I was clearing out some drawers and came across this old Compaq IPAQ Pocket PC, something I haven’t used for around 5 years.
At the time – summer 2002 – it was the height of sophistication and technology.
Not only did it sync with your PC, but it has Bluetooth, mapping software, plus basic Word even Excel should you so have wished.
For a few years, it contained my life – all my contacts, all my important dates, everything.
And then, one thing led to another, and I just stopped using it. The battery gradually lost charge and one day I forgot about it.
A year later, I found it again and all my information had vanished. The Pocket PC had reset itself and, although all the data was on the back-up disk, I didn’t have the heart to go through the reboot and reset process.
In fact, within the space of 12 months, it had become obsolete.
Today, I tried to charge it up and see what it was like. While it stilll worked, it looked extremely old-school in its interface.
What’s more, the IPAQ feels so heavy now, in comparison, say, to my iPod Touch.
The development of the likes of the iPhone and iPod Touch proves how limited the function of the Pocket PC was. No phone, no video, small memory.
In years to comes, this will be a museum piece and people will wonder and how limited and big a mini-PC could be.
I was just thinking about pretty much the same line of thought yesterday. In one of my drawers is my old XDA IIi I got when I worked at AOL. I remembered trying to move the AOL Mobile team away from strictly mobile phone stuff and (sputter) ring-frickin’ tones into cooler areas like PDA games, and such. Who knew that a few short years later we’d all be well versed in what an “app” is and all the fun games you could play on what is pretty much a PDA.
I still have fond memories of playing – and writing about – Age Of Empires on my trusty old paperweight PDA.
Ha. I don’t think anyone could have imagined quite how much things have moved on in such a short space of time.