Preserving the handheld heritage of the computer revolution.
One of the most outstanding UMPCs of the first era is the SONY VAIO UX. It is insanely technological, powerful, and comfortable. A real masterpiece of technological art.
At the same time, SONY VAIO UX is quite a reliable device. They fail noticeably less frequently than many other UMPCs of the first era. Despite this, it is useful to have a spare copy in the collection.
The P8 is a modern 8-inch UMPC from an unknown manufacturer. It has a swivel hinge display and is convertible into a tablet. The device is sold on Aliexpress under a variety of little-known brands. The device is notable for the fact that at its price of $250, it offers an interesting specification. There are no completely failed characteristics. For specifications, see the item description.
In terms of build quality, the device is, of course, inferior to the flagship devices from One-NetbooK. But in general, the quality is quite good and no worse than, for example, the Fujitsu U810. See the photos in the gallery below.
And in terms of performance, the P8 even surpasses some competitors, which are many times more expensive. For details, see Benchmarking NoName P8.
This price-performance ratio makes the NoName P8 stand out from the modern line of UMPC devices.
I’m glad to present you a portable setup, that lets you visit old-school BBS servers on a native old-school handheld on the go.
Hand386 is a unique handheld. It’s quite modern: the device was released in 2023. But at the same time it’s based on a rare Intel 386 compatible CPU.
From the practical standpoint, the device has a decent keyboard, genuine OPL3 sound chip and a high-quality screen, which makes Hand386 a good choice for playing non-demanding DOS games.
One of the most typical hardware failure of HP 100lx/200lx is a broken battery cover latch. That’s why a spare 3D printed battery cover would be a good option even if your current battery cover is intact. A free 3D model of the battery cover is available on Thingiverse. However, I was not satisfied with the quality of this model, therefore I’m glad to present you a custom (improved) version.
You can download this model for 3D printing here: HP 100LX battery cover.stl.
The first issue of the series ‘Handheld in use’ sin 2024 shows the following devices:
The previous posts from this series:
Plotting the function f(x)=1/sin(1/x) is a very difficult task. Few graph plotters are able to draw the function correctly.
Unfortunately, the built-in graph drawing program in the HP 100lx also does not quite cope with this task. Obviously, the specified function never takes values in the range (-1; 1).
Here are few summer pictures taken on multimedia handheld Hewlett-Packard iPAQ rx3710. The device is equipped with a 1.2-megapixel camera and runs Windows Mobile 2003.
It’s quite amazing, that you still can buy and legally register PocketDOS for your Windows CE 2.0 handheld.
The Pinephone is a smartphone developed by Pine64, intended to allow users to have full control over the device. It runs plenty of GNU/Linux distributions and provides six physical kill switches, which allow disabling hardware components.
The smartphone itself looks like an ordinary slate phone. However, there is the keyboard case accessory, which converts the device into a clamshell Linux handheld.
Despite the fact that Pine64 developers were inspired by the Psion Series 5 keyboard, the Pinephone keyboard is not as comfortable to type on as the Gemini PDA keyboard. Besides that, the device is quite bulky when the keyboard is attached.
Nevertheless, it seems to be the most affordable Linux handheld with a physical keyboard, a 5.5-inch display, and a wide range of connectivity options. Do not expect high performance, though.
Overall, the Pinephone with the keyboard case is a nice toy for a nerd.
