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Where does your Windows CE Interest Come From?

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pacmania1982 Page Icon Posted 2020-02-19 10:57 AM
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Just wondered where all y'alls interest in Windows CE comes from?

Mine came from using Acorn rebranded PSION Series 3a's at school. Once I saw this video I've just found on an old CD, I was hooked.

https://youtu.be/Z_kAp4ub4RU

Someone did upload it to YouTube a while back but it got removed so I've uploaded it again.

My first H/PC was a 300LX.

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I dunk for bananas Page Icon Posted 2020-02-19 12:31 PM
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Mine is probably a bit different than yours, I got into it when I first saw the Windows CE license sticker on the back of a TV set top box — that got me googling and before I knew it I got my first system. I have 7 in total now.
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pacmania1982 Page Icon Posted 2020-02-19 7:30 PM
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I'm up to 11 so far. I may have a problem!
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2020-02-20 6:01 AM
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When I saw one of the first H/PCs (Casio A-10). A handheld device with an interface that looked just like that of a desktop computer. From the beginning I wondered how Windows CE was different from its desktop counterpart. Several years later, I got the chance to find out when these old devices started to become affordable used.

You'll have to go to my profile and count for yourself how many CE devices I have. If you have a problem, pacmania1982, well, I guess I have an obsession.
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pacmania1982 Page Icon Posted 2020-02-20 8:28 AM
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Quote


You'll have to go to my profile and count for yourself how many CE devices I have. If you have a problem, pacmania1982, well, I guess I have an obsession.


Oh my! I feel much better about my 'little' collection now
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stingraze Page Icon Posted 2020-02-20 11:37 AM
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My interest with Windows CE started off with Cassiopeia E-700WE (Pocket PC 2000). Then, I began some experiments with home-server webpage hosting using my Sigmarion 1 and CEHTTP (web server software). The reason I liked hosting web page with Sigmarion 1 was because it was without fan. Then my Windows CE adventure grew into hobby, and some part time exporting to many countries.

I also liked the fact that Windows CE generally could run longer than regular laptops of that era.
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PDXMark Page Icon Posted 2020-02-20 7:07 PM
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I found HPCFactor (and HPCs) in 2005. I had been using an iPAQ with a folding keyboard as a portable computer, but wanted something more. Bought my first HPC (Compaq Aero 8000) that summer, and continued using various HPCs until getting a One Mix 1S Yoga laptop last year. I still have a working Jornada 720 and MobilePro 880/890.
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Alt Bass Page Icon Posted 2020-02-20 7:26 PM
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I got my hx2790 in school because it had a large touch screen and hackable OS - all other relatively affordable devices did not have touch screen at that time. It definitely was a coolest device in a class featuring Worms World Party until some of my mates started getting similar things year or so later - Qtek S110, rx3715. This was at the time when Sony Ericsson P700 and iPhone were an expensive novelty. I also got a fat ass battery for it to play Worms almost forever. It also had SD and CF memory slots and IIRC it was cheaper than miniSD for smartphones at that time. Having 3,5mm headphone jack was also not a totally common thing for smartphones at that moment (correct me if I am wrong). OH AND not every Symbian smartphone had Wi-Fi those days!

Then I discovered a whole new class of devices - HPCs with even more hackable OS and with even bigger and better screens. I got attracted to SIgmarion 3 because of it's WVGA TFT display, USB host and that it had ATI Imageon (I wonder why video chip it mattered to me at that time at all). I found that touch buttons near screen were a great addition to the device after I found a way to reprogram them. Sigmarion was another whole level of coolness. Teachers sometimes even asked me to do some work with office documents during the class when everybody else was busy studying what I have done like a boss. CF cards were still bigger than SD cards at that moment IIRC.

I totally liked making typed and written notes with Sigmarion after I learned to write my thoughts down. I never used PPC and HPC as organizers though, this was totally needless at that age.

