Brief Jornada 680 review by request

[asiafish]

By Doronto’s request, here is a review of the HP Jornada 680. Mine is NOT the “E” model nor the Dutch Railway conversion that most eBay Jornadas are. I’ll also be very non-technical here, as I honestly don’t feel like doing a research project on the specs of a 7-year-old machine. Finally, my Jornada has only the extended battery, so I have no idea about weight with the standard battery.

To start, the Jornada is very small, narrower than the keyboard on my X41 by about 2 inches, is about an inch thick and a bit under four inches deep. I’d guess weight to be around 2 lbs with the extended battery and can run for about 8 hours.

What I like most is the keyboard, which despite being about half size. The key action is very nice and with practice I can type at about 35-40 words per minute (down from 50+ WPM on my X41). The key to typing on one of these is to ignore your typos, and there will be many typos. On my laptop I make very few typos and do something in between hunt-and-peck and true touch-typing. That means that I occasionally do look down at the keyboard, but can go on for many sentences without looking and still hit the correct keys. Of course, my fingers are used in proper keyboarding technique as I only use about 8 fingers and not always on the correct key. Using the Jornada this is still possible, but I have to look at the keyboard far more often and I still miss many keys.

The software on this is also showing its age and cannot be upgraded. The Pocket Word app is what I used most, and for basic note taking or writing it is more than fine. Where Pocket Word fails is in complex documents. Footnotes and end notes often get lost when moving to or from the Jornada and the PC, and sadly the newest ActiveSync program does not support this generation of Windows CE, which rules out using the sync built into Windows Vista.

The Jornada has a CF and a PC card slot, and that is how I move data. I save everything on the CF card and then unload to my PC when I’m done. Wifi is another way to transfer files, but my networks are both 128 bit WEP encrypted and the Wifi client for CE only supports 40 bit encryption, so that is not an option. Smaller documents can also be sent as email attachments when connected by the modem, or transferred to a PC by infrared, which I’ve yet to set up on my X41, but had working on my X32.

The screen is a half VGA, meaning 640X240 resolution that displays in 256 colors. There was a hack to enable 16 bit (65000 colors) color, but for my use its not worth the effort to find and install as I really only use this to write when my laptop batteries have died or to play solitaire on an airplane. Since my laptops get exceptional battery life, this isn’t very often.

Other limitations are the email client and web browser. The Pocket Outlook program only supports one email address, so if you have multiple accounts, you will need to locate another email client for Windows CE or use Web mail. Web mail is a horrible option because the ancient Pocket IE browser is both slow and limited in functionality.

I thought of selling my Jornada a few times as I really only use it when my batteries are dead, but for trips to Korea or long days of note-taking, it makes an nice and lightweight insurance policy in my bag.

[dorronto]

Thanks Andrew. As always a truthful and concise review.

Ron

[pianowizard]

I bought a Jornada 720 about half a year ago. I liked it a lot because it served as a nice laptop replacement and in many ways it's actually even better than laptops:

1) much lighter than laptops (1.1 lbs with the standard battery)
2) longer battery life
3) small enough to put in a pocket
4) starts up in less than 5 seconds

But I decided to sell it after just two weeks (for the same price that I had bought it for) because, as Asiafish pointed out:

1) the software is very outdated
2) the screen is too small for comfortable viewing and its resolution too low
3) the tiny keyboard is hard to use (and my fingers aren't particularly big!)
4) Solitaire is the only game included in the OS (I can't live without FreeCell!!!!)
5) compatible wireless cards are usually too expensive (>$30).

[dsigma6]

2) the screen is too small for comfortable viewing and its resolution too low
3) the tiny keyboard is hard to use (and my fingers aren't particularly big!)
4) Solitaire is the only game included in the OS (I can't live without FreeCell!!!!)
5) compatible wireless cards are usually too expensive (>$30).

2) that's subjective. the whole point of this thing is to be smaller than a laptop, but still pack features. i was never uncomfortable when using it for over a few hours- at least no more than you would on any computer screen.
3) once again, if the keyboard were full size, it would be a laptop!
4) tons of free games, utilities and productivity suites available online.
5) lucky for ron, the 680E i sold him comes with one

[asiafish]

Any way to get into a 128-bit WEP encrypted network?

[dsigma6]

I didn't know it lacked that capability. I use WPA and it works fine with that.

drivers, patches, programs, forum and more at http://www.hpcfactor.com

there is a patch for 64K colors on there.

[sliston32]

see toms networking guide to cracking wep. its a two part thing and sounds like a really long winded process.

[pianowizard]

2) that's subjective. the whole point of this thing is to be smaller than a laptop, but still pack features. i was never uncomfortable when using it for over a few hours- at least no more than you would on any computer screen.
3) once again, if the keyboard were full size, it would be a laptop!
4) tons of free games, utilities and productivity suites available online.
5) lucky for ron, the 680E i sold him comes with one

Don't get me wrong, I think HPC's are a very nice concept, and I would prefer them to the OQO 01+ and the Sony Vaio UX series which have virtually useless keyboards. Perhaps there are HPC's out there that would suit me better, but I slightly prefer using conventional laptops than the Jornada 720.

[asiafish]

I use the Jornada a lot less than I anticipated when I bought it as well. Its not so much that it isn't good at what it was designed for, but rather that a very small laptop really duplicates that function without any of the compromises.

[dorronto]

This post is generating more interest than I thought. I probably will only be surfing the net with the Jornado, since I'm a Palm addict and use my Palm all the time.

Thanks to all for the input,
Ron

[dsigma6]

Ron I'm currently configuring the Jornada for you. I did a hard reset to restore it to factory settings, and installed 128 bit ssl...I logged into ebay to make sure it works- it does, but now it won't log me out!

I'm looking for help on the forums at hpcfactor.

[Saysana13B]

I was looking at a jornada for a while. The 720 with a big compact flash card, I wanted to use it as an mp3. I don't listen to like 30,000 songs but like 2Gigs is enough.