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New Site Poll: Who manufactured the best H/PC?Handheld PC News Posted 15 years ago | Community | Chris Tilley 30 comments
In what is certain to be a highly contentious issue, we have added a new site poll this afternoon. Quite simply we want to hear who you think was the best of the Handheld PC device class OEM's?
Perhaps you think NEC and its MobilePro leviathan dominated development, or maybe you favour the sleeker, slimmer hp Jornada range? Whatever you think place your vote in the left hand navigation area and let us know the reasons for your choice here in the comments! But remember! You can only vote once. View: Have Your Say Posted on 01 January 2008 at 11:14By Chris Tilley (C:Amie)
Comments on this articleAs great as the Jornada class was, they never came out with a Windows CE 4.x .net version, and they held onto SH3 for too long. To me that gives the edge to NEC. They did away with SH3 before any HPC2000 devices were released, where as NEC held onto MIPS against the flow of change within the OEM community and against Microsoft's direction on the subject. For me the lack of a .net versions doesn't make me feel like the Jornada missed out on anything - tangible. I have to say it was HP. The Jornada line was brilliant in my book. I still love the 720 and have said many times I think it was the best ever produced - until I got my Smartbook at least. :-) The thing I loved about the Jornada line was that from the 6xx to 7xx lines all of the accessories were interchangable (batteries, cases, etc.). That made it easy to get bits for them for a long time and one of the reasons I think there are still so many of them out there (see usedhandhelds.com as an example). I vote for HP: they had a perfect track record with the 95 to 200LX DOS handhelds, then started rather clumsily IMHO with the 300/320's, buggy 620...., but made an excellent recovery with the 700's series. Portable, decent battery life ( OK, no 50 hrs on 2 AA's, but still...). My current choice for the NEC as my most-used handheld nowadays is not based on a 'quality choice' per se, but on my eyesight ( and the inbeatable USD 75 i paid for excellent 900C's) HP for their excellent 700 series. Easily one of the best handhelds of all time. Great battery life, perfect size, rugged construction etc etc. Its the 1 handheld that should be resurrected from the dead by HP and updated to todays standards. I also voted for HP, but i was quite torn. Like many of the users on this site, i've only ever been able to compare HP and NEC. In the case of my "older" devices (MP880 vs. J680), NEC would clearly win, but this was mainly for the screen size, and usb port. But in the case of my "newer" devices (MP900C vs. J720) i was a bit torn - I agree with RTFM about the design aspects, but the MP900c wins for CE.net and flashability. Both devices could have done with a true TFT screen and faster / accelerated framebuffer though :( Whatever marketdroid persuaded MS to dump the keyboard shoul... I personally picked hp because i feel the jornada has allway been a more solid machine than the others wile keeping it small but not ridiculasly small.. Price wise: no Up to date : no As for the voting in genral, i notice there are alot more votes than comments.. wich is normal and allthough hp is wining, I feel that alot of the nec votes could be comming from people that all they ever had was a 900c there for not really a resonable poll... but who knows? You make a valid statistical point, however one could assume that the users considered the choice between the NEC and the hp in their buying decision, and opted for one vs. the other. Again of course this isn't going to be exclusively true. Well, it's no secret I have both the 900C and the J728 (along with a bunch of other devices by both HP and NEC) and, while the 728 is arguably the best H/PC ever made (considering form factor as well as functionality, though the Sigmarion III is very close), I believe the original question was, "Who was the best H/PC manufacturer?" (We've already had a poll on the best H/PC.) Let's not forget that NEC played a role in the Sigmarion series as well. As for MIPS, NEC was the primary manufacturer of that CPU, and MIPS is making a comeback (while the ARM architecture is not without its own issues). Well actully Nec sold devices in eroupe under the packard bell name if i recall