HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC

By Jim Bray

Portable computing has certainly become portable over the years!

Time was when a "portable" computer, like old models by Osborne, were about as big as today's desktop PC's. Now, thanks to the onward march of technological innovation, we have computing devices small enough to fit into a shirt pocket - and little PC's you can perch in the palm of your hand.

"Palmtop" or "handheld" computers are an interesting species; while they're small and light, they can still offer a color screen and - thanks to the Windows CE operating system - an interface that's fairly familiar to those who use the big PC's. This is a field Hewlett Packard has been tilling for many years, and its latest model examples of the breed are called Jornada.

TechnoFILE put the mid-line HP Jornada 680 Handheld PC through its paces and found it to be a flexible and likable machine.

The Jornada 680 is light (it weighs a mere pound), has good battery life (HP says a charge lasts up to seven hours) and - depending upon who's using it - a keyboard that's quite usable.

Well, I found the keyboard far too small on which to do any real typing, thanks to the ten stubby little thumbs I call fingers, but my eldest son's slender and graceful digits had a far better time of it. Thanks to my "deformity," I had to hunt and peck at letters and numbers, while he could do a passable job of touch typing. This isn't a big deal if you don't touch type anyway, of course, but if you're used to your fingers being a blur of activity over the keys, you may find the Jornada (and, dare I say, its ilk) frustrating until you get used to it.

HP says the keyboard is 76 per cent the size of a desktop keyboard. I won't quibble with that, since it depends on the desktop keyboard. My personal keyboard is bloody huge - almost unwieldy - because that's what I like. Anyway, one can't dump on the Jornada too much for its keyboard because it's the nature of the beast: the entire "mini-PC" is only about 7.5 inches long, 3.75 inches wide and just over an inch thick. With a size like that, the fact that it has a keyboard at all is a bonus!

And don't forget, units like this aren't meant to replace your PC; they're meant as a portable alternative, something you can take on the road with you and keep in touch, keep connected, and remain productive until you get back to your main unit.

As such, the Jornada 680 offers full connectivity with your home/office PC. With its built in 56K modem and the included Microsoft Pocket Inbox and Pocket Internet Explorer you can access your e-mail messages and surf the Web.

Logging on is accomplished via HP's dialup software. In all, the setup works well, and the color LCD screen does a credible job of displaying whatever you want, though it's no substitute for a 20" monitor!

Other productivity software includes the Windows CE versions of Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access - basically scaled down versions of MS Office (wish there was a scaled down version offered for desktop users who only need the very basic functions of each application!). With Pocket Outlook, you can keep track of your contacts and schedule - downloading your "big" Outlook files into the Jornada and synchronizing them as necessary.

This synchronizing process is easy and quite quick. The unit and its accompanying software are quite well thought out and the whole shebang works very well.

TheHP Jornada 680 comes with an internal modem; the model 680e is sans modem, for those who don't need to surf or send files back and forth while on location.

While my personal taste runs more toward a notebook PC (mostly because I need a bigger keyboard and like to play games to occupy my time on the road), the Jornada and its ilk fill an increasingly popular market niche. If you're looking for such a beast, the Jornada will probably serve you quite well.

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