It doesn't seem possible, but this issue of The HP Palmtop Paper (PTP) concludes our eighth year of publication. It is also the final issue for this millenium.
Over the past eight years, PTP has chronicled the "golden age of palmtop computing." We've looked at all the Palmtop's built-in applications and discovered how to push these apps to the limit. We've looked into the nooks and crannies of these miniature computers and uncovered such things as Filer.ini and Pushkeys. But more importantly we've looked to our readers and found that they had discovered some most unusual uses for the Palmtop. (See Jeff John's Profile article in this issue.)
One of the things that makes the Palmtop more worthwhile is the wealth of DOS software that runs on the machine. (See both David Sargeant's review of the latest version of Derive: The Mathematical Assistant, and the "Through the Looking Glass" article that describes several more math programs that work on the Palmtop.)
Initially, the costs for commercial DOS programs remained high but, now that DOS is perceived as "dead," some of this software is being given away. That's our good fortune (look at the New Products article in this issue to see what has come to light in the past couple of months). However the real treasure is the software designed specifically for the Palmtop.
We've watched the growth of the World Wide Web since 1992 and have seen that the Palmtop can still keep up with the information explosion.
So, what's ahead?
In the coming months we plan to continue publishing The HP Palmtop Paper as before. New hardware is on the horizon (see Hal Goldstein's User to User column) and more DOS software will undoubtedly be freed from the coffers of commercial software vendors. People are still finding new ways to use the Palmtop. Some folks in Japan are in the process of developing a Palmtop-like machine but with a '486 processor. We want to continue chronicling the adventures of the world's smallest Personal Computer.
Once we have an updated version of our Web site running, we'll try the trick of publishing early drafts of future articles. Hopefully the early publication will help us refine the final, printed version. We envision this as being something like a "peer review process." The Web will make the information more immediate and the printed version will make it more permanent and polished. We'll have both the first word and the last word that way.
Until we see you on the other side of the year 2000, let us be the first to wish you and your descendants a Happy New Year, a Happy New Century and a Happy New Millenium and, as always, Happy Palmtopping.
Ed Keefe