HPCFactor and NEC 900c flood

A few months ago, I remember that someone said that HPCFactor was evolving into a "Jornada 720 only forum". I have now the feeling that HPCFactor is becoming a "NEC MobilePro 900c zone". I am certainly happy that many newbies are discovering the HPC platform due to the recent Ebay flood of cheap Mobilepros... On the other hand, I'd like to see more general HPC contributions.
The developers arena seems very very quiet: just a few speculations and "crazy ideas" and no interesting contributions. The only serious contributions seem to come from Cmonex , with her recent breakthrough in homebrew ROMs: and, yes, it is for NEC 900c again...!
Are the other HPC contributors just sleeping ? or do I really need to buy a 900c ?
Just my 2 cents...

This site has always struggled with attracting developers and technical contributers who are willing to share their knowledge and encourage uptake. If the community doesn't want to help contribute to content on the site, then the site falls at the mercy of the scarce amount of time that Clinton and I have these days to do anything on it. I am sure that my lack of presence recently must have been noticed by at least someone. I put my hand up and plead an unreserved Guilty to that charge.

We cannot offer the foundations for encouraging development, because Clinton and I do not posess the knowledge to a level to be able to write tutorials on it. When Snappy! was still with us, we were discussing the idea of some web stream beginners guides on a lot of what cmonex is doing and what we all want to see here to move things forward.

If you can think of a way to attract developers, I am particuarly interested in hearing them.

Maybe it will become a Sig 3 forum as a few people seem to have them....

I have one on the way (sitting in customs at the moment) so should join the Sig3 ranks in next 2 or 3 days....

Agree though the Jornada and other HPC's etc. were mostly very expensive new and have only really become common for home users when the big corporate users get to the end of life with the products.

I guess now is about the time the companies are starting to get rid of the 900c's so I expect the 2nd hand market to become more and more flooded and they will certainly infiltrate the home market... Defo think NEC missed a trick by not selling Sig3 devices in all markets as they were sold at a price that would have made them a popular buy for the home user...

John

I think it will all settle down soon. I mean it was to be expected as soon as that glut of 900s hit eBay. You could see it coming, and the market dropping out the bottom for the sales of other HPCs.

Now that the initial influx is over with I think you will see things return to normal. Which I believe means 40% about the J720, 40% about the MP900, and the other 20% divided up between all the other machines.

The great thing is all the discussion in the past about the all the other machines is still there...it just doesn't jump out at you since it is in the "latest threads" area....

And C:Amie, you and Clinton do enough just keeping the board running, I don't feel you are obligated to write all the content as well...on the other hand, since you are so smart...and have so much time.....

Rich

Look, I'd be happy if more members of the HPCFactor community would consider contributing their expertise by submitting Hardware or Software reviews - Believe me, if I can do it, anybody can do it.

As for attracting developers, I'm beginning to think that it's a case of 'too little. too late' ....... why develope for the HPC. when there is money to be made in the PPC, Smartphone market? Anyway, maybe there are a few developers who still have a soft spot of the HPC platform......those are the ones that we need to support and encourage.

Geared2003: hey yes i noticed the tendency too, but this has already been explained why this is happening. yeah, why not get a 900c
to get more serious, for example i wish the jornada flash and cenet 4.2. project would continue. i know stuff is happening in the background (no details ) don't know yet if anything will become of it.
but that would really stir up the hpc2000 forum
other than that i think it is just the normal activity for the developer arena.. when i asked for help with recreating dumped dlls (it takes a while if i do it alone! though tool speeded it up now) no one answered because it requires some kind of programming knowledge
btw do you know programming? i don't know enough, but if i ever get there, i'll definitely chime in





i still have such plans, but never enough time. and yes you're guilty, neglecting the hpc users too much. (joke before any misunderstanding)

Edited by cmonex 2007-04-18 8:20 AM

What, you mean Chris actually has a life outside of HPCFactor? Wow!

Rich

.

I disagree. The 900Cs are all from AstraZeneca which released all 6,000 of theirs to the liquidation market. I estimate just under 1000 have sold so far. Unless some are diverted to other corporations or groups besides eBay (which is possible, ambulance companies like them for example), it will continue for years to come

John:

Because software makers have abandoned the H/PC platform strikes me as precisely why we should have greater interest in developing applications. I for one have an interest in trying my hand at this, in hopes of finding new uses for my collection of H/PCs; however, thus far I am finding even the basic concepts just a little over my head. Perhaps it would be helpful if one or more of us here with such knowledge could write a tutorial on the basics (fundamental command sequences, how to draw windows, etc).

As for reviews, I'm very interested in writing one or more. However, first I'll have to find time. When I wrote a review of the Casio E-105 Palm-size PC on Yoldering's site, it took several weeks just to formulate what to write, and then several more writing and re-writing it. Here, I will have an additional step: figuring out what to write a review on. (I'm working on that part as we speak.)

CE Geek: nice start here (and it is CE specific!):

http://www.trajectorylabs.com/win32.html

btw, i don't know how unique i am - i needed to see all of it at the low level before understanding C/C++ etc concepts. so, learning assembly helped me a lot here.

hmm, reviews, i have too many ideas lol. and too much to do

Sniff ... You didn't like the improvements to nPOPuk?

Seriously, though: what are the main "development" goals of this site? Is there a list somewhere of: these are the apps we want or want improved?

For my part, I use my Jornada 820 as a quick e-mail checker (I'm reading messages before my desktop finished booting); I got into nPOP when I needed smtp-auth. I'm developing it because it didn't work the way I wanted it.

I don't use much else on the J820, so I'm not inclined to develop other apps -- eg, someone wanted a developer to take over the "Dict" source code, but I have no need/experience with Chinese/English dictionaries.

That looks like a fine site. PPC and Smartphone, rather than HPC, but looks pretty generic. It does use PellesC; it might be interesting to re-do the tutorial with MS eMbedded Toolkit (available from HPCFactor) for an HPC.

yeah i dont know why it uses that pellesc thing. would you be able to re-do it?

Yes, I can re-do it. I'll have to see what I've got for screen captures.

Is there a place on HPCFactor to put the resulting pages (and how do I get them placed on the site)?

Oops, sorry...! I did like these improvements to nPOPuk, and I really appreciate that you made many different versions for different OSes and processor types. And, yes, I think that NpopUK is a really useful program for all of us !

I think it is not necessary to be a programmer to make useful contributions: there are many other ways to contribute and Cmonex is very good example. People with imagination and motivation can achieve a few things that IT professionals would just find ridiculous, childish, uninteresting or just "primitive"...

Going back to the main topic, I made a few useful things for my WinCE PNA that I would really like to share with others: One major concern with PNAs is that they generally use a 320x240 screen, and that most Windows CE applications are made for bigger screens. So I modified a few japanese freewares like GSFinder+ in order to make them more "user friendly". But I was really wondering if it would be useful for someone else in this forum, due to the very rare contributions about PNAs. This is actually very strange because the GPS market is booming, unlike the PDA market: Yes, the PocketPC platform is slowly dying out and evolving into an expensive smartphone platform and the classical Windows CE platform is hitting the consumer market again... ! (PNAs are not really HPCs, but they are a "very close family member" nonetheless). Sure, there are some very large GPS forums like GPSpassion, but I find them quite boring due to their very basic WinCE knowledge ( and my interest in endless discussions about POIs is very limited). So, should I start a new topic about PNAs or go to Ebay and grab a 900c ?