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Jor-not-a Pocket PC?

Posted by emmett on from the busted dept.

Bool writes: "HP was wrong when they claimed that the Jornada 540 series has a 16-bit color display. It was Jason Cluts who pointed out that the supposed 16-bit display was actually a 12-bit display. HP has issued an erratum on the subject that you can read here. You can find more details at this Web site." Apparently, the USB is slower than it should be, too. Has anyone else played with one of these things?

5 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. oops! by tcd004 · · Score: 4
    HP also forgot to mention it doesn't fit in your pocket either.

    tcd004

    Here are my Microsoft and AICN parodies, where are yours?

  2. My side of the story by jmc · · Score: 5

    I'm Jason Cluts, the one who supposedly pointed out to HP that the display is only 12-bit.

    I just wanted to note here that I wasn't necessarily the one who pointed out to them the Jornada was only 12-bit. I think we can all assume that HP knew this well before I brought it to their attention. All I did was rant on a public message board about how the display was obviously not 16-bit.

    According to someone I spoke with at HP, it was only after reading these comments that they looked into the matter and discovered the Jornada was only 12-bit. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's what I was told. Personally, I think they realized they weren't going to get away with marketing it as 16-bit after reading my comments.

    Of course, that's probably just a small part of the whole story. If nothing else, the story I was told by them was just a convenient way to own up to a rather embarrassing situation. Maybe we'll get some further insight into the whole matter when HP makes their official statement tomorrow. I somehow doubt it though.

    I still have the Jornada but I'm relatively sure that I'll swapping it in for a Palm in the coming weeks. HP will have to come up with something really good to keep me from dumping the thing.

  3. Different types of 12, 16 bit displays by billstewart · · Score: 3
    I've used a variety of limited-color-choice displays over the years. Remember CGA? Or 8-bit displays on Suns? Some of the limitations really matter, some don't. The big difference is between true-color displays (which are a bit lame with a limited number of bits) and table-lookup displays (which give you a lot more choices, but tend to flash around when different processes mess with the color tables.) With true-color displays, 12 bits means 4 bits per color; 16 bits usually means 5 bits per color and do something with the leftover bit. That's not a big difference for color photographs, but it's an immense difference for handling gray-scale pictures - 16 grays vs. 32 grays vs. 64 grays makes a lot of difference, though it's less important once you've got at least 64 gray levels (6 bits). I used to work with satellite images, and it made a lot of difference having >=64 gray levels - things went from banded-looking to continuous-looking around that level. The real data was originally from 12-bit A-to-D converters, but usually quite processed by the time we got it.

    Table lookup display drivers give you a lot more choices (the 12 or 16 bits can be a lot of gray levels plus a reasonable number of colors, and even 8 bits is a good start as long as you don't mind the non-active windows being all the wrong colors because somebody else has the color table right now.

    There are also several different Jornadas - one's Palm-shaped, one's large-Psion-shaped.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  4. Retarded by Foogle · · Score: 4
    This is so retarded. I don't mind being moderated down here, but doesn't anyone else think that this is just a stupid story? Aren't there better things to post?

    I've been told that Slashdot will only post so many stories during one day -- that means we lost a potentially interesting story for this one: a stupid nitpick about a product that is continually made fun of on /. anyway. What gives?

    Rusty's experiment with Kuro5hin seems to be working out alright - why doesn't Malda swallow his pride and learn from somebody else how to implement story moderation... Slashdot is going down the tubes.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  5. CE, PocketPC, etc. by crisis · · Score: 3

    To all of you MS naysayers (i.e. 95% of anyone who posts to Slashdot), I suggest that you don't be so quick to slam CE or PocketPC devices simply b/c it being a product powered by a Microsoft OS. WinCE 1.xx had some serious problems, and Microsoft has learned from these problems and has made what I feel is the most stable OS in their product line. Granted, you need a good bit more fault tolerance for an embedded OS, but it's a good combination of ergonomics and actual function. And as for battery power, Casio has recently announced the development of a rechageable battery that will last for 76 hours on their E-11x and E-5xx lines of PDAs. I'm not stating that one OS/platform/etc. in the PDA market is greater than the other. I do think, however, that many of you will be surprised by what PocketPC devices are offering. Here is a good place to start: http://www.wincecity.com - crisis