My Dear Notebook PCs/PDAs
last updated10/29/06) click here for Japanese

(includes PCs (Italic ones) I come across through the business)
(excludes Desktop PCs)

EPSON HC-88 (beginning - mid. of 1980s)
An operating system so called "CP-M" was installed. You wouldn't believe, but the storage device of this PC was micro-cassette and some small amount of memory. However, I enjoyed programming a lot on this machine. I also bought an acoustic coupler for HC-88 and did enjoy BBS with 300 bps ! Unbelievable if I look back now ...

TOSHIBA J-3100SS (late 1980s - beginning 1990s)
80C86 + 1.5 M RAM (!)  DOS based PC.

   

CASIO DK-2000 (late 1980s - 1998)
This wasn't really a PDA, but it was simply a calculator with some addressbook, scheduler, and Japanese dictionary functionality. I used it for about 10 years and I've done battery replacement for many times, I knew how to do it. One day I was replacing the battery and failed to do it and the whole data has gone ...

   

TOSHIBA J-3100SX-041VW (beginning of 1990)
386SX/20 MHz with 2 MB RAM + 40 MB HDD. Windows 3.1 was running. Despite of the limited capacity of HDD at that time, I installed a lots of Microsoft stuff. HDD was still very expensive those days.

   

Psion Siena (1998 - 1999)
Psion is a famous manufacturer for PDAs from U.K.  The user interface is very well designed. Although I obtained this machine around '95, I didn' t use it till '97 since it only supports English characters and I thought I would never use it without Japanese capability.  However, after the bitter experience with Casio DK-2000 (above), I slowly started to use it as a scheduler.  Honestly speaking, I was very reluctant to use it in the beginning since it doesn't support Japanese characters. But I started to realize the user interface is well designed and I liked it very much (except the battery consumption).  Again, I had a battery problem although Siena was warning. I should have replaced batteries before it's too late.

   

TOSHIBA Libretto 50 (1997 - 2000)
I used to carry this one everyday between the office and home. I also used to take this one with me whenever I go abroad for business trip for E-mail / presentation / web browsing / webpage publishing etc. Connecting PC to the telephone line via modem is always challenging thing in foreign countries, but it is a lot of fun. It is the same with every time / every notebook PC, but I wish if the battery could last longer... .

IBM WorkPad (8602-30J) (1999 - now)
Too many things to write about this PDA. The best PDA I've ever met. It shows its power in HotSync with PC, ready-to-use applications after power-on in mobile environment, and long-lasting battery (center in photo).


- see also
here for some of my experience with IBM WorkPad

SONY VAIO PCG-505V/CBP (1999 - 2000)

SONY VAIO PCG-Z505C/BP (2001 - )

IBM ThinkPad X20 (2001 - Oct. 2004)

Dell Latitude D600 (Nov. 2004 - Oct. 2006)

IBM (Lenovo) ThinkPad X60 (Oct. 2006 - )


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