J720's Enemy~NEC MC/HC 300HC

A bit more info for those who cannot read the page.

The OS is originally in Japanese, but the units sold have already been "translated" to Chinese by add-on software.

The price is 1499 Chinese Yuan.

Cmonex, once the usb drivers are installed there are no special wifi drivers needed. The normal prism ref drivers for cards work with usb prism gear.

BTW, the page below has some good data on CF cards. Better than I found at Kingston, albeit only a quick look there.

http://www.flash-memory-store.com/kingston-compact-flash-1024.html

It appears I have no worries about writing to my CF cards given how I use them

thanks again for your answer, wally you mean CF/pcmcia ref drivers will work? is it that simple? or ...? interesting! i'll really try to borrow a prism usb wifi from some friend...

oh 1GB for 80$ you can get 2GB for the same price: http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10390647&loc=&PageFormat=1 (sorry if you already saw this link in another thread here)

Yep, pcmcia ref drivers. Now we just have to find a cheap usb prism wifi. edit: Linksys wusb11 2.5 is the prism 2.5 chipset. Cripes. I had and sold those awhile back

I thougt it interesting that the 1gb card draws 21-54ma when active. That's more than I imagined. I guess it's close to 0 when idle. I wonder aloud how much my 256mb sandisk draws?

For some bizarre reason I really want this hpc, chinese and all. Don't ask me why. It's just soooo cool. Only $185US !! Is there anyone here with relatives in China who can buy it and reship it?

What other neat obscure hpc wonders will emerge from Asia? It really makes me wonder.....

Edited by wallythacker 2005-07-26 2:13 AM

I know this HPC darn too well coz i live in China and once owned one. Before buying it, i dig out every information about it on the internet (not much).

This is my conclusion for this 300HC:

simply put, this HPC is NOT a machine that you can rely on or hold on coz its screen is not reliable at all. After surfing around several CHinese HPC forums, I got the impression a rahter high percentage of 300HC's screen will die after your purchase, sooner or later (most cases are within two o three months). This percentage could top 40-50%. My 300HC's screen died only two days in my hands.

i bought 2nd-hand one from an hpc user through internet for US$103.(of coz in China) The first day i got it, the screeen sometimes got blank and too dark to read. other moments, just fine. The other day, the machine got unreaderable (too dark) much more frequently. Even after some warm-up time, this 300HC's screen never woke up again. in the end, i had to return this unit to the seller and got the refund. I believe the seller would not deliberately sell a defective unit to me coz i was protected by restrict refund terms. I think 300hC itself is kinda unreliable.

Other 300HC users are luckier, only in a certain cense. after using it for two-three months, their 300HC's screen are getting unstable too. they say the problem is in the screen connector, which is easily broken. I believe my 300hc also died of this reason, too.

To put it short, this problem is similar to that of Psion 5MX, another famous HPC based on EPOC system.

BTW, this machine is sold as so-called "Electronic GARBAGE" in China and this is why the price is so attractive. That auction on ebay is not the lowest-priced one. at the promotional period, a big HPC trader only sold 300HC at 999 yuan or US$128. He claimed it as "inventory" and "not-used at all".

Besides the screen, this 300HC also has the following problem or disadvantages:

1. The ROM could be easily lost. after playing with some softwares on 300HC, one user found his 300HC unbootable at all. The ROM (I mean OS and other appz) just malfunction and 300HC just did not power on. In the end, the guy had to spend US$20 to restore the ROM to his defected 300HC.

2. the battery is short. It is norminal capacity is 2000Mah. But reading ebooks and sometimes watching videos (not oftern) and other PIM operations on 300HC just lasts 3hrs.

In the past, i bought several other 2nd-handed digital gadgets and even some HPCs, which were all dumped into China as electronic garbage. All is fine and durable. None has so many fatal problems.

So i believe these 300HCs have some problems, minor or major, before they are dumped into China. Maybe this is why they are now sold as Electronic Garbage. They are not simply "Inventory".


In the next post, i would elaborate on 300HC's advantages on an HPC and some technical stuff.

Iamjoe, thanks for the info. From what you said, I suspect that the ccfl in the LCD is at fault, but I could be wrong. If its only that, then its an easy fix. Too bad even the ROM is crap. Hmmm ... does this sound like a similar case as in the faulty MP900 ROM?

oh iamjoe thanks for this lot of information! so sad though i'm looking forward to your next post.
Snappy.. i agree with you.
oh.. and not only the ROM, but this screen connection thing sounds too familiar too.. you remember me telling you about that case with a MP900? if it's the same problem with the 300HC it can easily be fixed (as in that case - took five minutes)! so, i'm not sure if it's the CCFL i'm not even sure if it is similar to the psion 5mx but it's more likely (i did have the dreaded screen screen cable problem with my 5mx clone.. or more like my brother had it and i had it repaired then a new cable had to be soldered in, that was all)
well.. i could conclude NEC didn't always pay attention to quality control..

thanks again.

