Well, if memory served (and it might not), there were pre-release models in 1998, with general availability in '99.
Keep in mind that had the product not been orphaned by Compaq, possibly due to the then upcoming merger with HP, it would have had faster transport to the host machine. USB1.1 was current when the thing came out way back. Not even sure if Firewire existed, but even if it did, it needed a costly licensing fee. The original prototype had ethernet, tho, but that was scrapped as being consumer unfriendly.
Yes, it was very expensive. It was also the first unit of its type, and it did not enjoy the economies of scale that production from a Compaq would have bestowed on it. Moreover, it shipped much later than it was supposed to, again because Compaq didn't see the wisdom of doing so.
The point is: Compaq/HP had something very special, and they neglected it to death.
I second that - it looks like Bush needed to make a big announcement to cover up the terrible economic news that was coming the next day (today). No job creation in December, in what was expected to be a huge positive month. The immigration proposal turned out to be a lead balloon, time to throw something else against the wall.
Of course, the networks will be blathering on about a proposal that has no details, like the immigration proposal, and things like a tanking economy and soliders killed in Iraq will be ignored.
As one of the inventors mentioned on the Yahoo groups PJ-100 list, it seems that HP is actually going to pay Apple to use their own patented technology.
I really think that HP is just at the beginning of a long decline with this brilliant move.
Compaq more of less invented the hard drive based portable music player.
I have one of the first sold, almost 6 years ago. Back then, it featured 10 hour battery life, gapless play (albums were ripped as one large mp3 with pointers), and open sourced PC client and drivers. It is still the golden standard for audio quality from such a device. No player out there has all of its technical features, still.
People were so excited when it first came out, delayed over a year (yes, this thing was ready to be sold in '96/'97), that the first units were bid as high as $2000 on mp3.com. My girlfriend, flush with dot.com bucks, bought me one.
So, what happened given the HP acquisition? What happened when a shipping product was so accutely sought after, people where paying 4x what Compaq originally sought to price it at? It was abandoned, licensed to a Korean company called Hango that had no marketing or R&D budget, and forgotten. The engineers on the project were sacked. Even the case was ugly, but the unit was (and still is) great. Given the time frame, the orginal is the size of two iPods wide.
HP could have had a platform and something like iTunes a long time ago. This is apparently the new HP.
A friend of mine works at a hedge fund, and they're shorting the hell out of Tivo. Why? Because the conventional wisdom is that Tivo is going to die from the "free" DVRs that the cable co's and Dish are offering.
For example, Time Warner, an early investor in Tivo (well, the AOL side), is renting non-Tivo DVRs. This is not a good thing to Tivo.
This lawsuit is an attempt to bring the stock shorts back in line, and to fire a shot across the bow of anyone bundling DVRs - and to regain control of the DVR industry in the process.
Let me preface that I'm neither a lawyer or all that knowledgable about networks...
If I read it correctly, the RIAA can still get subpoenas. It has to do so with a judge involved, tho, making it much more expensive and time consuming.
Having subpoenas on the cheap would allow them to put up an automated version of the client, pull a download, do a netstat, and then have someone that checks if a "valid" file arrived. If it did, they'd subpoena everyone that they connected to, and that would be that.
Now, they can't use a cheapo subpoena method. MUTE is actually perfectly timed.
Now this, I believe. When I was in Costa Rica, the locals would put coffee grounds into what looked like a sock, and then pour boiling water through it. It was amazing.
Of course, it didn't hurt that the coffee had been roasted the day before, then fresh ground.
Anyone that would consider Yuban or Folgers as the ingredients for an ultimte cup of coffee has yet to have a good brew:) Now, I could go on about how you need to spend huge dollars getting the best beans and gear, and sound like the idiots that buy Monster Cable. However, it isn't about what you spend; you just need to be careful about your selections. For the same price as a what you find in most folks' kitchens, you can truly experience amazing coffee.
