ipaq 3800 Linux
Monday, September 22, 2003[7:12:56 PM]
Status....
I mostly don't use the ipaq. For some reason, when the battery says it's at 50%, it becomes unusable. Every second or so it Opie pops up a dialog that it's time to recharge. Supposedly there's 50% left, so it's pretty stupid of Opie to make the computer unusable at that point.
I did, at one point, track down some information about how to fix that problem, but I'm *tired* of screwing around with it. The last I saw, Familiar on ipaq was not ready for prime time, and it didn't seem like anyone was testing it on the 3800 series.
So every now and then I copy the content of an article off the internet onto the ipaq and read it at the cafe. But usually when I want to do that, the battery is dead, because it runs down to unusable in a few days. So I have to plan ahead -- give it time to charge before I go to the cafe. It's mostly not worth it to me. I've got plenty of things to do.
It's *very* disappointing to me. Compaq's design was wretched, but the potential is so close.... If they had just done a few things right instead of wrong, this could have been an awesome little computer.
Now, *maybe* -- if I get the newest version of the software, fix the battery problem, and use it consistently -- it will live up to a little more of the potential. But I'm reluctant to waste any more time installing the operating system over (and over) again.
Ultimately the problem is that it is really not a pocket device. Compaq stupidly made a 'sleeve' to protect the screen, made the device itself slippery without the sleeve, and required a separate sleeve for a compact flash card (for networking, say). Even if I got all the software and the wifi working, it still takes a backpack to carry all the stuff around.
But *someday*, someone will come out with a decent, light handheld that you can attack to a decent keyboard. That'll be cool.
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Last update: 9/22/03; 7:13:10 PM.