Oh, if only it were so exciting. Instead I was struck with a severe case of pneumonia. Due to doctor's orders, I had to spend the week, pumped up with antibiotics, away from my work as an underpaid computer consultant. I downed Sudafed, and ingested Halls Mentho-Lyptus drops by the gross and codeine-laced syrup by the gallon. I was so congested with mucus that I couldn't go two minutes without coughing my lungs out and reeling in waves of nausea. [Thank you, Jason, for that lovely visual...you poor guy! -- DG]

You would think that in my state of decrepitude, that the last thing I would want to do is sit down in front of a computer, check my email and browse the Web. You'd be right, but after about three days of sleeping for twelve hours at a time and being completely disconnected from computers, I was bored to tears. Fortunately, I didn't have to get out of bed to maintain contact with the outside world. I had the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Jornada 820!

Inside Jornada
Weighing in at 2.5lbs, the Jornada 820, shown in Figure A, is smaller than the average ultra-light notebook. It's perhaps the most powerful H/PC Pro device currently on the market. It's the first H/PC to use the 190MHz Intel StrongARM RISC processor, which rivals the power and performance of desktop PCs. If that isn't enough to make you get out of bed and rip the packaging open, it has an 8.2 inch 640 x 480 passive color LCD display, which is large enough even for those of us who have Coke-bottle lenses in their glasses. Tres cool.

FIGURE A

The very cool Jornada 820 is smaller than the average ultra-light notebook. Click picture for a larger image.

Hands-on Jornada
HP claims that the keyboard on the 820 is 90% of the size of a standard keyboard. I sort of believe that, but I also have fat fingers. I can imagine people with smaller hands really liking this keyboard, but I was unable to type on it for more than a few minutes without getting cramped. I may be asking too much -- and I say this to all of the H/PC Pro vendors -- if you're going to make a notebook-sized device, find some way to put a notebook-sized keyboard in it.

Aside from the keyboard, everything else about the 820 is pure joy. The mouse is controlled by a touchpad, which I normally hate compared to eraser-head pointers and trackballs. This one was responsive and easy to control. Application performance is stellar, which should come as no surprise. It would have been nice if the unit had come with 32MB of RAM instead of 16, because it would make multi-tasking that much easier -- but in the shape I was in, I was lucky to be able to move a mouse, much less multitask. The passive matrix screen, while not as bright as active matrix screens on PC laptops, is quite readable and bright enough for viewing even with a good amount of sun glare. I know this because my wife Rachel opened the blinds in the bedroom one bright afternoon, letting in enough sunlight to kill Count Dracula.