One Boring Day in January

Note: This is a work of pure fiction, intended to present my ideas about what I'd like to see in a palmtop. Please don't call HP and ask for one...

I'd like to tell you, my loyal web page readers, about something interesting that happened the other day. It was a normal Monday afternoon in January -- cold and icy, with wind chills in the -20 range. I was spending the day in bed, programming and nursing a back injury, when I heard a knock at the door. By the time I hobbled to the door, the visitor was gone, leaving only a nondescript brown box in my mailbox.

I turned the package over in my hands. Instead of an address, the package bore only a barcode and a set of coordinates, the first two of which I recognized as the latitude and longitude of my apartment. What was inside the package, though, was far more interesting than the outside...

I opened the box, and immediately noticed the note:

Rob: Love your web pages, especially that software library CGI. Thought you might like to have a look at this... they'll be back to pick it up in a few days.
--Anonymous

"How odd," I thought, "the software library isn't even there yet."

The only other thing in the box was a palmtop computer. On first glance I thought it was a 200LX, but the color was a bit different and the PCMCIA slot looked thicker. That's when I noticed the nameplate. I looked twice just to be sure, but it definitely said "Hewlett-Packard HP400LX".

So, without further ado, I present my short review of the new HP400LX, scheduled to be released on... heck, I have no idea!

The Hardware

The hardware design of the 400LX is quite similar to that of the 200LX. It's the same size, plus or minus a couple of millimeters, and is no heavier. It still uses two AA batteries. Although the lid is the same size, the screen goes nearly all the way to the border, as many laptop screens do.

The keyboard deserves special mention. On the unit I tested, the keyboard was identical to that on the 200LX. When I first looked at it, though, my eyes were immediately drawn to a pair of thin slots in the upper corners. At first, I thought these were for use with keyboard overlays, but the "Hints" file which was (thankfully) preinstalled on the C:\ drive explained their true purpose: interchangeable keyboards.

Using a small screwdriver, I was able to pop the keyboard unit out of its tray and unplug the connecting cable. According to the hint file, HP offers several alternate keyboards including one with larger keys and no numeric pad, like the OmniGo 100/120, another with soft keys like the Psion 3c, and another with an "eraserhead" pointing device built in. An external PC-compatible keyboard is also supported, using an adapter that plugs into the serial port, and a receive-only infrared window is located on the front edge of the unit for use with an infrared keyboard.

Another thing I noticed immediately was the flip-over hinge. Like the one on the OmniGo 100 (but more compact), the 400LXs hinge allows the screen to be flipped all the way around for use as a pen tablet.

As you might have guessed from the last sentence, the 400LXs screen is touch sensitive. I'll cover this in more detail later.

The ports on the 400LX are identical to those on the 200LX, with one exception: the PCMCIA slot now supports two Type II cards, tightly stacked in what used to be a few millimeters of "extra" vertical space. (A Type III card could, theoretically, be used, but the problems of using power-hungry cards on only two AA batteries have not yet been circumvented.) An additional trapdoor in the bottom of the unit offers access to a motherboard memory socket, for RAM expansion and ROM upgrades.

The internal hardware differences in the 400LX are apparent the moment it is turned on. The LCD is obviously much denser -- 640x480 pixels, with at least 8 shades of gray. The CPU is very speedy; as near as I could ascertain, it's one of those ultra-low-power 486s Intel, AMD, and others have been working on. The system I tested had 8 MB of RAM, although the on-line hints mentioned 16MB and 32MB models.

The Software

The 400LX uses GEOS as its core operating system, but it's compatible with all existing DOS and System Manager applications. (This, unfortunately, doesn't include all of the TSR hacks -- MoreEXM, Buddy, iPeX, etc. -- we know and love, but as I'll describe later this is no big loss.)

Every 200LX built-in application has a counterpart on the 400LX, and they have all been greatly improved and expanded. Quite a bit has been added, too... I can't begin to list all the changes, but I'll try to hit some of the highlights.

Communication

Communication is obviously one of the 400LXs strong suits. A full networking suite is built in, supporting serial, modem, ISDN, Ethernet, and infrared LAN gateway hardware. The centerpiece of the suite is a full-featured TCP/IP stack and applications including a PPP dialer, telnet, FTP, IRC, and NFS client and server. A Novell IPX client is also provided, as is Windows (SMB) peer-to-peer networking.

