It has Bluetooth so use it with your Sharp Zaurus and IRC all you want. IRC on a phone would be painful unless you were just lurking around.
With the Zaurus you can pick from many IRC apps or port one yourself. And there's Java on the Zaurus too.
IMO, the phone should be a phone and provide the voice and connectivity while the handheld or laptop uses the connectivity. With Bluetooth, you could keep the phone in your pocket or briefcase while you IRC on the handheld computer.
it's also amazing that a group can threaten legal action using an automated system and walk away with a "I'm sorry" letter. And if a human was involved, THEY should be fired and civil charges filed against them, and the organization, for punitive damages. IMO.
With all the stupid patents being awarded and laws being passed these days, The Baird's words regardings lawyers sound more prophetic every day.
I wouldn't say that IBM is teaming up with Trolltech to provide product to "ordinary people". As far as the PalmOS goes, it's a good PDA OS but not a full featured OS for when many enterprise customers would want to do. PalmOS v5.0 is a v1.0 product. Had it be embedded BeOS that would be another story but it's not. Therefore, it's got to prove itself and Linux already has proven itself to IBM.
A company like IBM needs to provide solution that work. OS/2 worked years before Windows NT was usable on the DESKTOP and DOS/Windows never really made it. Sure it worked sometimes but support and reliablity were not enterprise ready. The same goes for WinCE.
Regarding the PalmOS, well, it's not full featured enough and Linux already is.
That's my "take" on why IBM didn't go with WinCE or PalmOS.
LoB
Re:OS can't scale? Pretend by running more OS copi
on
VMware: Another Netscape?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
if you run 2 VM's, each running the same OS and same server process then if one goes down the other could be configured to take over. In the world of MS Windows, your OS and app is more likely to fail before the hardware. So there is an advantage in here and Microsoft might be able to say admin costs are consolidated too but I doubt that's going to be reality.
Good point though. The hardware failover goes away in this configuration.
one correction, you'll have to pay for the dev tool. As long as IBM pays Trolltech for putting the libs on the device, the developers either build free/oss applications or they build commercial ones. You can still give away the source but if you charge the customer, you've got to pay Trolltech for the tool you used to build it.
Seems like a good mix to me. Heck, the Qtopia SDK is what, US$100. Big woop. IMHO.
but the company who has to manage 5 machines instead of one might rethink their TCO after all the failed patches, virii, etc turn what they thought was cheaper and reliable into something else.
Unlike IBM's version of this( Linux on the mainframe ) Microsoft still has a problematic core called Windows.
The real threat there might have been Linux running on Connectix but we all know that product will die very soon. Lucky that GNU/Linux on another virtual system will still have advantages over the Windows one.
"Why insult people that are good at teh latter (but not the former)?"
It's a known fact that most of the innovation comes from small companies. By removing the rewards for such innovations, as Microsoft does year after year, they are effectively clean-cutting the forests for their profits today. Partnering can be a good thing but it's almost never a good thing with Microsoft.
It's already almost impossible to get funding for anything that does or COULD cross Microsofts path. That's my beef. There's no Win/Win partnering with them, it's Win/Lose in 99% of the cases.
LoB
OS can't scale? Pretend by running more OS copies
on
VMware: Another Netscape?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
First it was failover because you couldn't put more than one server process on a Windows box and get 7/24/365 uptime. They fell over far too often. So run 2 identical boxes and WHEN one failed, the other took over. The large Sun, IBM, and HP boxes can run 64 CPUs without a problem and hundreds of server processes for 7/24/365.25.
But Microsoft wants to say it can do this too. Enter Conectix. Now you can hide those duplicate servers in one box! Yeah, scalable and 7/24/365.25 reliability and your support budget will be really small. I can see the press releases coming out of eWeak and C/Net now.
if the technology doesn't ONLY RUN on MS Windows, Microsoft will come up with their own version. It all comes back to saving Windows. Wasn't it Bill Gates who said "Does anybody remember Windows?" when Microsoft developers got to excited about Java?
