Eulogy for A Palmtop
On July 6, Hewlett-Packard announced that it would cease production of the HP 200LX and HP 1000CX computers as of November 1, 1999.
We anticipated that HP would pull the plug on the Palmtop sooner or later, but we hoped that the announcement would come later rather than sooner. Nothing lasts forever and, in the computer business, software and hardware seldom lasts for more than a couple of years. It is to the credit of the HP Palmtop that it lasted for seven years. During its product lifetime it led to the creation of at least a dozen third-party companies, countless users groups and an active online community. It provided material to fill fifty issues of The HP Palmtop Paper, a book, and almost a hundred disks and CDs full of information and programs that stretched the machine to its limits and beyond.
The only thing that has passed away is Hewlett-Packard's presence in the Palmtop market. What endures is the Palmtop itself. Thaddeus Computing plans to continue to support the machine and its users for at least three years.
The word "eulogy" means to speak well of something. So this issue of The HP Palmtop Paper like every issue of PTP is a eulogy for the Palmtop. We continue to speak the praises of those who designed the machine and brought it to market. Even more so, we eulogize the hundreds of people who have added value to the Palmtop with new software and hardware. We eulogize those who contributed their time and expertise to make the Palmtop a "true personal computer."
In this issue, I introduce the topic of Artificial Intelligence on the Palmtop. This is something that has not been mentioned in the context of a handheld computer but it seems like a natural place for this kind of application. Robin Clarke's article on using XTreeGold on the Palmtop shows that there is yet another tool to manage all the files on our favorite machine. Paul Merrill, a former editor of The HP Palmtop Paper, tells how he uses his Palmtop in his occupation of renovating older dwellings and then putting them back on the market. In his User to User Column, Hal Goldstein writes about the first attempt to put DOS software in a Windows CE machine and offers the brightest idea yet for the Palmtop: backlighting!