To get the ultimate cup, start with some good beans. Here's an outfit that has good prices and pretty decent beans. You'll see that good coffee doesn't have to be expensive - the Costa Rican varietals are excellent and $5.99/pound. You can also get great coffees at Trader Joe's if there's one near you, or even order pretty decent beans from Dunkin' Donuts.
Both Porto Rico and Trader Joe's offer Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain that is 100% - none of this crap of adding 2% to crap coffee and calling it what it is not. It is up to individual taste whether it is worth the money for rare coffees - I like them, but I like the more pedestrian beans, too. And they cost about the same as a can of Yuban or Folgers.
Now, notice that I said BEANS. Coffee that is ground goes stale in hours. Don't let anyone tell you different. Don't use beans, don't drink good coffee.
Next, you need a good grinder. The king of home grinders is the Jericho - nearly impossible to find online or off, and they cost up to $200 (couldn't even find picture online). I have one, and it is the greatest present I ever got. However, a decent burr grinder, like this one, can be had for as little as $30, and is the easiest, best way to grind your coffee - just set it, hit the button, and come back 15 seconds later. It'll do the job, even if it won't last as long as the Jericho (mine has been purring away, twice a day, for 7 years, just like new).
A good drip maker can make good coffee, but the best way is to use the vacuum method. Vacuum pots are typically expensive, hard to clean, and difficult to use - like the Cona, the best. However, Bodum has a line of automatic pots that are a snap all the way around. The Mini Santos is about $60, and it makes terrific coffee at the push of a button - add grounds, water, done. They look kind of cool, too, in an old iMac kind of way.
I guarantee that if you make a modest investment in time and money, you'll be having coffee that any snob would be very happy to drink.
Both are great finds. The Smartbook, with the built in GPRS "modem", is amazing - outside of OS, it is damn near perfect. Wonder if anyone is going to actually sell them, and for how much?
The "motherboard" on this must be super tiny. I'm guessing that it uses very little electricity, too.
I'd love to see it in a clamshell handheld configuration - 800x480, wide format screen, perhaps 7" diagonal, minimal psion like keyboard, and a big old battery, something off the shelf, perhaps a pair of cell phone batteries. Trackpad eraser would be nice, too.
Offer it with no memory (but with a SO-DIMM slot), cf slot (two better), ethernet, serial.
Hardware only warranty, and let the user or vars populate the memory, storage device (flash or CF hard drive), memory. That way, it could be offered as cheaply as possible. Use a standard boot method, too.
Then let the community decide on what OS to port to it - NetBSD, Linux, whatever. You'd end up with one device that spans from a very stripped PDA like config (minimal flash, memory), to something that could be a mini-notebook (lots of memory and up to 4 gigs of rotating storage), and everything in between.
It could be a portable serial terminal for sysadmins, a mobile web/internet platform, a portable media player, or a total notebook replacement. Whatever you want it to be.
I'd love one, and would pay near-notebook prices to get one. At under $600, it'd be a killer. Anyone else?
I recall that Novell's Netware 3.x had the ability to use multiple namespaces, and would automatically produce truncated versions from long file names for DOS machines. Used to run a Novell server that had Mac, Unix and DOS/Windows clients.
I used to own one, and it was a great piece of hardware. The Actius 250 weighed about 3 pounds, 1" thick, and with the extra batteries, could go 8-10 hours between charges.
However, Sharp's support just sucked. No driver updates, no support any OS beyond Win 98, no technical details, nothing. Any problem had one response: wipe the machine, use the recover disk.
Like Sony, they want to sell computers like other consumer electronics. Doesn't work.
I have a PJBox 100 from 1997 - it was the first hard drive portable jukebox back in the day. It has serial# **4**, so it is arguably the 4th oldest such device ever offered to the public.
The battery is replaceable, but there has been no need. It still provides 10 hours of playback time. Moreover, it is a standard battery type, widely available for about $25. This has been the typical experience with most folks on the PJBox mailing list that I'm on.
If Compaq could engineer this back in '97, surely Apple could do better.
The Tyan is more than I need, for more than I want to spend. Plus, it uses more expensive procs and memory.