Is there any open standard today that Microsoft hasn't already or isn't attempting to make a proprietary MS Windows-only technology?
Do you really think that Microsoft did Direct3D to solve more than a MARKETING problem? Couldn't they have provided a better solution quicker by working with the OpenGL group? Don't kid yourself, it's all about owning the API's and if OpenGL v2 starts gaining traction, a few $100 million from Microsoft and another MS-API will show up. Or they'll buy all the companies with interesting OpenGL v2 apps( Coopers and Peters... ). IMO.
"Microsoft wasn't in the mood to expend the effort to support platforms that couldn't carry their weight."
In 1994, they sold less than 400,000 copies of NT and had less than 700,000 total market for NT. IIRC. Not a very large market but they had just finished putting 100's of millions of dollars into MARKETING Windows 95( aka Chicago ) and IBM said it was going to push OS/2 into the server market. 100's of millions of dollars were dumped into MARKETING Windows NT into the server space. They are very much like vultures. They feed on the technology and markets of others. Go throw $50 million at a market and you'll see Microsoft throw $100 million at it while they figure out what the market is and how it make it only work on MS Windows.
Yup, the reason a company like Microsoft left the MIPS/PPC/Alpha/etc market was because there wasn't anybody in that market to kill. They weren't very large and Apple killed the PREP & CHIRP platform for the IBM/Apple/Motorola partnership and the last hope of an alternative DESKTOP hardware platform. When the $$ behind that market dried up so did Microsofts interest outside of x86.
There were very large companies putting $$$ behind those platforms and Microsoft had to be sure they'd be there to crush any other OS on those platforms. When the big $$$ leaves, so does Microsoft. They are not going after Linux because a bunch of developers like messing with it in their basements. It's because there is big $$$ behind it now and $$$ being paid for it as a solution base. IMHO.
yup, they got that low-end UNIX market by "partnering" with 3 or 4 companies who provided the Win32 API's on UNIX and told the UNIX application vendors that they could have the PC desktop AND the UNIX workstation market by writting to Win32. After enough of the 'important' UNIX apps were ported to Win32, Microsoft pulled the rug out from under the 3 or 4 companies who provided Win32 on UNIX. Only one was "allowed" to exist because Microsoft fed $$$ to them so they could afford the HUGE increase in licensing costs that killed the others. Why else would Microsoft pay someone to put Internet Explorer and part of COM on UNIX? Brilliant marketing more and stupid move by the UNIX app vendors. IMO.
What customers ended up with was no choice but to move from UNIX to MS Windows because the apps could no longer run on UNIX. You have to admire the guys and gals at SoftImage. They were purchased by Microsoft and fought hard to keep a UNIX code-base while under the MS thumb. And now they still have a rebust platform for their customers. Why do you think Hollywood is going back to *nix via Linux? It wasn't because Windows was as good as Bill thinks, that's for sure.
but they didn't, they based it on OS/2 and then put the Win16 API on it after 32-bitting it. They then hacked it up over the years to Window-ize more and more of it. The first networking in NT was provided by LanManager. An OS/2 product.
you know I just never looked at "business" that way. I guess it means that if you are smart enough to know how to steal someone elses work, you deserve it more. And the ultimate goal is to put the owner of the technology out of business so that you can take all the rewards for yourself. Why didn't I see that before? It's brilliant. It's also bullshit and something I expect from the likes of a tyrant or war lord. It's not what a socially responsible company should be doing and Microsoft should have been smashed into tiny pieces because of it. IMHO.
I had heard that when Microsoft released MS-DOS to IBM originally, it didn't work and IBM had to all but rewrite it( PC-DOS ). I'm sure there where many at IBM who knew how bad a coding Microsoft was/is but they "partnered" on OS/2 anyway.
