HP's Jornada 720: A Lightweight Contender
Currently, no device with a keyboard weighs less than a pound. The handheld that comes closest is the HP Jornada 720 Handheld PC. Unlike the NEC and Intermec offerings, HP's Jornada line is available in both palm-size PDA and micronotebook forms. With dimensions of 7.4" * 3.7" * 1.3", the product is thicker and broader than a PDA but not much deeper. At a featherweight 1.1 pounds, the HP Jornada 720 is by far the lightest micronotebook I reviewed.
The HP Jornada 720 includes a 6.5" color display, a V.90 modem, slots for a CompactFlash (CF) card or PC Card, and the full Pocket Office suite of applications. However, it also has the least memory (32MB of RAM, expandable to 64MB) of the units I reviewed. The keyboard, which is even smaller than Intermec's 6651 keyboard, makes anything but two-finger typing impossible. Perhaps because of the keyboard's light weight, the keys feel flimsy, with no positive feedback. The HP Jornada 720's price (originally $899) recently dropped, and many retailers have been offering sharp discounts. However, HP is replacing this unit with the nearly identical HP Jornada 728, which currently costs $999 (and has more memory than the unit I tested).
NEC's MobilePro 790: Bigger and Better
Only someone who wanted to get attention would carry a 1.8-pound computer nearly as wide as a laptop into a group of PDA users and call it a handheld. NEC's MobilePro 790 stretches the term handheld to its limit. With dimensions of 9.6" * 5.2" * 1.1", it's roughly the size of three PDAs side by side, and the keyboard is big enough for typing. In fact, the main alphanumeric keys are almost the same size as a laptop's keys, and the keyboard's spacing and feedback are excellent. The MobilePro 790 was the only micronotebook that I successfully used to write its review for this article.
The MobilePro 790's design isn't particularly flashy. The clamshell case unfolds just like a laptop's. The display is quite shallow in height, but it's so wide that it can display the full width of a printed page. The backlit 8.1" screen is extremely bright and crisp. The device comes standard with 32MB of RAM, expandable to 128MB. The MobilePro 790 has all the capabilities you expect from a laptop substitute, including a V.90 modem, CF card and PC Card slots, and a port for attaching an external VGA monitor (useful for presentations).
Anyone who chooses a micronotebook over a palm-sized PDA has already realized that size—or lack of it—isn't everything. At $999, NEC's MobilePro 790 is the best micronotebook for anyone hoping for one computer that can do the job of a PDA and a laptop.
The Glass Is Half Full
In some ways, the success of palm-style PDAs has come at the expense of handheld-computer forms such as micronotebooks. Many computer buyers seem to have overlooked micronotebooks as "tweeners" (i.e., between PDAs and laptops) that don't provide either the best price or the smallest size. However, I prefer the glass-is-half-full approach. For many users, one micro-notebook can adequately replace a PDA and a laptop.
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