Give me something that supports the low-end Athlon64, but has a bit more ooomph - something halfway between feast and famine, and I'd be happy. I'd bet a lot of other folks would, too.
I just can't help but feel that the manufacturers are missing the boat on what features should actually be present - and features that at least some folks would pay more for...
* Faster PCI. How about PCI-X? or 66mhz/64bit? Something that lets a power users do more without saturating the bus.
Of course, it'll be a moot point when PCI express arrives...
* More PCI. More than one bus would be nice - even two standard PCI busses would be useful to a lot of folks.
* More memory slots! Um, these CPUs can address more than 2/4 gigabytes. At least 6, and preferably 8 slots would be a good thing - let folks get to some really large RAM sizes inexpensively.
At least they got gigabit right (but probably hooked to the PCI bus, not good), and Firewire (but not the new faster kind, and again, hooked to the PCI bus).
I'd think that a properly outfitted board would be a video enthusiast's dream, or a hpc dream, or whatever. I'd expect that once MS actually ships XP 64, you'll start to see prosumer boards that address my gripes. But I'd sure like one now, price somewhere between these low-enders and higher-end "server" boards.
I think that everyone here knows the downward trajectory that this item is about to take.
They'll cut the price in the next few weeks to $199, or offer a rebate to get it to that price. It'll still fail to sell, but they'll wait for the Xmas rush to find that out.
Since so many gamers spend the Xmas dollars in January, they'll cut it to $99. You'll get it for free with a 1 year contract from Voicestream and Cingular, too.
By next summer, it'll be $49 from compgeeks.com and other liquidators, and sell out immediately:) Several websites praising this great product that the sweaty masses didn't appreciate will appear, as will several hacks and hardware mods.
Hmm, lessee... still have true oldies in the piles, but in use?
1. I'm typing on an original Northgate keyboard that has seen duty on a 386, then an Amiga, then a Mac, and on PCs again. Has got to be from the late 80's. Still works, my every day keyboard.
2. Video card: Diamond Steath 964(?) A whole 4 megs of VRAM, upgraded from 2, first PCI video card, I think, and originally shipped with a very early Pentium 60. Sadly, no longer supported by Windows, was retired by a recent service pack for Win2000. Still works under Linux, tho. Likely only 10-11 years old, perhaps 12.
3. Monitor: 14" SVGA monitor with dials, a Viewsonic 5, still has a Windows 3.1 upgrade sticker on it. Likely date, new, 1990. Tube is in perfect condition, no burns, nothing. Good for the server rack:)
BEIJING, Oct. 8 -- After a decade of preparation, China will launch its first human being into space on Oct. 15 in a 90-minute flight that will orbit the Earth once, a major Chinese Web site reported in one of the most concrete signs yet that the landmark trip is imminent.
In 2013:
BEIJING, Oct. 15 - As part of a celebration of its first decade of manned space flight, China announces an agreement with the USA's NASA space agency to outsource all space-related operations. An unnamed NASA official said: "Well, they can do it cheaper than we can - we can hire three taikonauts for what it costs us to loft one astronaut - and who cares if some foreigners get killed repairing our satellites?"
In related news, all remaining astronauts have been informed that their services are no longer needed, and offered placement services for lucrative positions in the fast food industries.
There is no way that a Vectrex could be considered portable:)
The unit is about the same size and weight as an old-time all-in-one-Mac (in fact, it is so similar that most folks that see it think it IS a Mac with a built-in portrait screen). Batteries are out of the question, and the built-in CRT is simply too fragile to take too many knocks.
Yes, it has a handle on top, but I doubt that any of its owners were lugging it to school very often.
I will say that it is very fun little system, and can't be beat for games like Star Castle and Asteroids - absolute clones of the originals due to the vector graphics employed.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if memory served (and it might not), there were pre-release models in 1998, with general availability in '99.
Keep in mind that had the product not been orphaned by Compaq, possibly due to the then upcoming merger with HP, it would have had faster transport to the host machine. USB1.1 was current when the thing came out way back. Not even sure if Firewire existed, but even if it did, it needed a costly licensing fee. The original prototype had ethernet, tho, but that was scrapped as being consumer unfriendly.
