HP Jornada 420: The Bold, The Beautiful and The Unsupported
Written: Dec 22 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: color screen, fast, great organizer, fits in white coat pocket
Cons: rather heavy, no good downloadable applications, Windows CE recently discontinued, everyone else has Palms (i.e. herd envy)
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| litldoc's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Jornada 420 Pocket PC |
As a doctor in LA, I am always on the look out for space-saving and memory-promoting devices on the market. Anything that can serve as a pager/reminder or a database (and preferably, that can fit in the pocket of my white coat without giving me severe shoulder strain) would be a huge boon to my existence. I currently own a cell phone, a personal pager, a hospital pager, a Seiko message-watch, a desktop computer, and now, the HP Jornada PDA. My aim in obtaining a PDA to add to my arsenal was to have access to a database of appointments, names, numbers, addresses and notes-to-self that I could carry with me throughout my day. With the cost and mass of a desktop computer, the PDA seemed a great alternative.
What struck me about the Jornada initially (vs. the Palm, etc.) is that it is Windows CE based (which I love, since I have grown up on the Windows OS, and can maneuver it in my sleep), handwriting is recognized almost verbatim (i.e. there is hardly any confusing graffitti to commit to memory), and of course, the reason I bought the Jornada after all... It's in BEAUTIFUL COLOR! You may think this isn't a very big deal, and, well, you may be right. But I remember as a kid, using those tiny little green-screen Mac's at school, and marvelling at the revolution that took place when they were replaced by color screens -- it was like looking at a whole new universe. They were just so much more enjoyable to look at. Same with the Jornada. It's pleasant to look at. I don't do much that requires color (no art/graphics), but even the text and the background are much more aesthetically pleasing than the green-screen Palms and others. And when you're planning to keep pulling the PDA out of your pockets and scanning it for names, numbers, appointments, notes, etc... the aesthetics of what you are looking at can have a bigger impact on you than you may initially think.
So, that's the beautiful part. Onto the Bold... It's thicker and weighs more than any of the Palms (esp. the Palm V). Lengthwise, it's approx. the same size as them, and therefore, does indeed fit into my white coat pockets, but it's heavier, and therefore, may indeed contribute to my eventual hunch-backedness. The newer Palms are a bit faster at processing than my Jornada (although I've never noticed that mine was slow, per-se). But the biggest drawback (at least in my little world) is that everyone and their grandmothers have Palms, and everything on the internet is geared to Palms. Ergo, all the nifty medical applications that you can download for free on the internet are built for Palms (dagnabit!), and I have yet to find one good one for the Jornada. Furthermore, while they are going to continue to support the Windows CE platform, I recently heard that Microsoft is going to discontinue the production of PDA's with CE, due to the overwhelming popularity of Palms. So, if you like to network with everyone around you, download great software for a myriad of applications off the internet (medical, in my case), and purchase a system that will continue to be produced and developed into the future, the Jornada may not be for you.
As it is, it's been working well for me. I use it mainly as an organizer, and I do so like the color screen. But let me tell you... sometimes, on rounds in the morning, when everyone else is pulling out their Palm-3,4,5-x-e-c-whatevers and comparing their latest medical apps... I do feel something akin to a twinge of jealousy... But then again, I do have a much more aesthetically pleasing screen, and of course, you'll never catch me accidentally writing in a patient's chart in graffitti. ;)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
litldoc
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Member: Britton Ashley Hill, M.D.
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 1 member
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