The electronic mail client, called simply "E-Mail", is surprisingly powerful. Using plug-in transport drivers, it can handle Internet mail, various common LAN mail systems, Usenet news, wireless mail and pages, and even QWK packets from BBSs. It is tightly integrated with the web browser, allowing HTML-formatted messages, file attachments, and the like. The E-Mail application also serves as a universal in- and out-box for faxes and infrared beaming.

The World-Wide Web browser is equally superlative. Besides handling most Netscape- and MSIE-isms with ease, it supports secure transactions, Java, and plug-ins. The system I tested had a RealAudio plug-in installed; while I wouldn't want to run my batteries down listening to streamed audio, the possibilities are intriguing.

The PIM

As with previous models, the PIM applications form the core of the 400LXs software collection. The System Manager applications are gone, replaced by GEOS equivalents that are not only seamlessly compatible with the old applications, but add significant new features as well:

Appointments: Adds a yearly planner view, subsets, and multiple to-do lists.
Phone / Database / Note Taker: These are no longer separate, because GEOS allows multiple running copies of a single application. They now have more field types, the ability to have more than one category and/or note field in a record, the ability to store pictures and digital ink, and much more flexibility in subsetting and reporting.
Map: World Time has been renamed, and can now track the palmtop's position if a GPS is attached. Though only the world map is supplied, more detailed maps can be loaded for street-level tracking.
Find: A global find feature is now available, which presents a list of matches (either simple text search, or a "power search" which allows regular expressions and selection of particular applications and/or files) and allows the corresponding information to be immediately viewed with a single tap or keypress.
Links: Every record in the PIM system can be linked to other records in the PIM, or to external data or applications.

Letters and Numbers

Although there is no GEOS version of Lotus 1-2-3, HP has found an admirable replacement in the 400LXs "Sheet" application. Besides supporting the whole range of 1-2-3 macros and graphing options, the 400LXs spreadsheet supports Excel-like visual formatting and can use plug-ins for advanced features.

The Memo editor is, thankfully, no more, replaced by a WYSIWYG word processor that approaches full desktop publishing capability. Of special note is the inclusion of HTML editing support, which makes creating web-based information easy.

Pocket Quicken is included, and hasn't changed much.

With the addition of the pen, a draw/paint package is included. It's not Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, but it is quite useful for basic graphic editing tasks.

The HP Calc application is now fully HP48 compatible, and (not surprisingly) faster than today's HP48 calculators.

Backward Compatibility

As I mentioned above, the 400LX is compatible with all DOS and System Manager applications.

GEOS makes good use of the 386+ CPUs' "virtual 8086" capability to provide full-sized, protected DOS boxes for multiple applications at once. The GEOS memory manager gives DOS applications access to XMS, EMS, DPMI, and virtual network drivers -- you might not be able to run Windows inside a DOS box, but with enough memory, you can certainly run almost any other DOS program.

System Manager applications are handled in much the same way. A desktop icon brings up a DOS box running System Manager, and from there it is possible to start EXM applications in the normal manner. Multiple copies of System Manager can be running at a time, just as multiple DOS boxes can be open at once.

Connectivity

I wasn't able to test most of the connectivity options, as no desktop software was provided with my test unit. About all I know for sure is that the serial connector is the same. According to the "Hints" file, a desktop hot-sync package, desktop versions of all built-in applications, and cables are supplied with every unit.

The 400LX is also backward-compatible with the Filer protocol used in earlier models. I was able to successfully transfer files using the HP200LX Connectivity Pack's Filer.

Conclusion

In order to give the 400LX a fair test, I copied the entire contents of my 200LX to it (via IR) and converted all my PIM data to the 400LXs native format. After two days of use, I was already hooked, and hadn't found any real deficiencies in the unit.

As you can probably imagine, I didn't want to give the 400LX back when the messenger came for it a couple of days later. Unfortunately, I had no choice, and I have the stun-gun burns to prove it. Where the HP400LX is now I have no idea, but I imagine its owner is glad to get it back.

Epilogue

This morning, I found a blank white envelope in my mailbox. Inside was a note from the owner of the palmtop I'd borrowed:

Modern physics tells us that there are a multitude of possible futures branching off from every moment. I hope you liked this short look into one that might not be so far away. I'm sorry I couldn't let you keep the 400LX, but... well, could you live without your palmtop for more than a day or two? Here's to keeping HP #1 in the palmtop world...
--Anonymous