I had also heard that another big fracture between IBM and Microsoft was in the design of the OS itself. Microsoft wanted the application with focus to get most of the CPU and IBM wanted a tight kernel so that all apps got an appropriate amount of CPU time. It took almost 10 years before Microsoft came out with an OS( W2K ) which had decent multitasking for the DESKTOP. Of course THE DESKTOP was now a 700MHz machine with 128MB of RAM while OS/2 still ran great on a 300MHz machine with 64MB of RAM.
It's all about marketing though and that's what Microsoft is, a marketing company. The ultimate snake oil salesman award goes to Bill Gates and Steve Balmer. IMO.
it sounds more like they saw that they could take the core NT design and put THEIR API's on it instead of the API's from the partnership( IBM/Microsoft ).
From the article, they said they went back to IBM and told them Microsoft was going to do a Win32 API and not an OS/2 API on the NT core system.
BTW, you will also notice that it wasn't until they got the i860 AND MIPS stuff working and started on the x86 stuff before they decided to dump OS/2 for their own Windows API's.
Like I said before, they Window-ized the product and said to heck with the "partnership". It's the way Microsoft does business and ANY company would be just plain stupid to "partner" with them. They are the brain sucking monster in "Starship Troopers". IMHO.
I had heard that Microsoft took the NT code with them as the split from IBM but I never heard that they planned on implementing the Windows API's instead of the OS/2 API's BEFORE the split....
Just another example of Microsoft "window-izing" a product and making it their own. How many times has this happened in Microsofts history?
It was well known that the networking in Windows NT 3.1 was basically LanMan running via the OS/2 subsystem.
BTW, IIRC, after Microsoft pilfered DEC's OS people, DEC filed a law suite against them. And so began the "partnership" between DEC and Microsoft which eventually ended up with DEC MIA.
Hmmmm, steal the design, go to court, settle out-of-court, see the "partner" close shop. That's another funny part of Microsofts repeating history.
my comment about MSFT losing the server war relates to the fact that they won't be owning the server space. For Microsoft, that is a big loss. They won't be able to control that space and therefore can not control the protocols and API's in that space. This is going to force it's way back into their client OS's too.
With Microsoft, winning means total control. Nothing less.
My bad. I just did a search for "Christensen" and "obsolete" and banged through the resulting pages. I screwed up by not looking at the first names and used the first name of the first hit, which didn't result in much data. Sorry and thanks for doing the "research" correctly.
The market for shrink-wrap PC software began its slow upmarket ooze into Christensen obsolescence right around the time that Microsoft really hit its stride.
might be referring to James C. Christensen's book, "The Pelican King" having to do with the growth or aging of organizations related to becoming obselete quickly in a very innovative climate. Just quickly did some searching on this so I might be off though it seems like what he was getting at. Also, IIRC, Windows 95 was released and the Y2K scare was in sight at this time and so there was a massive upgrade cycle going on though network fed upgrades were not the norm.
That was also the time of the Internet wave, a phenomenon that Microsoft co-opted without ever really internalizing into product wisdom.
Microsoft was able to win the browser war and get Exchange and LookOut dominant but didn't/haven't been able to proprietize it or enable all their software to effectively use the network. That with the exception of their virus platform.;)
While those qualified to move the state of the art forward went down in the millennial flames of the dotcom crash,
Many of the innovative ideas and people had their business's collapse around them when the dotcom bust removed much of the funding. Again, a Christensen like reference to better/faster innovation happens in the smaller organizations.
Microsoft's rigorous belief in the physics of business reality saved both the day and the profits.
Might be realated to Microsoft owning the OEM channel and therefore maintaining profits because nobody else could sell their products directly into the channel. Profits keep flowing to Redmond while others lose them left and right.
But the tide had turned, and a realization that "the net" was a far more interesting place than "the PC" began to creep into the heads of consumers and enterprises alike.
It's the network stupid... And finally, that concept is getting accepted throughout the industry.
