Why I think HPC failed and why Microsoft/HP is stupid not to reissue.

Since I purchased my 680 and my JOrnada 720 I've been combing the net finding out everything I possibly could about these little computers. I've read tons of ideas as to why they failed and then weighed that against the AMAZING response I've gotten just carrying the thing around day to day. Particularly among women. I must tell you, this thing is the equivalent of a cute puppy to women. They will cross the coffee shop just to talk.
I've read that it failed because it was underpowered and had poor support. But the truth is this: It failed because the market teams were idiots. Admitedly, USB support and a slightly larger keyboard would have benefited them...but the fault lay in the marketing. No one has ever seen these things or know that they exist. I stumbled onto mine entirely by accident. HP tried to market these to the business world when they should have been marketing them like the ipod and targeting the young high school and college age student. If they released a chrome model with exactly the same specs as the 720 with a USB connection and an active matrix screen and priced it at $500....they would FLY off the shelves. They you have some pastel colored models aimed specifically at the young female demographic and THEY would fly off the shelves (their hands are better suited to typing on the small keyboard anyhow). I bought three 680s and a 720. So far I've sold two of my 680s for a small profit to friends...but I have to say...I could sell ten more. As for the machines being underpowered for the business world....that maybe true for some select business men...but, in my experience, the pattern for most of my executive bosses is that they have the most expensive laptop they can buy...and they use it for VERY basic Word and Powerpoint and Excel functions. And I'm not just talking one or two exectives. I am a professional actor who temps between gigs. I would say of the dozens of high powered execs I've worked for maybe 10% actually used a third of the power their laptop provided. So for reviewers to claim that it failed because it was underpowered is ridiculous. A new browser and better connectivity would be appreciated but the machine is PERFECTLY adequate in it's present form.
So that is my brief summary of why the Microsoft/HP people are idiots. I hope Apple or someone picks up the HPC ball and runs with it. It is a great idea that was let go LONG before it's time.

Just my humble opinion.

Macros

yay, you've got some good points.
not long ago, i read some articles in the archive on microsoft.com about announcing CE 2.0, hpc pro and hpc2000 respectively... and one of them said 80% of the the machines were aimed at the business, and only 20% for the general customer. it said a lot more but i can't remember now. point is that they didn't talk about us plain people at all. that's the problem i can't see why they never realized they're great for many people. just as an example, most of the ce.net hpc's are quite strictly intended for vertical markets. still, i, who has nothing to do with serious business, just a casual average user, can use them with ease and missing nothing! (don't mention PIM, that can be solved as well.)
no, they weren't underpowered, the 206 Mhz SA-1100 and IE 4 wasn't too outdated in 2000 imo. IE4 is still usable, just imagine what it were like at that time! like IE5.5 and IE6 now on ce.net hpc's (excellent i must say)... i don't see what the problem is with connectivity. i could get even 3G on this thing if i wanted to (and if i had the money for a 3G phone).
you've mentioned women.. oh well, it is true, hpc's are really "cute puppys" in a sense i just like the clamshell design and that they're nice small devices. not like an ugly PC. but thanks no pastel coloured models for me! black or silver, that's fine. maybe some white, blue or grey can be used as well (not too extensively). that's about it.

ok, so someone tell me why ms and the oems never realized the potential in the average customers apart from realizing they were pricing them too high.
and yeh the usual ranting, nothing we said here is new

Edited by cmonex 2005-09-26 8:01 PM

I want a new one designed by the guys who made the Alien Notebook case. I want it green and alien looking and everything. And I dont even work, let alone work in big business.

GIVE ME A CE5 HPC NOW MS!!

Well thats my demanding over, back to coding.

PS: Well said there, I liked that little read and totaly agree.

It seems to me that marketing was only half the problem - the other half was pricing. These were machines aimed at the business and enterprise customer, and they were priced as such. Their features were driven more towards business users than personal users.

There's a reason for that, though. Back when the CE 1.0 machines came out, we were selling Casio HPCs at Radioshack, where I worked at the time. They sold poorly, very poorly in fact - end users didn't want to pay the price for one, when they figured the much cheaper Sharp and Casio organizers would do the job. The cheaper, smaller Palm Pilots that came out at the same time didn't really help, either.

Business customers are where they got their early sales, so that's where they focused.

Personally, I think the thing that killed HPCs and HPC Pro form-factor devices were falling laptop/subnotebook prices.

Kudos to Macros746, good thoughts.
Just some quick questions:
1.) What is an end-user?
2.) Is there any HPCs still being made?
3.) Why are midgets funny?

Another thing,

One would think that HPCs should have prevailed because in a sense they weren't underpowered. A 168MHz MP780 or 790 HPC could easily outperform an 800MHz X-Scale Dell Axim X50v PPC. Why? It all depends on our preception of performance.
When it comes to recreation, games, wifi, multimedia, and other time wasti- I mean, consuming activities, the PPC wins.
But when it comes to REAL LIFE, where you have to compose documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and E-mails, an HPC is definitely the champion.
In Windows Mobile 2003, they accidentally renamed notepad to Microsoft Word... How can they sleep at night?

