ksmith | Bleeding edge of tech

Several years ago, I took the PDA plunge and bought a Jornada 548, one of HP's entries in the tech wars. This was about a year after it first came out--I had read that folks screamed about the 16K color screen that really turned out to be much less distinct and colorful, but it could do email with a modem card and came with a Pocket PC version of Word, so I was happy. Bought a few add-ons--a folding keyboard, a GPS module (which I never used), and called myself a techie.

Then HP bought Compaq, Jornadas were killed in favor of iPaqs, and I was stuck.

This was of course one of the last models that came with the need-to-send-it-back-to-HP-to-get-switched-out batteries.

Over time, said battery went south, holding charge for less and less time until finally it quit holding a charge at all. Lost everything I had loaded into it a few times, which was a pain. But since I only made use of it at cons, and my con-going has decreased markedly over the last few years, I quit worrying about it.

Then recently, like *today*, I thought oh hell, why not see if you can get it up and running again. WFC is coming up, and a functional PDA is a nice thing to have. So I found a place online selling original HP batteries, and bought a couple. Even with shipping, it comes out to less than the going price of a Jornada 540-series, which looks to be about $35.

Needless to say, I did not pay $35 for mine three years ago.

Ah, tech.

UPDATE: Ah, tech, indeed.

There exists a program called PocketMac that enables Pocket PCs and Macs to work together. If I can find the USB cradle that came with my Jornada, I may check this out.

Oh, dear, they sell updated themes and everything...