IMO, this is VERY important to Microsoft because 30% of it's profits come from a PC OS and another 30% come from using that PC OS monopoly to sell their office suite. Because Microsoft is losing the server war to Linux, their plan to make the network proprietary has been foiled while at the same time, their PC OS is becoming less and less important to consumers and the business world.
I know it's still a bit tough to configure but a Bluetooth enabled handheld computer and mobile phone can get you web browsing and email when on the road.
There are many doing it with the Zaurus now and looking at your list of features you use and want, the Zaurus would be a better fit than the ipaq. Better keyboard extra batteries available SD and CF expansion for tons of MP3's and/or movies(not tons;) OK and Cancel buttons( pen not always needed )
Hey, and if you want to tweak your own ROM or use another( opie ), its up to you. It'll give you more of the impression that you own the device and not Microsoft.
BTW, I recently dropped my Palm VIIx service for Bluetooth enabled remote networking via mobile phone. I miss the Datebk 3 event icons and non-contiguous repeating events but that's about it. Oh, and battery life, though Bluetooth works much better for wireless networking from the couch also( desktop PC is routing/NAT for the ppp connection:).
It's probably not unknown to those who've use the StarOffice v5.x database ( Adabas = SoftwareAG ). Granted, OO doesn't have the ODBC driver for that free Adabas database but if you've got the SO v5.x CDROM, you've got the driver.
It's working fine here.
BTW, it might not be well known that the database shipped with Sun's StarOffice 5.2( Adabas ) can be run as a multi-client database if you start the server on the right port. Here's a startup script:
Slashdot Mirror
It has Bluetooth so use it with your Sharp Zaurus and IRC all you want. IRC on a phone would be painful unless you were just lurking around.
With the Zaurus you can pick from many IRC apps or port one yourself. And there's Java on the Zaurus too.
IMO, the phone should be a phone and provide the voice and connectivity while the handheld or laptop uses the connectivity. With Bluetooth, you could keep the phone in your pocket or briefcase while you IRC on the handheld computer.
LoB
it's also amazing that a group can threaten legal action using an automated system and walk away with a "I'm sorry" letter. And if a human was involved, THEY should be fired and civil charges filed against them, and the organization, for punitive damages. IMO.
With all the stupid patents being awarded and laws being passed these days, The Baird's words regardings lawyers sound more prophetic every day.
LoB
I wouldn't say that IBM is teaming up with Trolltech to provide product to "ordinary people". As far as the PalmOS goes, it's a good PDA OS but not a full featured OS for when many enterprise customers would want to do. PalmOS v5.0 is a v1.0 product. Had it be embedded BeOS that would be another story but it's not. Therefore, it's got to prove itself and Linux already has proven itself to IBM.
LoB
Then use Bluetooth for your wireless networking. There's the CF modules you can use and Pellico Systems has a module that plugs into the serial port.
s ystems.com
It won't be blazingly fast but could be good enough while Intel fixes it's XScale problems.
try:
http://www.zaurus.com
http://www.pellico
LoB
A company like IBM needs to provide solution that work. OS/2 worked years before Windows NT was usable on the DESKTOP and DOS/Windows never really made it. Sure it worked sometimes but support and reliablity were not enterprise ready. The same goes for WinCE.
Regarding the PalmOS, well, it's not full featured enough and Linux already is.
That's my "take" on why IBM didn't go with WinCE or PalmOS.
LoB
if you run 2 VM's, each running the same OS and same server process then if one goes down the other could be configured to take over. In the world of MS Windows, your OS and app is more likely to fail before the hardware. So there is an advantage in here and Microsoft might be able to say admin costs are consolidated too but I doubt that's going to be reality.
Good point though. The hardware failover goes away in this configuration.
