R.I.P. Jornada13 May 2002 The HP Jornada is dead, the latest victim of an ugly corporate merger. What does this mean to the handheld market, and what does it mean to consumers? I know I'm a third of the way into a six-part series, but unfortunately, the news doesn't always cooperate with my scheduling. We'll get back to ebooks next week with an in-depth profile of Palm Digital Media. This week, I want to talk about a disturbing news item that left me despondent and muttering to myself. I felt like the robot in that Circuit City commercial... "Don't take her! I love her! Weeping, weeping, weeping..." In the wake of their merger with Compaq, Hewlett Packard has begun the long and arduous process of trimming their product lines, cutting the overlapping, redundant products. HP's Windows-based servers are out in favor of Compaq's Proliant series. HP's Vectra business PCs are gone. And... I'm having trouble typing this... The HP Jornada series of Pocket PCs is dead. While all of the Pocket PC 2002 devices have their issues, the Jornada 560 series came the closest to perfection. The 560s are thin, light, have side controls for easy ebook reading, great battery life, internal CF expansion -- which is still far cheaper and more flexible than SD -- an integrated screen cover so you don't have to bulk up the device with a case, slimmer expandability than the iPaq sleeves, and oh, yeah, the best screen around for ClearType readability. All of that's gone now (well, probably -- see below). My sources tell me the 560 series will still be manufactured for a few more months, then it's gone for good, and the "HP iPAQ" is the new handheld on the block. For those of us that dislike the iPAQ's slippery feel, ClearType-crippled screen, overall bulk and lack of side controls, this is a dark day. It's not a day I didn't see coming. As soon as the merger went through, I suspected something like this would happen. As with so much in life, it all comes down to the numbers. Even though the Jornada may be technically superior, the iPAQ still sells like gangbusters. HP will keep the better seller, because that means more revenue. More revenue means more profits. More profits mean happy stockholders, and HP's management team is probably still edgy about the stockholder mood. As someone on a message board stated, "HP kills Jornada" is a news item that only sites like this would run with. "HP kills iPAQ" would be all over the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Sadder still is that we may never see the Jornada 570 series, which had just leaked onto some e-tailer sites a couple weeks ago. Leaked pictures showed a new Pocket virtually identical to the 560 series cosmetically -- it had silver application buttons instead of gray, but that's about the only difference -- but packing internally a 400 MHz XScale processor, 128MB of RAM, an ATI graphics co-processor for MPEG-4 decoding, a Bluetooth radio and possibly even the incrementally improved Pocket PC Phone Edition operating system. Although HP hadn't officially announced it, it seemed only weeks away from shipping. Now, according to my sources, it's dead and we'll never it for sale at all. Any units already built will probably be destroyed and written off, as that's cheaper than selling a product you don't plan to support. The HP Jornada 578 would have been my ideal Pocket PC, especially matched with an Ericsson T-38 Bluetooth cell phone, but I might never see it. Considering that although the iPAQ was the number one selling Pocket PC, the Jornada was a strong number two, accounting for as much as 25% of Pocket PC sales, HP's decision here does raise some questions in light of other decisions they've made post merger. For example, if the point of this merger was to increase efficiency and reduce redundant product lines -- which is, remember, the official reason for axing the Jornada -- why did HP decided to keep producing and selling both lines of consumer desktops and laptops? That's right; HP will continue to sell consumer PC products from both companies, which pretty much contradicts a big stated reason for merging in the first place. If they can keep both Compaq and HP lines of desktops and laptops, why should palmtops be any different? I think this was a real missed opportunity for HP. This was an ideal time to take a cue from Toshiba -- the heir apparent now for that number two spot -- and sell separate product lines to the consumer and corporate markets. Most iPAQs sold have been sold to consumers, not enterprise customers. I've talked with a lot of businesspeople that wouldn't be caught dead with an iPAQ; they think it looks too garish and "toy-like." The Jornada has an understated, conservative styling that looks great in the boardroom. Why couldn't HP have positioned the Jornada as the "enterprise" Pocket PC and the iPAQ as the "consumer" model? Toshiba did pretty much the same thing by selling the e570 to enterprise customers and licensing a 32MB version