This is a letter more in sorrow than in anger. It appears from your Publishers Message in the May/June issue of The HP Palmtop Paper that you are going to give up on the HP 200LX, as HP (a company renowned for the loyalty of its customers rather than for listening to them) is going to stop producing them when demand falls.
It has taken me two years to half exploit the capabilities of my 200LX, and I do not anticipate replacing it (or them...I have three) for five years or so, by which time I shall have exhausted its possibilities. I totally depend on it, which is why I have a spare for backups.
The Windows CE machine is impressive, and obviously is the thing of the future, and I hope HP will sell many times as many as their 95/100/200 sales. But what about me? About us, the DOS/200 users? About our sluggish, elderly machines?
If HP produced an upgraded 200LX with the better screen, we would have no decision to make. I would only need to decide whether to buy my second one at the same time as the first, or in a month or so.
It seems absurd that I have to buy a go-faster crystal and fit it myself, when I would have preferred to buy from HP.
On excavating inside my 200LX, I find it has less bits in it than an HP41 calculator. Surely it wouldn't be hard to redesign the board.
If HP markets a 200LX with a bigger screen and with more memory (and with the 320LX processor) I will buy one, and so, I suspect, will at least half of the existing 200LX owners and this will be in addition to HPs CE sales. The ability to run Windows would be a bonus, but isn't essential.
If HP forces me to buy a CE machine in a few years time, they must remember it wont necessarily be an HP one that I buy. With an upgraded 200LX they have got me.
And a parting shot why do they ignore the UK market? No advertising. No press comments. Often, HP is not even mentioned in palmtop articles.
Jeff Cragg
United Kingdom
[HP will continue to sell the HP 200LX and, as per my User to User column, we will continue to support HP palmtops. Hal Goldstein]