A Day in My Life
Back before COVID-19, I was walking through the airport towards the gate when suddenly I remembered a document I wanted to read on the flight but had forgotten to bring along. No worry, I paused for a bit on the concourse, reached into my pocket and proceeded to download the document from the Internet. Once comfortably seated on the plane, I relaxed and began reading. Afterwards, I did a little programming in C on a shareware program I was developing.
Today this would be an ordinary if not boring recollection, except for one thing: this happened in the 1990s, and what I pulled out of my pocket was a fully functional MS-DOS computer:
Introducing the HP-200LX, the first real palmtop computer. I used one of these daily up until the mid-2000s, and still have an operational one in my desk drawer. Let’s step back in time and see how this powerful pocket computer began its life.
Some History
Today, carrying around several hundred thousand MIPS, massive data storage, dazzling color displays, and multiple forms of wired and wireless connectivity in the palm of our hands is taken for granted. (The thing even has a telephone.) But obviously, it hasn’t always been so.
The Hewlett Packard company began as a manufacturer of quality test instruments, a tradition that continues to the present day despite two corporate and brand name changes: becoming Agilent in 1999 and first palmtop
