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What devices were my personal workhorses in the early days of Pen Computing Magazine? That depends. On the road I almost always used whatever the latest Apple Newton was in the mid 1990s. But I also recall traveling with a Sony Magic Cap, both the Motorola Envoy (Magic Cap-based) and Marco (Newton-based). I also loved the odd combo of a HP LX200 Palmtop and a GE/Ericsson Mobidem wireless modem. Oh, and the Sharp Zaurus K-PDA! And the Psion 3A. And a bunch more. Compared to the billions of almost identical smartphones in use today, those early handhelds tried every conceivable form factor, input method, colors, operating systems, etc. No two were the same in any way. Rugged tablets were really almost too big and heavy to take on the road, even though the TelePad 3 came close.
Things were truly different back then. The web, though it existed, was still only little-known. So little that in my editorial in our April 1995 issue I asked: “Does WWW mean anything to you? If not, you better catch up quickly! WWW stands for World Wide Web and is a graphical hypertext-based interface to the Internet.” Truth!
Conrad, you are absolutely correct about the diversity of devices. It was a treat to see what the next device looked like. Sure, some followed a design spec (Windows CE-based Handheld PCs and Palm PCs come to mind), but even then, it was thrilling to see the new “chrome”.
As you’ll recall, a lot of people felt the same about the early personal computer world. An Altair looked radically different from an Apple II, which was radically different from a TRS-80, and so on through Commodore, the BBC Micro, Sinclair, and more. We lost that when computers became mere PC-compatible white or tan boxes.
It’s funny that you mention the HP 200LX. It was a tiny DOS machine without a pen, and yet I too used it religiously for about a year! There was something magical about the keyboard. That’s when we all learned to type with our thumbs! Haha.
One more memory. I used an HP Jornada 720 for some time. With a built-in 56K modem, it was great for connecting to a phone line, downloading the news from the Web, and then catching up while on-the-go. I used to go to both Hungary and Chile regularly then (family) and remember loading up my Jornada in the morning and reading the news on the Budapest or Santiago metro when this was still not a common thing to do.
OK, let’s pick up the story of Pen Computing magazine around the end of the first year of publication. What do you remember changing in the industry, and what changed with the magazine as the industry moved forward?
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