LoB
Do they get to pick what story their ads get tied to?????
one correction, you'll have to pay for the dev tool. As long as IBM pays Trolltech for putting the libs on the device, the developers either build free/oss applications or they build commercial ones. You can still give away the source but if you charge the customer, you've got to pay Trolltech for the tool you used to build it.
Seems like a good mix to me. Heck, the Qtopia SDK is what, US$100. Big woop. IMHO.
LoB
but the company who has to manage 5 machines instead of one might rethink their TCO after all the failed patches, virii, etc turn what they thought was cheaper and reliable into something else.
Unlike IBM's version of this( Linux on the mainframe ) Microsoft still has a problematic core called Windows.
The real threat there might have been Linux running on Connectix but we all know that product will die very soon. Lucky that GNU/Linux on another virtual system will still have advantages over the Windows one.
LoB
"Why insult people that are good at teh latter (but not the former)?"
It's a known fact that most of the innovation comes from small companies. By removing the rewards for such innovations, as Microsoft does year after year, they are effectively clean-cutting the forests for their profits today. Partnering can be a good thing but it's almost never a good thing with Microsoft.
It's already almost impossible to get funding for anything that does or COULD cross Microsofts path. That's my beef. There's no Win/Win partnering with them, it's Win/Lose in 99% of the cases.
LoB
First it was failover because you couldn't put more than one server process on a Windows box and get 7/24/365 uptime. They fell over far too often. So run 2 identical boxes and WHEN one failed, the other took over. The large Sun, IBM, and HP boxes can run 64 CPUs without a problem and hundreds of server processes for 7/24/365.25.
But Microsoft wants to say it can do this too. Enter Conectix. Now you can hide those duplicate servers in one box! Yeah, scalable and 7/24/365.25 reliability and your support budget will be really small. I can see the press releases coming out of eWeak and C/Net now.
LoB
if the technology doesn't ONLY RUN on MS Windows, Microsoft will come up with their own version. It all comes back to saving Windows. Wasn't it Bill Gates who said "Does anybody remember Windows?" when Microsoft developers got to excited about Java?
Is there any open standard today that Microsoft hasn't already or isn't attempting to make a proprietary MS Windows-only technology?
Do you really think that Microsoft did Direct3D to solve more than a MARKETING problem? Couldn't they have provided a better solution quicker by working with the OpenGL group? Don't kid yourself, it's all about owning the API's and if OpenGL v2 starts gaining traction, a few $100 million from Microsoft and another MS-API will show up. Or they'll buy all the companies with interesting OpenGL v2 apps( Coopers and Peters... ). IMO.
LoB
"Microsoft wasn't in the mood to expend the effort to support platforms that couldn't carry their weight."
In 1994, they sold less than 400,000 copies of NT and had less than 700,000 total market for NT. IIRC. Not a very large market but they had just finished putting 100's of millions of dollars into MARKETING Windows 95( aka Chicago ) and IBM said it was going to push OS/2 into the server market. 100's of millions of dollars were dumped into MARKETING Windows NT into the server space. They are very much like vultures. They feed on the technology and markets of others. Go throw $50 million at a market and you'll see Microsoft throw $100 million at it while they figure out what the market is and how it make it only work on MS Windows.
Yup, the reason a company like Microsoft left the MIPS/PPC/Alpha/etc market was because there wasn't anybody in that market to kill. They weren't very large and Apple killed the PREP & CHIRP platform for the IBM/Apple/Motorola partnership and the last hope of an alternative DESKTOP hardware platform. When the $$ behind that market dried up so did Microsofts interest outside of x86.
There were very large companies putting $$$ behind those platforms and Microsoft had to be sure they'd be there to crush any other OS on those platforms. When the big $$$ leaves, so does Microsoft. They are not going after Linux because a bunch of developers like messing with it in their basements. It's because there is big $$$ behind it now and $$$ being paid for it as a solution base. IMHO.
