IMHO:Sharp HC-AJ1, Possibly a Dream HPC Pro?

I have finished a reviewed on Sharp HC-AJ1. It is possibly one of the best HPC Pros.The followings are part of the review.

My full review has been published on rothberger.net and joined the HPC review competition. If you are interested in this review as well my other two reviews on Celux (NEC) 300HC and NTT DoCoMo Sigmarion 2 (not 3), pls consider voting for me.

Sharp AJ1

http://www.rothberger.net/pages/reviews/zx_hcaj1_english.shtml

Celux (NEC) 300HC HPC2K machine with PXA250 300Mhz and full-sized USB host
http://www.rothberger.net/pages/reviews/zx_celux300hc_english.shtml

DoCoMo Sigmarion 2 Predecessor of the powerful S3
http://www.rothberger.net/pages/reviews/zx_sig2_english.shtml



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HC-AJ1 is an angel from Sharp. It is thin, light, fast and powerful compared to those usually bulky and slow HPC Pro machines. For only 810 grams, you will get an 8.4-inch glamorous TFT screen, USB host, 56K modem, CFII and PC Card II slot, infrared and serial synchronization port.

Its keyboard is good enough to complete a whole novel, but in English only. I have completed all my three reviews on Celux 300HC, Sigmarion 2 and this one on HC-AJ1 on this incredible machine and its marvelous keyboard. It is quite a comfortable experience. Inputting Chinese on this keyboard (or HPCs in general) is a bit clumsy and I seldom do this.

I would even recommend HC-AJ1 over Intermec 6651 and even Sigmarion 2. The not-as-good-as-expected HPA screen on S2, in a certain sense, wastes the great CPU power and the separate video card MediaQ 200. Though with HPC2K OS, Intermec 6651 is not much faster than my 32M AJ1. In fact, their speed is almost identical. 6651 is also thicker and somehow more bulky than AJ1......

That looks like an awesome device! It actually reminds me of the super thin laptops like the Sony x505 and Sharp mm20 - except it's even smaller. This is almost another "I want one" device, if it weren't for the HPC Pro and MIPS

AJ1 was released in early 1999. Then, you could not expect a HPC 2k machine, not to mention an ARM HPC 2k.

In fact, Sharp has another attrative HPC - HC-AJ3. It has the same form factor as AJ1 and similar hardware, but added with 32M standard ram, headset jack and connectors for faster cellphones. Most important of all, it is powered by HPC2k.

in fact, i am looking for an AJ3.

I think that duplicates are usually down to impatience, rather than slow connections

hehe, it is quite strange that the access speed from China never returns to normal, even after the bandwidth restrictions have been lifted. Maybe the route, not just the ISP, has been dramatically changed.

When i posted the above post this afternoon, I had to use a proxy to connect to this forum. This is not just impatience.

Btw, the speed seems to be faster now, when China is 22:00pm of October 15.

My brother lives in China, and he just got a computer and Internet access since a few months ago. We have a strong suspicion that Internet access in China is censored Every website in China is fast, and everything else is a "maybe". Some are fast (like Google), some are slow (like MSN), some even inaccessible (CNN!). So that might explain why it's so slow.

Oh, is that AJ3 with a MIPS too? HPC2K is great, but even better if running on ARM

Now, if the site is local, ie accessing a china based site from China, or US site from US, then it would naturally be faster than accessing a foreign site, since the request do not need to be routed through gateways and hop through the links that interconnect the WANs in different continents.

From what I know, some sites do load balancing based on the client's geographical location. This means that using the client's IP, they may route the client to a server that is closest to that user. That would explain the difference in speed one may experience while accessing different sites. As sites with geo-load-balancing would mean that one would access the local mirror site irregardless of the location one is at.

Unfortunately having such a scheme means replication and having data centres all over the world, which translates to high overheads and is not possible with most non-mission-critical sites.