I met my first new Libretto

today while at my local big box electronics store.

I was wandering about with my 720 open when a polite woman asked what it was. She was about to buy a new Libretto when she spied us. I gave her a short demo and she was duly impressed. She was astounded at the size and she asked the right questions about the machine.

After the exchange we both concluded a hpc would suit her needs, but she was semi-committed to buying the Libretto. Her life was contacts, appointments, text email and detailed notes. She had ruled out ppcs because, well, for the same reasons we rule them out. Lots of fluff, not much substance. She didn't like the idea of an external keyboard/thumboard/stylus. The Libretto was the next closest fit she could find.

I asked to tag along with her to learn about the new Libretto while the saleperson explained the finer ponts. So off we went to the display counter.

The new Libretto struck me as an incredibly sleek, small and stylish unit. I must say the screen is unmatched by anything I've ever seen. Not many things drop my jaw but the Libretto did.

I said nothing while the staff pitched the Libretto and answered her questions. To be fair, the young man knew his product very well. He didn't hedge or fudge or attempt to bamboozle us. He knew the Libretto sold itself to the right customers. He mentioned he was saving his money to get one for himself in the new year.

This is where the fun starts.

She, the young potential buyer, asked me to place my 720 beside the Libretto for comparison.

The sales guy flipped out. At first he thought the 720 wasn't real, that it was some sort of learning toy for a kid or a weird Nintendo. He called several other staffers over for a look. Nobody had seen a 720 before. They were all agog. I was asked "how much?", and I said , "about $250 for a good complete one".

News travels fast. In less than a minute the computer department was swamped with buyers clamouring to buy the "$250 laptop." Needless to say, everyone went away disappointed.

I could have sold 50 720s if I had them in my car boot.

FWIW, the young woman decided to pass on buying the Libretto. I think she's in hpc mode now.

such a nice story!

i'm glad you convinced her!
for those tasks the libretto just isn't right. (i saw a 50ct, don't think the new one is any better in this sense)

and if you had mentioned the 134$ jornadas...

btw what is included in your demo's?! i'd like to do the same to people here

That's a neat story. Were the Librettos new? I should look into these Jornada 720s, but they sound like $100 too much out of my budget.

you can get one on ebay 134$ BIN (techsmartz?)
...that is, if they're still available

But the second that they would find out that the 720 is discontinued, and there is little software development going on, probably half of those people would leave.

Anyways, funny story. If HP sees that thread, hopefully they will be shaking their heads at their mistake!

-They could make quite a business selling them for $250 new....but with a tft screen.

The only "older" computer devices that constantly amaze people are hpcs.

One question always stands out. "Why have I never heard of them until today?" Umm, terrible marketing, totally wrong focus groups, obscene prices, incredible confusion over architectures, I could go on and on.

I've only had one person who didn't like hpcs. He was a moron concerned only with mhz and Mb and didn't understand much about anything. No surprise.

My demo is nothing more than launching Excel, Word , opening a couple of files, showing them Pocket Outlook. That's usually enough to convert them. If I'm in a hotspot browsing convinces the stubborn ones.

I always emphasize that no new software is being produced, the units are disco'd, no official support and whatnot. Most people don't care about those aspects. They just want Outlook and Word and a keyboard. Period. Browsing is a bonus they say they can live without.

I do think that an XDA mini like Chiark owns would turn just as many heads considering all the features and it's a phone to boot.

I used $250 as an average figure with a wifi card, decent sized CF, carry case and a bit of software. And yes, the Librettos were the new models. Very sharp little machines.


Edited by wallythacker 2005-12-20 10:55 PM

actually my opinion differs. i think they'd leave after using IE4, if they wanted to use the 720 solely for web browsing. (not that IE4 is so bad, it just isn't IE6 on a pentium-4 PC)

btw why is this about the tft... again?!
dstn has certain advantages.. i have several tft hpc's and still like dstn
of course if you want multimedia tft is essential so i can understand...

oh and we should really tell HP to check this thread

hehe.

This is all we gotta do to usher in the comeback of the H/PC - just show it to people who didn't notice them when they first came out. I do little demos like this too to friends, coworkers, etc. (BTW, wallythacker, could we be seeing a new girlfriend for you? )

I owned a Libretto 70CT for a number of years and it was a great machine. I checked out the new Libretto U100 at Compusa and was VERY unimpressed. The screen is nice, but the keyboard is AWEFUL. All the keys are rectangular and have no bezel and are mushy as hell. It is among the worst keyboards I have ever seen on a laptop. The keyboard on my original Libretto and the much smaller keyboard on my Jornada 728 are both far superior. Also, they have departed from their oversized eraser style pointing device located on the screen to one located in front of the keyboard. With the pointing device on the screen, you could hold it one handed and move the mouse around. Not only is the pointing device now standard sized, but they have placed it in front of the keyboard, making it much harder to use. All in all, the stats are nice but the ergonomics are a MAJOR deal breaker for me.

Yeah, I'm many people would be clamouring for a sub-$300 "notebook" (HPC ie).

The sticky part is for most people to live with not being on WindowsXP (or 2k, 98 or 95) for that matter. For those who really need to only check email (not browse fancy sites) and take notes, a standalone HPC would be great. Anything more, I personally think they would find it a bit of a stretch.

Still, I'm surprised that so many people have not heard or seen a HPC or Jornada before. Guess being a Singaporean helped for me, as Jornadas were designed and manufactured in Singapore! ... though sadly, the prohibitive pricing back then prevented me from owning one until now.

The other blocker would be the lack of equivalently priced upgrade path. Beyond the refurb/used HPCs, the next in line would be the ~$500 smartbook which is still limited to UK and china and the occassional used set. Further up would be the PSION NetBook Pro which would be priced even more than a entry level notebook right now!

I guess my previous employment has shaped the way I interact with the world. I'm always willing to take the stage and educate people, especially about hpcs. Natural ham I suppose.

Anyway, ready for this? I looked and she entered her name and number in my 720 contacts!

Monica, help me out here. From a woman's perspective was this intentional on her part or what? Am I supposed to call? I'll be looking at my 720 in an entirely new light from now on.............

I love this story. For my part I find the Jornada keyboard to be WAY more functional than the Librettos. The thing that we need to get fixed is what EVERYONE on this board is always saying: if we can just get a modern browser these things would be damn near perfect. Has no one picked up the $30-$50 idea and run with it yet? I can't imagine it would be THAT difficult (although well beyond my power )

Macros

hehehe

guess it won't do any harm if you call her

let us know about the result

Edited by cmonex 2005-12-21 4:23 PM

netfront isn1t bad..
it would also be interesting to get the cenet IE 5.5 or 6.0 run under hpc2000