Handheld PC Community Forums
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The nostalgic world of old-school handheld PCs is making a comeback in a retro forum, sparking a wave of fond memories among commenters who reminisce about their trusty HP Jornadas, Compaq iPaqs, and other Windows CE devices. As some users share their experiences, others chime in with humorous observations, like vladde, who chuckles at the forum's quirky user count. The conversation takes an interesting turn when g947o and deafpolygon debate whether modern tablets can be considered "handheld PCs," with rchaud arguing that they're distinct categories with different user focuses. The thread is a delightful trip down memory lane, highlighting the evolution of portable computing and the unique charm of these vintage devices.
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Dec 21, 2025 at 4:59 PM EST
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Dec 25, 2025 at 5:22 AM EST
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haha this made me chuckle
A pair of mathematicians are sitting in a park chatting. There’s a snack shack near by, and while they’re chatting, three people walk into the building. Some time later, four people walk out, and another couple walks in. A bit after that, two more people walk out. One of the mathematicians sees this and comments to the other, “you know, if one more person walks into that building, it’ll be empty.”
https://fantasticbytes.com/products/launchmanager
I even wrote a disassembler for them
blog.carolos.za.net/2007/03/charmed-disassembler-beta-02-for-pocket.html?m=1
Only until I saw "Windows CE" along with the UI did I realize what devices this forum is actually about
P.S. of course I also confused "HPC" in the domain with "high performance computing"
I had Acer W4-821 and I think this (along with the Dell counterpart) was the last 8" on the market, at least available in the retail. It was compact enough to go into a jacket pocket and had a full blown OS, I even run CentOS virtual machine on it for testing small things while on the go.
Today the only option for less than 10" are Android tablets and they are far from a PC.
Yeah, outside of the odd offering from GPD or their knock-off crews every now and then, that segment only exist in the industry-PC market ("ruggedized"). Everything else is indeed ToyOS land.
The Steam Deck is, no doubt about it. The iPad isn't. If you're walking around calling your iPad a "handheld PC" then you're looking like Dwight from The Office.
It totally deeply horribly sucked for phone-like devices. I used to have one from work. HTC Touch Pro 2. It had a glossy horrifically slow overlay that made things even worse but either way it was a UX nightmare.
Even on my Dell Axim it wasn't great though not terribly bad either. For the time it was ok, and I read some books on it and played some games with the likes of ScummVM. But as a phone you use every day brrr.
For some reason they thought the tablet would be the next major computing form factor rather than the niche it has become and they were afraid losing it all to Apple. Kinda can imagine that but I never understood why the desktop had to suffer for it.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46265015
More disappointingly, other gadgets of a similar era - such as a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox and a GP32 handheld are suffering from flash memory losing it's contents (the firmware), bricking the devices :(
It finally gave up the ghost eventually, many many years ago. But, just yesterday I was lucky enough to find someone selling that exact model in fully working order, so I'll be picking that up in a few days! Will be fun to reexperience some of that joy.
Side note: this makes me wish the windows handhelds had a phone form factor and 5g