT 3.1, and tons of other programs I can use to enter in data and take notes. Word 2000 is da bomb. If I want to develop apps for it, I have IIS and SQL Server 2000 installed on it. It enables me to take my office on the road with all my apps I need installed (DBArtisan 5.2, ERStudio 4.2, Oracle client, SQL Server 2000, Visual Studio Enterprise Edition, IIS 5 (soon!), and whatever else I can install).

However, suspend mode on this takes about 10-30 seconds, depending on time of day. However, it has EVERYTHING for it I ever need, except the size factor (which a new ThinkPad T20 will solve). It's still big, but it's not as bad as a 380. It has ultrabay so I can put in new toys from iGo such as new batteries. It works, but isn't the total answer. What about taking notes? This is good for when I work remotely and have to transfer tons of files.

Not included here is my NEC Ready 120LT that I still use (Cyrix 200, 64MB RAM, Red Hat 6.1, 2GB HD, bashed the battery case bad) as my home box. It has a 640*480 screen and runs 98 like crap. No way. When I can get Helix GNOME and Xfree86 3.3.5 running faster on the same HW, there are issues. Nice little small home box with ipchains

I think I found the most low-tech answer of them all. I wanted a machine that could link with anything to dump data.

I bought a Tandy WP-2 on eBay, $36 including shipping. Can use a null modem cable to dump data anywhere, including a certain ThinkPad with an unused serial port. It's got an 80*8 display, 22K free of RAM, and serial port connectivity. I can take it to Rittenhouse Square and write, considering it weighs less than 2 pounds, and lasts 16-20 hours on AA batteries. Everyone has connectivity to serial ports, and they don't get obsolete like Windows CE 1 or 2.

I also am going to buy a Tandy 100 so I can develop some small apps for it to do what I really want to. This will handle what I need for data entry and contacts apps.

The other difference. They are much more durable than anything else I can purchase these days. These are really good machines that can take a beating like a ThinkPad 380 because they are solid state.

Why haven't we seen anything in this form factor since that costs under 2K? I have seen a couple of CE machines in this form factor that are solid state, with the same form factor, that are just as rugged. However, they run $2,000 and up. The day I see one of those on eBay, it's mine

I think something in this form factor, for those of us that just want to get work done, would work well as a companion to the laptops we have these days!

Hopefully y'all enjoyed this

Mitch