28 Sep
2005
28 Sep
'05
11:26 p.m.
On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 20:45:51 -0400
John Boffemmyer IV <john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org> wrote:
Sridhar: I could always sell you my incredibly flawed
and limited
Palm m130 with partially defective color display (Palm had a recall
on them that really didn't give you a working m130 back without
paying out the ass for the value of 2 of them... and it would still
have the same somewhat flawed display of 50-something thousand colors
instead of the proper 64k, amazing what those marketing idiots did).
Sorry, had to have a laugh. Also, there used to be a joke/image out
there about M$: The next new future: "Windows CE_Me_NT: dumb as a
brick and goes about as fast."
My younger brother got bored one day and did research on reducing the
size of Win98 (he does naughty things like program and reverse
engineer when he gets bored). He found that if you remove a good
chink of the B.S. in Win98SE, you could have a working graphical OS
in the footprint of about 48MB, full installation. Obviously, after
he tinkered with the research and all, the drive was immediately
blanked entirely for legality sake, etc. Just shows how much garbage
there really is in there if the newer XP takes about what- 1GB for
fully loaded installation? It probably only truly needs (estimating
fairly) about 256MB for something that much more complex and
graphical.
Final thing: looking online for replacement Palm batteries confirms
the poor planning and intent on selling those damned things.
$30-40.00 US plus shipping for a replacement m130 battery via 3rd
party (Palm doesn't even offer it and their tech-help confirmed
that)! For a unit only 3-4 years old, that is about double what the
unit goes for used, in good to excellent condition, on ebay.
-John
Yes, but the 'good to excellent condition' unit that is 3-4 years old
probably is also due for a battery replacement. I recently bought a
Tungsten E and am happy except I do anticipate needing a new battery
before the unit has served it's useful life (I try to wring a lot longer
life out of expensive gear than the manufacturer plans).
To drag things back on topic, battery replacement for portable 'vintage'
machines is always an issue. My Powerbook 165c (which is _quite_ on
topic here now, I hope) needs a battery that would cost quite a bit. My
PC Convertable needs a battery, but last time I cracked a Convertible
battery pack, it was just C-size Nicads spot welded together. I've now
started using a fairly nice 386sx Zenith laptop for assembly language
programming and it's close to time to look into batteries for it (the
brick powerpack is pretty cumbersome.) The Model 100 is the king of
vintage portables, though, and it just slowly eats regular batteries.