correctly .. Yeah it doesnt say nec but thats what it is... as for my point above, i see it as more of a price point, the jornada's are actully still going for more than a mobile pro 900 series I think thats more of a buying factor, as most nec owners i assume purchased it from ebay or the like, and any new owners probily went on the "oh thats a cool little laptop & its cheap" factor, Not knowing exactly what it was... Arguably, and not the entire range, certainly not the 900 series. I have lived in the UK my entire life, and I have never seen a Packard Bell branded device - sans for one or two on eBay in more recent years. Keep the discussion coming. Who has voted for "Other" and who did you vote for? I must admit that's a bit strange for a company called Nippon Electronics Corporation (Nippon, of course, meaning Japan). I have owned a Packard Bell 800 in the past (bought it in 2000, kept it until battery wouldn't hold its charge anymore about 2 years ago). I found it easy to work with though a little frustrating with the lack of javascript support in IE. I had a Dell p133 Latitude at the time and prefered using the PB 800 over it for typing, emailing... I haven't owned a H/PC for a while now but I am currently bidding for a NEC 900c (disappointed that you don't get pocket versions of word, excel, powerpoint etc only viewers but at least you get a 'Wordpad' to do basic docs with... I have to go with... For me, it's the NEC MP900c. I had a HP J728 before, which is an excellent device, so it was a very close draw to decide on. The USB host functionality as well as the flashable ROM (cmonex' ROM v2 is on it :-)) decided it for me, over weight and size (which are definitive pluses of th J728). Ummmm. I think it says "Who manufactured the best H/PC?" I took "Other". I am totally in love with the PSION/Teklogix Netbook Pro. Add integrated wireless, Tablet XP and decent storage and it would be unbeatable - in my opinion. If Samsung can fit competitive power into the Q1, it can certainly be done with a Netbook chassis. I consider J728 and Sig3 as king and queen. I slightly lean to Sig3 due to its OS, LCD, USB, and weight. I vote on Fujitsu with Pencentra 200 and DTResearch with WebDT375. And like Jornada 7XX series too. Robinson hahahah LG was probably the worse. It was disaster when it comes to reliability in my experience. Sigmarion III is the best! Best in every factor especially the screen resolution I've only owned NEC 900C, Jornada 728, and Sig3 (and a Zaurus, and Axim X30, but they are not H/PCs). I sold the Jornada since it had the oldest (least modern/usable) browser. It was a great device, but I feel that HP messed up big time by not making the ROM flashable. The device itself was nicer, but less usable (to me). Another thing about that device was the spare CF slot was only usable for memory cards. Also no USB host. I know we are not talking about devices, but manufacturers, but it seems to me short-sighted on HP's part to omit these features. I have owned both the NEC Mobile Pro 900C and Jornada 720s and a 728 as well as a XDA Exec pocketPC. The best machine is the Jornada 728. The size is not too big, it is more robust and despite it's slower processor navigation around very large Compact Flash cards is much quicker on the Jornada compared to the NEC MobilePro. If the Jornada 728 had a more up to date web browser and a clearer brighter screen with a higher resolution than the 640x240 it currently has it would, in my mind be the definitive HPC. The best as far as the form factor is clearly the Psion 5mx clamshell devices, but I would also add the HP Jornada 728 as it had a better OS for real world use. I would love to see a modern version of either that had the internal UMPC guts so they ran rull windows OS!!!!!! I voted other, reason why... Psion made an awesome computer. Since the day of Psion 3 to Net book pro. The 5MX is freaking awesome. EPOC was awesome. AA batteries esy to get, long life. Still got my 3,3mx,5 and 5mx . J720-28 is my next one with these two computers 5MX and J728 I am set. easy to put in pocket. LG Phenom 220 was ahead of its time, you can tilt the computer, screen shot, printer port, vga port. Now take some thing from NEC MP 900/900c ( USB , Win CE 4.2 ). Sharp Telios HC 7000/Intermec 6651 is the most complete screen , camera, usb, flip screen etc. S/F CEYA! |
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