Yes, it was very expensive. It was also the first unit of its type, and it did not enjoy the economies of scale that production from a Compaq would have bestowed on it. Moreover, it shipped much later than it was supposed to, again because Compaq didn't see the wisdom of doing so.
The point is: Compaq/HP had something very special, and they neglected it to death.
Jonathan
I second that - it looks like Bush needed to make a big announcement to cover up the terrible economic news that was coming the next day (today). No job creation in December, in what was expected to be a huge positive month. The immigration proposal turned out to be a lead balloon, time to throw something else against the wall.
Of course, the networks will be blathering on about a proposal that has no details, like the immigration proposal, and things like a tanking economy and soliders killed in Iraq will be ignored.
As one of the inventors mentioned on the Yahoo groups PJ-100 list, it seems that HP is actually going to pay Apple to use their own patented technology.
I really think that HP is just at the beginning of a long decline with this brilliant move.
I have one of the first sold, almost 6 years ago. Back then, it featured 10 hour battery life, gapless play (albums were ripped as one large mp3 with pointers), and open sourced PC client and drivers. It is still the golden standard for audio quality from such a device. No player out there has all of its technical features, still.
People were so excited when it first came out, delayed over a year (yes, this thing was ready to be sold in '96/'97), that the first units were bid as high as $2000 on mp3.com. My girlfriend, flush with dot.com bucks, bought me one.
So, what happened given the HP acquisition? What happened when a shipping product was so accutely sought after, people where paying 4x what Compaq originally sought to price it at? It was abandoned, licensed to a Korean company called Hango that had no marketing or R&D budget, and forgotten. The engineers on the project were sacked. Even the case was ugly, but the unit was (and still is) great. Given the time frame, the orginal is the size of two iPods wide.
HP could have had a platform and something like iTunes a long time ago. This is apparently the new HP.
...to find out why this is happening.
A friend of mine works at a hedge fund, and they're shorting the hell out of Tivo. Why? Because the conventional wisdom is that Tivo is going to die from the "free" DVRs that the cable co's and Dish are offering.
For example, Time Warner, an early investor in Tivo (well, the AOL side), is renting non-Tivo DVRs. This is not a good thing to Tivo.
This lawsuit is an attempt to bring the stock shorts back in line, and to fire a shot across the bow of anyone bundling DVRs - and to regain control of the DVR industry in the process.
Let me preface that I'm neither a lawyer or all that knowledgable about networks...
If I read it correctly, the RIAA can still get subpoenas. It has to do so with a judge involved, tho, making it much more expensive and time consuming.
Having subpoenas on the cheap would allow them to put up an automated version of the client, pull a download, do a netstat, and then have someone that checks if a "valid" file arrived. If it did, they'd subpoena everyone that they connected to, and that would be that.
Now, they can't use a cheapo subpoena method. MUTE is actually perfectly timed.
Jonathan
That's how the company spells it. A Hispanic-owned company. OK, gringo?
Jonathan
Now this, I believe. When I was in Costa Rica, the locals would put coffee grounds into what looked like a sock, and then pour boiling water through it.
It was amazing.
Of course, it didn't hurt that the coffee had been roasted the day before, then fresh ground.
Jonathan
To get the ultimate cup, start with some good beans. Here's an outfit that has good prices and pretty decent beans. You'll see that good coffee doesn't have to be expensive - the Costa Rican varietals are excellent and $5.99/pound. You can also get great coffees at Trader Joe's if there's one near you, or even order pretty decent beans from Dunkin' Donuts.
Both Porto Rico and Trader Joe's offer Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain that is 100% - none of this crap of adding 2% to crap coffee and calling it what it is not. It is up to individual taste whether it is worth the money for rare coffees - I like them, but I like the more pedestrian beans, too. And they cost about the same as a can of Yuban or Folgers.
Now, notice that I said BEANS. Coffee that is ground goes stale in hours. Don't let anyone tell you different. Don't use beans, don't drink good coffee.
