Hi everyone, I wanted to share with you my experiences with a great little piece of technology for photo bloggers and other people who want to do more with their photos while on the road - the Jornada 720.
What is a Jornada 720 you ask? The HP Jornada 720 in my opinion is the best incarnation of a form of mobile computer called Handheld PC. A Handheld PC is in essence a very small laptop (7.44 x 3.74 x 1.34 inches [18.9 x 9.5 x 3.4 cm])with a special system architecture and operating system. Think of todays PDAs, but with a bigger screen and actually usable keyboard. I won't describe the J720 here in any more detail, but point out how it has enhanced my photography experience while away from home. (If you want to learn more about the J720 in general there are many reviews on the internet, for example
here)
First use of the J720 - photo vaultSince the J720 has both a Compact Flash slot and a PCMCIA slot one of the things I do is after a photo session use a PCMCIA SD-card reader to transfer the Photos from my cameras card on to the Jornadas CF card and have a fresh and empty card for many more photos again.
Second use of the J720 - photo viewer and editorUsing software like Resco Photo or Pocket Artist on the J720 I can view, crop, resize and even edit pictures just like I would on a regular PC (don't expect Adobe Photoshop abilities here, but the functions certainly are enough for basic web publishing)
Third use of the J720 - picture upload and bloggingBy using a regular LAN, Wifi, or cellular modem card in the PCMCIA slot or by the built in land line modem you can instantly connect to the internet from almost anywhere and mail your pictures to a friend or upload them via FTP or web interface to your website or any photo hosting site you want.
The Jornadas great keyboard makes it a joy to write the accompanying blog post or descriptions for your pictures.
Fourth use of the J720 - script editingLikewise it is really easy to write or modify your chdk scripts. You even have the proper syntax highlighting.
There are of course many more things you can do with the Jornada 720, like connecting to your home PC via VNC or RDP, managing contacts and appointments with Pocket Outlook, write and read Word and Excel documents and much more...
While not as powerful as a real big laptop its small size (it even fits in the back pocket of some of my jeans and easily in any backpack or small photo bag) makes it the perfect companion for those cross country hiking trips you were planning, for camping vacations, mountaineering and so forth. In addition it has no movable parts that can easily break (like a laptops harddrive) , a good battery lasts for about 6-8 hours and it is instantly usable after turning on (no boot process, you just switch it on and start typing an instant later).
The bad part is that if you want to grab one of these amazing machines you'll have to look for used ones, since HP halted production at the end of 2001 and never offered any real replacement. It can be a difficult hunt to find one in good shape and with a relatively healthy battery, but if you do it is well worth it.
Oh and I just wrote this entire post on mine, speaking about usability