LoB
yup, they got that low-end UNIX market by "partnering" with 3 or 4 companies who provided the Win32 API's on UNIX and told the UNIX application vendors that they could have the PC desktop AND the UNIX workstation market by writting to Win32. After enough of the 'important' UNIX apps were ported to Win32, Microsoft pulled the rug out from under the 3 or 4 companies who provided Win32 on UNIX. Only one was "allowed" to exist because Microsoft fed $$$ to them so they could afford the HUGE increase in licensing costs that killed the others. Why else would Microsoft pay someone to put Internet Explorer and part of COM on UNIX? Brilliant marketing more and stupid move by the UNIX app vendors. IMO.
What customers ended up with was no choice but to move from UNIX to MS Windows because the apps could no longer run on UNIX. You have to admire the guys and gals at SoftImage. They were purchased by Microsoft and fought hard to keep a UNIX code-base while under the MS thumb. And now they still have a rebust platform for their customers. Why do you think Hollywood is going back to *nix via Linux? It wasn't because Windows was as good as Bill thinks, that's for sure.
LoB
but they didn't, they based it on OS/2 and then put the Win16 API on it after 32-bitting it. They then hacked it up over the years to Window-ize more and more of it. The first networking in NT was provided by LanManager. An OS/2 product.
LoB
you know I just never looked at "business" that way. I guess it means that if you are smart enough to know how to steal someone elses work, you deserve it more. And the ultimate goal is to put the owner of the technology out of business so that you can take all the rewards for yourself. Why didn't I see that before? It's brilliant. It's also bullshit and something I expect from the likes of a tyrant or war lord. It's not what a socially responsible company should be doing and Microsoft should have been smashed into tiny pieces because of it. IMHO.
LoB
I had heard that when Microsoft released MS-DOS to IBM originally, it didn't work and IBM had to all but rewrite it( PC-DOS ). I'm sure there where many at IBM who knew how bad a coding Microsoft was/is but they "partnered" on OS/2 anyway.
I had also heard that another big fracture between IBM and Microsoft was in the design of the OS itself. Microsoft wanted the application with focus to get most of the CPU and IBM wanted a tight kernel so that all apps got an appropriate amount of CPU time. It took almost 10 years before Microsoft came out with an OS( W2K ) which had decent multitasking for the DESKTOP. Of course THE DESKTOP was now a 700MHz machine with 128MB of RAM while OS/2 still ran great on a 300MHz machine with 64MB of RAM.
It's all about marketing though and that's what Microsoft is, a marketing company. The ultimate snake oil salesman award goes to Bill Gates and Steve Balmer. IMO.
LoB
it sounds more like they saw that they could take the core NT design and put THEIR API's on it instead of the API's from the partnership( IBM/Microsoft ).
From the article, they said they went back to IBM and told them Microsoft was going to do a Win32 API and not an OS/2 API on the NT core system.
BTW, you will also notice that it wasn't until they got the i860 AND MIPS stuff working and started on the x86 stuff before they decided to dump OS/2 for their own Windows API's.
Like I said before, they Window-ized the product and said to heck with the "partnership". It's the way Microsoft does business and ANY company would be just plain stupid to "partner" with them. They are the brain sucking monster in "Starship Troopers". IMHO.
LoB
I had heard that Microsoft took the NT code with them as the split from IBM but I never heard that they planned on implementing the Windows API's instead of the OS/2 API's BEFORE the split....
Just another example of Microsoft "window-izing" a product and making it their own. How many times has this happened in Microsofts history?
It was well known that the networking in Windows NT 3.1 was basically LanMan running via the OS/2 subsystem.
BTW, IIRC, after Microsoft pilfered DEC's OS people, DEC filed a law suite against them. And so began the "partnership" between DEC and Microsoft which eventually ended up with DEC MIA.
Hmmmm, steal the design, go to court, settle out-of-court, see the "partner" close shop. That's another funny part of Microsofts repeating history.
