Thursday, June 10, 2004
Brighthand: iPAQ Sleeves Officially Dead
Posted by Janak Parekh in "NEWS" @ 12:00 PM
We speculated on this a few weeks ago, but now Brighthand is reporting that HP has confirmed that their sleeve formfactor is officially dead.
"The h5500 is the last classic 100-pin connector model from HP...The company believes these peripherals are no longer necessary. Many of the functions they offered are now built into the handhelds, or are available as CompactFlash or SDIO cards. Also, sleeves were created at a time when the iPAQs were much larger than they are today...HP's Dev News also explicitly states that the h5500 series will be discontinued this year."
It's sad to see an era go: my first Pocket PC was an iPAQ h3650, and I was the envy of my officemates when I got the hard-to-obtain PC card sleeve for it. :) It's still at home, along with a CF sleeve, a Silver Slider sleeve, a CF Plus sleeve, and many other accessories. I also bought an iPAQ h3870 because of, among other things, its sleeve compatibility. However, most of them are now stuck in a closet gathering dust -- the integrated functionalities of my i700 and e805 have rendered them moot.
That said, I think there are still vertical applications for which the sleeve formfactor is incredibly convenient -- it allows size flexibility, which products like the YellowJacket use. On the other hand, companies could still build a "virtual" sleeve that wraps around a PDA and uses a CF slot to interface with the device. At the same time, without a standard formfactor specification, such sleeves are likely to be short-lived as PDAs keep evolving. What's your thoughts on the situation?
"The h5500 is the last classic 100-pin connector model from HP...The company believes these peripherals are no longer necessary. Many of the functions they offered are now built into the handhelds, or are available as CompactFlash or SDIO cards. Also, sleeves were created at a time when the iPAQs were much larger than they are today...HP's Dev News also explicitly states that the h5500 series will be discontinued this year."
It's sad to see an era go: my first Pocket PC was an iPAQ h3650, and I was the envy of my officemates when I got the hard-to-obtain PC card sleeve for it. :) It's still at home, along with a CF sleeve, a Silver Slider sleeve, a CF Plus sleeve, and many other accessories. I also bought an iPAQ h3870 because of, among other things, its sleeve compatibility. However, most of them are now stuck in a closet gathering dust -- the integrated functionalities of my i700 and e805 have rendered them moot.
That said, I think there are still vertical applications for which the sleeve formfactor is incredibly convenient -- it allows size flexibility, which products like the YellowJacket use. On the other hand, companies could still build a "virtual" sleeve that wraps around a PDA and uses a CF slot to interface with the device. At the same time, without a standard formfactor specification, such sleeves are likely to be short-lived as PDAs keep evolving. What's your thoughts on the situation?