to Audiovox for consumer sales. Speaking of the Audiovox, where do we go from here? After the recent price cut to $299, the Audiovox Maestro has been flying off retail shelves, increasing the chances that accessories will appear for it and the Toshiba e570. Being a city kid, always near a car or AC outlet, the battery life on the Toshiba doesn't bother me all that much. Frankly, I'm disgusted enough with HP right now to switch to my e570 as my primary device if only I had a folding keyboard for it. Targus has released a Stowaway for the Toshiba Genio (the Japanese version of the e570) but they say they have no plans to release an English version. If Toshiba/Audiovox market share increases enough, that may change, and the new Audiovox Thera Pocket PC Phone should help matters further, since it's basically an Audiovox Maestro with a GSM phone radio in place of the CF slot. Even an English version of the Toshiba's Stowaway isn't an ideal solution, as it requires a bulky adapter to work around the e500 series's nonstandard serial port. Even if Targus never gets their act together, we mobile writers have another option on the horizon. A Canadian company called PockeTop, Inc. is developing a folding keyboard that will work with any PalmPilot or Pocket PC via IR and a detachable stand to hold the PDA and relay the IR signals. If it works as advertised, it would be the last keyboard you'd have to buy, because it will work with any PDA you pick up. I don't know when this device will hit the market or how well it will work, but you'll know as soon as I do. Frankly, the whole "no keyboard for my e570" thing wouldn't be as big a deal for me if not for a tiny freeware app I picked up last week. Last summer, when I switched from my trusty but long-in-the-tooth Visor to my shiny new Clié N710C, there were no Stowaways for the Clié series. I made do with pen input. It was slower, but I got by. I could do the same with the e570 if not for WordCommands. This freeware gem adds all the Control key shortcuts to Pocket Word that Microsoft left out. Now I can type full speed in Pocket Word and still italicize text, set bulleted lists, check word count and spelling and a ton of other stuff without my hands ever leaving the keyboard. I admit it, I'm spoiled. Any PDA I move to from the Jornada has to have a keyboard option. So, if you want a Pocket PC for writing and ebook reading, what are your options in the wake of the Jornada's death? Option 1: Add a PockeTop keyboard -- as soon as they actually come out -- to a Toshiba/Audiovox Pocket PC and leave HP behind. I have to admit, this is darn tempting. The e570/Maestro screen is just about as readable as the Jornada, and the internal SD and type II CF slots allow for a heck of a lot of expandability. Add a 128MB SD card and a CF 802.11b card and you're good to go. Take that, Carly! (Note: early reports indicate that you'll also need Nyditot Virtual Display to put your Toshiba/Audiovox into landscape mode, in order to position the IR port at the "top" of the device where the keyboard's IR repeater stand can see it.) Option 2: Buy a Jornada 565 on clearance, get it upgraded to 128MB and seal the screen, then buy every Jornada accessory you can find -- the MMC/battery, the thumb keyboard, the PC Card pack (which includes the 24-hour extended battery) and a slew of styli. Heck, buy two 565s and upgrade 'em both, then store one in the closet as an emergency backup. This is an appealing option for people that already have a Jornada and some accessories, because you don't have to start over. And frankly, stockpiling pre-CBDTPA technology is probably a good idea anyway, just in case Disney and their puppet Fritz Hollings win the tech war. Option 3: Gamble that the reports of the Jornada's death have been greatly exaggerated. Although one poster claiming to be a former member of the Jornada engineering team claims that the Jornada team has been laid off, other reports in the media recently hint a different future. Some reports hint that the Jornada 570 is dead in name only, and that it -- or "something very similar" -- will be released soonish and called an "HP iPAQ". Compaq only committed to sticking with the familiar iPAQ form factor for two years anyway, so that time is, in theory, up. If HP releases a Jornada 570 with a shiny "iPAQ" on it, heck, I'll still buy one. Personally, given that the "HP iPAQ" seminars at the 2002 Pocket PC Summit seem to center around the current iPAQ 3800 series, I don't give this theory much weight. It's wishful thinking, but probably only that. Only time will tell. If the Jornada is truly dead, then I'll hang on to what I have for as long as I can, and hope that some Pocket PC maker out there realizes what made the Jornada so special and carries on the tradition of a slim form factor, internal card storage, easy expandability and most importantly, an exceptionally readable screen. Jeff Kirvin
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