LoB
my comment about MSFT losing the server war relates to the fact that they won't be owning the server space. For Microsoft, that is a big loss. They won't be able to control that space and therefore can not control the protocols and API's in that space. This is going to force it's way back into their client OS's too.
With Microsoft, winning means total control. Nothing less.
Sorry for the confusion.
LoB
My bad. I just did a search for "Christensen" and "obsolete" and banged through the resulting pages. I screwed up by not looking at the first names and used the first name of the first hit, which didn't result in much data. Sorry and thanks for doing the "research" correctly.
LoB
might be referring to James C. Christensen's book, "The Pelican King" having to do with the growth or aging of organizations related to becoming obselete quickly in a very innovative climate. Just quickly did some searching on this so I might be off though it seems like what he was getting at. Also, IIRC, Windows 95 was released and the Y2K scare was in sight at this time and so there was a massive upgrade cycle going on though network fed upgrades were not the norm.
That was also the time of the Internet wave, a phenomenon that Microsoft co-opted without ever really internalizing into product wisdom.
Microsoft was able to win the browser war and get Exchange and LookOut dominant but didn't/haven't been able to proprietize it or enable all their software to effectively use the network. That with the exception of their virus platform.
While those qualified to move the state of the art forward went down in the millennial flames of the dotcom crash,
Many of the innovative ideas and people had their business's collapse around them when the dotcom bust removed much of the funding. Again, a Christensen like reference to better/faster innovation happens in the smaller organizations.
Microsoft's rigorous belief in the physics of business reality saved both the day and the profits.
Might be realated to Microsoft owning the OEM channel and therefore maintaining profits because nobody else could sell their products directly into the channel. Profits keep flowing to Redmond while others lose them left and right.
But the tide had turned, and a realization that "the net" was a far more interesting place than "the PC" began to creep into the heads of consumers and enterprises alike.
It's the network stupid... And finally, that concept is getting accepted throughout the industry.
IMO, this is VERY important to Microsoft because 30% of it's profits come from a PC OS and another 30% come from using that PC OS monopoly to sell their office suite. Because Microsoft is losing the server war to Linux, their plan to make the network proprietary has been foiled while at the same time, their PC OS is becoming less and less important to consumers and the business world.
That's MY take on what that means.
LoB
I keep seeing a bunch of Microsoft banner ads on Slashdot and other Linux-friendly sites.
Can we support our favorite Linux site with Microsoft $$$ by clicking( back/forth ) on those banners?
LoB
I know it's still a bit tough to configure but a Bluetooth enabled handheld computer and mobile phone can get you web browsing and email when on the road.
:).
There are many doing it with the Zaurus now and looking at your list of features you use and want, the Zaurus would be a better fit than the ipaq. Better keyboard
extra batteries available
SD and CF expansion for tons of MP3's and/or movies(not tons;)
OK and Cancel buttons( pen not always needed )
Hey, and if you want to tweak your own ROM or use another( opie ), its up to you. It'll give you more of the impression that you own the device and not Microsoft.
BTW, I recently dropped my Palm VIIx service for Bluetooth enabled remote networking via mobile phone. I miss the Datebk 3 event icons and non-contiguous repeating events but that's about it. Oh, and battery life, though Bluetooth works much better for wireless networking from the couch also( desktop PC is routing/NAT for the ppp connection
LoB
It's probably not unknown to those who've use the StarOffice v5.x database ( Adabas = SoftwareAG ). Granted, OO doesn't have the ODBC driver for that free Adabas database but if you've got the SO v5.x CDROM, you've got the driver.
It's working fine here.
BTW, it might not be well known that the database shipped with Sun's StarOffice 5.2( Adabas ) can be run as a multi-client database if you start the server on the right port. Here's a startup script:
x_server -p 7200
sleep 1
x_start dbaseName
sleep 2
xutil -d dbaseName -u control,user-passwd restart
StarOffice and OpenOffice just need to know where the file "./lib/odbclib.so" is. IIRC
LoB