21-54 mA? thats possible but don't worry, it's idle most of the time and then the current draw is under 1 mA!

why do you want this 300HC? get a jornada 720.. ok, it's really more exotic (chinese, slightly different design, etc...)

yikes! ... this is the rare few moments of lapse in the history of Japanese QC!! ok, I know ... its a sign ... the end is ne... what? oh, its not the end yet? oh, its just a HPC? What do you mean its just a HPC? That is of utmost importance ... ... so as I was saying ... blah blah blah ...

Iamjoe, Brilliant, thank you (crosses crappy hpc off wish list)
I can put my money to better use, like another 6651.

grrr ... leave some 6651 in the market for the rest of us folks! ...

for the issue of loosing Rom, only few 300hc users experienced this problem. according to the feedback on HPC forums, maybe 2 to 3 people. such a problem affected much fewer users than the screen issue.

But this issue just surfaced in the 300hc's promotional period while many hpc users just held a wait-and-see attitude and were waiting for first users's review. After playing around with several normal appz (not flashing rom or sth), one user's 300hC suddenly lost its rom. at the time, this raised many discussions on the forums. But no one can locate the reason including the big HPC traders who has been selling dumped HPCs for a few years. In the end, the guy had to copy a rom image from a working 300hc and then rewrite it to the defected unit. the whole process takes time and left a big impression on me as for the poor quality or QC of 300HC.

come down to biz now, the advantages of 300HC.

1. a not-bad screen. the trader claims it as an HPA screen, an improved DSTN screen. this could be the case. only little (almost invisible) ghost shadow in the screen. I onced used 300 to play the Matrix trailer from Betaplayer's website. the result is quite acceptable. even in some action-tense moments, the screen still delivered. quite oK. i can well assume that watch movies on 300HC is OK. But slightly larger dot pitch. u can see larger Noises or spots in movie play-back. still would not disturb the user much.

should be better than 720's LCD, which is not suitable for watching movies. (fortunately, few 720 users like watching clips on it.)

I now have an Intermec 6651 + Sharp hc-aj1 (maybe few people here know of this make, HPC Pro machine with 8-inch TFT screeen, only available in JP). these two both use TFT screen. 300HC is definitely no match for them. i once owned the japanese version of NEC Mobilepro 780. 300hc's screen surely beats MP780.

2. with the improving Betaplayer or TCPMP, 300HC can handle many divx files due to its PXA250 300mhz cpu. as Picard (Betaplayer's author) said before, TCPMP is mainly optimized for XSCALE CPU. so if u have mania for playing movies on HPC, 300HC is a good choice provided its screen lasts long.

3. Good connection choices. 300HC has a USB-host, a USB-slave (mini-b??) and a weired-looking sync port?(Sync port or cell-phone connector for internet??). of coz the cf port, no pc card slot. with an cheap usb mini-b-to usb wire, 300hc can do usb sync. guess what? u can use MP900's usb drivers to help the PC recognize the 300HC.)

biggest surprise is the the USB host on 300HC is a standared one, the same as those on PC.

u dont need any converter wire. just plug in ur usb thumbdrive and start using (with deje drivers.) for larger HPCs like 6651 or NEC MP780, a standard usb-host port is no surprise. but such a port on a not-that-big machine like 300, this is a really big convenience. with a small thumbdrive, the users can use usb flash for storage. the only CF slot can be used for wifi card, lan card, etc. a real thumb-up!!!

4. the keyboard? not-bad, considering its size. bigger key pitch and better than intermec 6651. keys smaller than 6651.

much better than Sharp hc-aj1 (an extremely light-weight HPC, 780g? for CF+PC Card slot+8-inch TFT screen+usb host+56k modem)

almost the same pitch as NEC MP780. MP780 could be slightly better than 300 for its larger keys and bigger key pitch. I did not use HP720 or Psion 5mx BEFORE. so no comparision between them.

the pic for ports on 300HC. check'em out.

http://www.shumazu.com/img/014.jpg http://www.shumazu.com/img/004.jpg

http://www.shumazu.com/img/007.jpg http://www.shumazu.com/img/005.jpg