I like the size of the 680/720. To me that was exactly the point - do what a computer does & then go in your coat pocket. I agree that price was an issue: I was impressed with so-called "palmtop PCs" (what HP originally called them) when they first came out, but couldn't afford the price. But half of promoting these devices was promoting the OS - and, looking back, I think that's where Microsoft (& the H/PC OEMs) failed miserably. It seems like there was little if any promoting of the advantages of CE (I really didn't understand myself until this year) - and I think people really didn't believe that they could do virtually everything that they had been doing on their desktop/notebook PCs. I think they just saw the H/PC as a sort of watered-down PC.

yes, i blame it on the pricing, too. even more than marketing. but pricing was actually derived partly from the decisions made by marketing. so they are both to blame.

i have been following the pocketpcs for sometime now, and they too have started to grow in size. take for example the new HTC Universal. it's almost a HPC, if it weren't for its un-touchtypeable keyboard. and poeple have been really happy with their HTC Universals. They don't complain about its size, even though it's a phone.

only if the jornada 720 had the specs of the HTC Universal.

Edited by msafi 2005-09-27 4:19 AM

really? then i don't seem to notice that.. or i am a business user...



maybe, for others, i don't know. for me, no, a subnotebook is still very pricey here and it is not the same as an HPC...

sigmarion III is close

I get the same reaction but not just from women. In fact, when I visit university libraries I go only weekend mornings. Otherwise, I am interrupted by students wanting to examine my Jornada or NEC and how they can get one.

I am told repeatedly by older librarians as well as by college students that they would get much more use from an NEC or Jornada than from their Notebook PCs. They are amazed to learn these handhelds give hours of battery use and they are impressed by the speed. When I demonsrate how I open a NEC790 and it is up and ready as I sit down, they are thrilled and comment how a Notebook takes 15 minutes or so to unpack, set up and wait for Windows and their program to load. Then, they are trapped at a table because walking to the restroom or anywhere means shutting down, re-packing and lugging their notebook.

I strongly agree that NEC and Jornada sales failures are marketing failures of two large corporations. Most likely, departmental leverage and politics paid a big part. IBM had to spin off their desktop-notebook PC business into an independent company so it could function and survive. The Big Blue Mainframe executives kept back seating desktop PCs when it came to corporate resources, including development & marketing!

Further problems came from Microsoft failure to update HHPC display drivers so better screens could be installed. No one wants a new handheld that cannot be used in daylight or under bright public flourescent lights. In so far as pricing goes, suggested retail did decrease steeply the last two years they were made and broader marketing would have brought down prices to below $600, due to economy of scale.
So far as looks go, the jornadas still look attractive and colored cases like kids can buy for iPods would sell.

I discovered Handhelds only after a lot of Google searching for desktop PCs with PDA tech guts. I was a very disatisfied (PDA group-active) PDA user, who wondered why the technology was not placed into a larger mobile unit. I landed on HP Thin Clients and went from there. I was thrilled when I discovered Jornadas and learned I could get one for under $200.

Finally, falling notebook prices is not good enough reason for consumers to not be interested in practical sized Handhelds. The prices may be much lower but notebooks remain hefty portable desktop Windows PCs. They are no match for a NEC 790 or 900 sized, instant on, no moving parts, mobile PC.

Theo

I must be doing something wrong... my hunch back perhaps a turn off?

Steady there, comparing the marketing teams in hp and NEC to eachother is like comparing chalk and cheese. hp have some degree of competancy about them, where as NECSAM lack any sort of credibiility or even organisation!
hp's Problem once the PsPC arrived was that they took the H/PC as a lateral market product and saw the financial potential in following Microsoft after Palm. hp themselves have an illustrious history with such formatted devices, and are a self proclaimed asset. I'm pretty sure that Carly when she was there heralded this fact.

Rubbish. H/PC had 256 colour support from CE2.0, 4096 colour support from CE2.01 and 16-bit support from CE2.10. 24-bit support and 32-bit support are around in releases after the CE3 PB update. Display drivers have diddly squat to do with the screen type. There is nothing stopping me right now changing my screen from a CRT to a TFT to a DSTN to a STN. It's a moot hardware point anyway as OEM's can write their own video display drivers if they so wish (EPSON displays i.e. the hp 720 have their own video driver, as do the z50's and probably all most all H/PC's post CE2 (mono)).

Maybe so, but people want features right out of the box; they don't want to buy something and then have to spend more time tweaking it or more money buying add-ons. The whole point of the H/PC, as I see it, is (as others have said above) that you can take it out of the box, turn it on, and you're ready to go. This issue about screens is a big one as well IMHO. Personally, I'd love to have a transflective TFT screen on my Jornada like the one I have on my Sony Clie - that's the only one I can see clearly indoors or outdoors, day or night.

Edited by CE Geek 2005-09-27 4:02 PM

Hey, if anyone wants to find a tft screen that works in the 720...be my guest.

-I don't see why not...just need to find something compatible...

I would have to go with pricing.

Jornada 720 when they were released here were $2200

The only HPC that I think is still available here is the Psion Netbook and guess how much it is?????? yes $2200.

Considering for that most people could buy 1 1/2 notebooks for that much, that is just stupid. I do understand that pricing is reflected by sales, if they sell shitloads the price will drop, but they wont sell any at that price.

I did ask my wife for $2200 but she laughed at me and told me to get undressed and dance down the street naked. I didnt do it.