Edited by Alt Bass 2020-02-20 7:26 PM
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robertojones Page Icon Posted 2020-02-20 9:22 PM
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I bought a used Jornada 548 in about 2001 / 2002 - Had been looking to buy a PDA for some time and found Palms and the like too limited (a little unfair perhaps). Did a lot with it over a short time, including (like PDXMark) using it with a folding keyboard. Swapped it for some sort of of mobile phone I've long since forgotten, regretted it, bought a Toshiba e570 that I kept for several years until I broke the screen and finally got my first and only HPC - an NEC MobilePro 900C. Got it dirt cheap in 2007, loved it but battles with Wifi cards and painfully slow web browsing (even in 2007) stopped it being properly useful for what I wanted to do with it, so sold it again (at university most of this time - may explain my not keeping any of these machines). I've not owned a CE device since but I've never forgotten how the MobilePro felt to use, both the physical device and the 'instant on' capability coupled with the way CE on a HPC felt like a 'proper' desktop OS. I've tried to recapture that feeling several times since, first with an 8" Windows tablet + keyboard (too clunky), then a GPD Win (couldn't get on with the keyboard), and most recently a Gemini PDA (couldn't get on with the screen only opening to a fixed angle mostly). The current crop of crowdfunded Mini laptops / UMPCs (GPD Pocket etc.) are just too expensive for me to consider as a secondary device though it is very encouraging to see so much activity in a market segment I'd long assumed was dead.

I'm probably more into HPCs from a hardware / ergonomics perspective than particularly the OS, though I did appreciate some of the remarkable software that was developed for Windows CE - and so much of it by hobbyists or tiny software firms. Bit of a nostalgia thing for me as well these days, I remember well reading my various PC magazines and electronics catalogues as a kid/teen and imagining owning first Psions and then HPCs. I wish I got as excited about any gadgets on the market nowadays...
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Mobi Page Icon Posted 2020-02-23 2:59 AM
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I saw a clamshell device sometime in 1999. It might have been a Jornada or a MobilePro. I can't remember.

Years later I bought a MobilePro 900. I wish I hadn't sold it. Then later, I came across a Jornada 680 for $5 on eBay (and I think $20 shipping) and snapped it up.

I have to take notes in a variety of settings and I really wanted the small form factor to work for me. In the end, my most-used small devices are a BlackBerry Bold 9900 and a Lenovo Thinkpad X120e. I still use both every day.

More recently, I received a PinePhone, and a clamshell keyboard is supposedly in the works. I'll try that when it becomes available.

In any case, I may not contribute enough here, but I have followed the forum for years....
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EkriirkE Page Icon Posted 2020-02-24 12:36 PM
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I saw the devices in Circuit City or Best Buy and though how awesome it was to have a full Windows Computer that small! Then they released the SDK for free and I was able to port my programs with minimal changes. So fun.
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Rich Hawley Page Icon Posted 2020-02-24 10:59 PM
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I really have no interest in Windows CE, or didn't when I got my first CE based handheld.

I was a 95LX fan/owner but was enticed by the Windows type operating system which my desktop was (3.1) after the "pure" DOS stage of my life.

Hence it made sense to migrate to CE. It wasn't until I blew a whole month's paycheck on a device that I discovered that my x86 Windows applications were incompatible…that CE was a different creature entirely.

But both enjoying and loving the small clamshell design I simply evolved.

And years later that would be to my wife's dismay after my near $1000 purchase of my 900C.
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C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2020-02-25 6:07 PM
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Back in the day I would be asked occasionally to give my opinion on and test electrical items handed into the Red Cross. They weren't allowed to sell electrical items, but sometimes central distribution would take them. So if electronics were donated, invariably they'd come to me to see what they were as the girls in the shops had no idea.

Anyway, I found a HP 320lx at the bottom of one of the boxes, it had a CE 1.0 ROM chip in it, no AC, cabling, documentation etc. It wasn't on the allowed to forward to national distribution list, so I said to the manageress 'how much do you want as I was intrigued'. She said £20, I gave them £25. I managed to get it working and immediately found there was absolutely nothing what so ever online about CE 1.0; it was all about 2.11. So I started ce320 a couple of days later to put something about CE 1.0 on the Internet... nearly 20 years later... it's still on the Internet and virtually nothing else is!
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Johnny Bjoern Page Icon Posted 2020-02-25 9:00 PM
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Just an interest to make these great electronic devices usable. My interest was originally from HP calculators but kind of developed :-)
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Duckworth Page Icon Posted 2020-02-26 7:32 PM
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I was into the HP 95LX and 100LX which were DOS-based. To this day, I still think they are better from a software standpoint. But their hardware is much more limited.

I bought a 320LX brand-new and was really disappointed by CE 1.0's inability to have submenus on the Start menu. But I did think it was super neat to have an interface that was very similar to Win 95. I loved the backlight on it.

I then purchased a 620LX which was stolen from me. I went to a Jornada 720 later but broke it and went back to a HP 200LX.

I came back to CE in 2010 or so once all of the toys I had once wanted were so much more affordable. Now I have a Mobilon TriPad, another J720, as well as some other non-CE handhelds.

Edited by Duckworth 2020-02-26 7:34 PM
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