Next, you need a good grinder. The king of home grinders is the Jericho - nearly impossible to find online or off, and they cost up to $200 (couldn't even find picture online). I have one, and it is the greatest present I ever got. However, a decent burr grinder, like this one, can be had for as little as $30, and is the easiest, best way to grind your coffee - just set it, hit the button, and come back 15 seconds later. It'll do the job, even if it won't last as long as the Jericho (mine has been purring away, twice a day, for 7 years, just like new).
A good drip maker can make good coffee, but the best way is to use the vacuum method. Vacuum pots are typically expensive, hard to clean, and difficult to use - like the Cona, the best. However, Bodum has a line of automatic pots that are a snap all the way around. The Mini Santos is about $60, and it makes terrific coffee at the push of a button - add grounds, water, done. They look kind of cool, too, in an old iMac kind of way.
I guarantee that if you make a modest investment in time and money, you'll be having coffee that any snob would be very happy to drink.
Jonathan
Both are great finds. The Smartbook, with the built in GPRS "modem", is amazing - outside of OS, it is damn near perfect. Wonder if anyone is going to actually sell them, and for how much?
Thanks for the info.
jonathan
The "motherboard" on this must be super tiny. I'm guessing that it uses very little electricity, too.
I'd love to see it in a clamshell handheld configuration - 800x480, wide format screen, perhaps 7" diagonal, minimal psion like keyboard, and a big old battery, something off the shelf, perhaps a pair of cell phone batteries. Trackpad eraser would be nice, too.
Offer it with no memory (but with a SO-DIMM slot), cf slot (two better), ethernet, serial.
Hardware only warranty, and let the user or vars populate the memory, storage device (flash or CF hard drive), memory. That way, it could be offered as cheaply as possible. Use a standard boot method, too.
Then let the community decide on what OS to port to it - NetBSD, Linux, whatever. You'd end up with one device that spans from a very stripped PDA like config (minimal flash, memory), to something that could be a mini-notebook (lots of memory and up to 4 gigs of rotating storage), and everything in between.
It could be a portable serial terminal for sysadmins, a mobile web/internet platform, a portable media player, or a total notebook replacement. Whatever you want it to be.
I'd love one, and would pay near-notebook prices to get one. At under $600, it'd be a killer. Anyone else?
Jonathan
Good size, very comfortable, no need to clean it very often. Not one glitch in four years.
jonathan
I recall that Novell's Netware 3.x had the ability to use multiple namespaces, and would automatically produce truncated versions from long file names for DOS machines. Used to run a Novell server that had Mac, Unix and DOS/Windows clients.
I used to own one, and it was a great piece of hardware. The Actius 250 weighed about 3 pounds, 1" thick, and with the extra batteries, could go 8-10 hours between charges.
However, Sharp's support just sucked. No driver updates, no support any OS beyond Win 98, no technical details, nothing. Any problem had one response: wipe the machine, use the recover disk.
Like Sony, they want to sell computers like other consumer electronics. Doesn't work.
Very sad, since their engineering is terrific.
Jonathan
I have a PJBox 100 from 1997 - it was the first hard drive portable jukebox back in the day. It has serial# **4**, so it is arguably the 4th oldest such device ever offered to the public.
The battery is replaceable, but there has been no need. It still provides 10 hours of playback time. Moreover, it is a standard battery type, widely available for about $25. This has been the typical experience with most folks on the PJBox mailing list that I'm on.
If Compaq could engineer this back in '97, surely Apple could do better.
Jonathan
The Next Xbox won't be done until Linux won't run. :)
Jonathan
They scrambled it with a story about the superior ergonomics of Nokia's latest releases, and leaked a picture of N-Gage II.
The Tyan is more than I need, for more than I want to spend. Plus, it uses more expensive procs and memory.
Give me something that supports the low-end Athlon64, but has a bit more ooomph - something halfway between feast and famine, and I'd be happy. I'd bet a lot of other folks would, too.
