Questions about Jornada 680E

HP does not need a product to be purchased directly from them in order to service them. They do, however, require the product to be in warranty to service them for free.

Registering a unit does not provide warranty. The s/n indicates date of manufacture, so if the unit is obviously less than a year old HP does not require a sales receipt. Most of the time computer equipment is purchased within a month of manufacture. That is how HP calculates warranty, in a case where a unit is purchased outside that time frame is when HP asks for a sales receipt. The 680e's in question were manufactured about 5 years ago, and would never have been covered in warranty in the USA as they were manufactured for a specific European market.

So da. At least it's good to no there actually IS a warranty of some kind. Though I've never heard of "Joy Systems".


Nice list. This site has tons of neat stuff buried everywhere.

I've looked on both units, and removed the blue Dutch Railways label to look underneath. But there's no letter code to be found anywhere. Where the letter code *should be* is the numbers "013". Perhaps this was some numbering scheme HP used for custom-built units.

Anyone else out there who bought a Tiger Direct 680e want to look and let us know?

Speaking of versions, looks like there may now be another varient on the market. Look what I just found:

http://store.yahoo.com/justdeals/hp.html

680e_AU? Perhaps an Australian version? Whatever it is, it looks like it's a refurbished retail 680e as it appears to come with the docking cradle, audio buttons, and no plate blocking the CF slot. At $129.95 with free shipping, this makes it a better deal than the ones from Tiger Direct, though there's no indication of any warranty as Tiger Direct provides.

Yeah, they were recommending SD cards on their site when I bought mine.

There are others who know much more about this than I do (like C:Amie). But from what I've read, Orinoco cards are said to be exceptionally good WiFi cards for Jornadas. I haven't had a chance to research it, but here's the one I'm considering:

http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=4021837

Someone got the word out about justdeals.com 2 days ago the Jornada 680e was going for $109.99 with free shipping, I just about fell out when I saw it jump up $20 in 2 days. And about the wifi card, check out this one. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=45000&item=5755354912&rd=1
I checked through the HCL first, and then looked up the drivers provided by the e bay sale site.
Also I have to give a big thank you to (C:Amie) I would have been really eaked when the other card showed up and didn't work. every one check out HCL first! also listen to (C:Amie)


Edited by Yoldering 2005-03-06 3:22 AM

Is it hard to find apps to run on the 680e's SH3 processor?

EDIT:
btw, here's another link for 680e @ $109.95 from JustDeals

http://www.pricegrabber.com/user_sales_getprod.php/masterid=6717894/lot_id=1598340/mode=googlegfr/
Note: The HP Jornada 680e has been specially customized and does not feature external audio buttons and compact flash card slot.

EDIT:
Apparently Justdeals have two batches of the 680e. The above link has the CF covered while the one below is the full 680e

http://www.pricegrabber.com/user_sales_getprod.php?masterid=232582&lot_id=1294636
# Add additional storage memory using the CompactFlash memory card slot
# Easy digital voice recording with convenient external audio buttons

For $20, I think its worthwhile to get the full 680e!

Edited by Snappy! 2005-03-06 6:24 AM

Looks like you get the cradle also with the second. I think I remember the cradle coming with the one I saw. I should have written it down.

Actually, this is a different unit. I almost bought the $110 Just Deals one. I had narrowed my choices down to Just Deals or Tiger Direct. I went with Tiger Direct because they promoted a 3-month warranty from HP/Compaq (now changed to Joy Systems) and the Just Deals 680e had a European charger with a US adapter while the Tiger Direct 680e came with a US charger. Otherwise the units were identical. I figured those two things were worth the extra $23 Tiger wanted (adding TD's shipping which is not free) and bought from them.

Looking at the tiny picture, this one appears to have the same keyboard as the Dutch Railways 680e's, so maybe it's Austrian. Just Deals is also claiming it's 64K color, which would make it a later (B?) model. The Tiger Direct units are 256 color because the 64K DLL file was left off the ROM (you can make them 64K color easily with the file in the Downloads section here). This may also mean a few other CE updates (also here) are in ROM that must patch into RAM on the Tiger Direct units. To get audio buttons from HP and a cradle from eBay to make the Tiger Direct 680e equivalent to this one would end up costing around $175. So $130 is a great price.

Since a bunch of vendors sold the Dutch Railways units, this makes me wonder if Tiger Direct might end up offereing the new AU one after they sell through their current stock.

Edited by Lensman 2005-03-06 10:37 AM

Sure enough, there's a CE 2.11 driver for it and $8.95 is a really great price if you don't need much range. Of course, it'd be pretty cool to be wireless without anything sticking out the side of the Jornada. Could really impress some folks at the local coffee shop.

I do believe there is an external antenna about 3-4 inches long for it, to get that sometimes needed boost, I don't think I'll need one though. I just hope I don't have any problems!
Edit: update on the antenna http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=61816&item=5755517879&rd=1

Edited by Yoldering 2005-03-06 11:40 AM

Well it does take some digging to find things, but there's a reasonable variety of software to keep you busy. Here's what I've found in the way of freeware so far:

Ministumber (a wardriver for finding WiFi spots)
Adobe Acrobat Reader
Various eBook Readers (of course with Explorer installed there's a lot of books in HTML format as well)
EzyUnzip (a ZIP utility - there are others)
Microsoft Streets 2001 (and a number of city maps)
Metro (another map viewer)
Hum (MP3 player available here)
Microsoft Windows Media Player
PocketTV (a pretty decent MPEG commercial viewer that's free for 680s. I played a few files, but the video is somewhat jerky. Haven't played with trying to improve playback through settings/encoding yet)
Wodeon (another video player I haven't tried yet - there are also others)
CaptCE (screencapture utility)
FrotzCE (emulator for playing Infocom-style text adventures)
HPC Doom (Plays Doom wads. I haven't gotten this to work yet - it keeps complaining there's not enough memory. There's also one for Quake)
Lots of wallpapers

Most of the games seem to be shareware or commercial. If anyone knows of any free ones, please let me know.

My mistake, Adobe Acrobat Reader does NOT run on 680s.

Information on forum on Jornada 680E have been helpful

Ordered a Jornada 680e at:

http://store.yahoo.com/justdeals/hp.html

they have two left no shipping with docking for $129.95

Have had good experience from Just Deals in the past.

Also purchased a 1 gig CF card.

This one is not listed as a Dutch RR should have both CF and PC Card ports.

There are five gig PC card Type II card revolving drives on market.

Looking for a PMCIA or adapted CF card GPS the will work on unit.

Delorme has a old serial unit GPS put heard it does not work on unit.

Also have noted at least two CF card GPS which do not work on unitl

Some one said and old CF card may work on unit but have note found one.

Has anyone tried serial port printing? Have a serial to parallel on the way.

Does software do plug n play to reconize drivers?

You are quite correct, once the CD goes through it's install you can revert back to "System Set" for page file. I should have noted it as a temporary action to install the CD...sorry

I installed the serial.dll driver as well as one other but it did not print while connected to my desktop ( I assume that is what it is supposed to do). Print choices still are PCL (HP cable), PCL laser and PCL inkjet. none of them worked.