I just can't help but feel that the manufacturers are missing the boat on what features should actually be present - and features that at least some folks would pay more for...
* Faster PCI. How about PCI-X? or 66mhz/64bit? Something that lets a power users do more without saturating the bus.
Of course, it'll be a moot point when PCI express arrives...
* More PCI. More than one bus would be nice - even two standard PCI busses would be useful to a lot of folks.
* More memory slots! Um, these CPUs can address more than 2/4 gigabytes. At least 6, and preferably 8 slots would be a good thing - let folks get to some really large RAM sizes inexpensively.
At least they got gigabit right (but probably hooked to the PCI bus, not good), and Firewire (but not the new faster kind, and again, hooked to the PCI bus).
I'd think that a properly outfitted board would be a video enthusiast's dream, or a hpc dream, or whatever. I'd expect that once MS actually ships XP 64, you'll start to see prosumer boards that address my gripes. But I'd sure like one now, price somewhere between these low-enders and higher-end "server" boards.
Jonathan
I think that everyone here knows the downward trajectory that this item is about to take.
:) Several websites praising this great product that the sweaty masses didn't appreciate will appear, as will several hacks and hardware mods.
They'll cut the price in the next few weeks to $199, or offer a rebate to get it to that price. It'll still fail to sell, but they'll wait for the Xmas rush to find that out.
Since so many gamers spend the Xmas dollars in January, they'll cut it to $99. You'll get it for free with a 1 year contract from Voicestream and Cingular, too.
By next summer, it'll be $49 from compgeeks.com and other liquidators, and sell out immediately
Jonathan
Hmm, lessee... still have true oldies in the piles, but in use?
:)
1. I'm typing on an original Northgate keyboard that has seen duty on a 386, then an Amiga, then a Mac, and on PCs again. Has got to be from the late 80's. Still works, my every day keyboard.
2. Video card: Diamond Steath 964(?) A whole 4 megs of VRAM, upgraded from 2, first PCI video card, I think, and originally shipped with a very early Pentium 60. Sadly, no longer supported by Windows, was retired by a recent service pack for Win2000. Still works under Linux, tho. Likely only 10-11 years old, perhaps 12.
3. Monitor: 14" SVGA monitor with dials, a Viewsonic 5, still has a Windows 3.1 upgrade sticker on it. Likely date, new, 1990. Tube is in perfect condition, no burns, nothing. Good for the server rack
Jonathan
Today's story:
BEIJING, Oct. 8 -- After a decade of preparation, China will launch its first human being into space on Oct. 15 in a 90-minute flight that will orbit the Earth once, a major Chinese Web site reported in one of the most concrete signs yet that the landmark trip is imminent.
In 2013:
BEIJING, Oct. 15 - As part of a celebration of its first decade of manned space flight, China announces an agreement with the USA's NASA space agency to outsource all space-related operations. An unnamed NASA official said: "Well, they can do it cheaper than we can - we can hire three taikonauts for what it costs us to loft one astronaut - and who cares if some foreigners get killed repairing our satellites?"
In related news, all remaining astronauts have been informed that their services are no longer needed, and offered placement services for lucrative positions in the fast food industries.
I've been saying for years that the big studios are just flinging shit onto film. Now we have more direct evidence :)
There is no way that a Vectrex could be considered portable :)
The unit is about the same size and weight as an old-time all-in-one-Mac (in fact, it is so similar that most folks that see it think it IS a Mac with a built-in portrait screen). Batteries are out of the question, and the built-in CRT is simply too fragile to take too many knocks.
Yes, it has a handle on top, but I doubt that any of its owners were lugging it to school very often.
I will say that it is very fun little system, and can't be beat for games like Star Castle and Asteroids - absolute clones of the originals due to the vector graphics employed.
Simple solution:
:)
fallback_relay=your.isp.mailserver
That's about it for Postfix, and I'd guess that it is no more difficult for any other MTA.
If you don't have an ISP that can handle that, pony up a few more bucks and keep your freedom. There just ain't no free rides any more
I use bway.net in NYC, and they are a dream for such things.