Commuter finds Jornada perfect fit for handling e-mail
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When Randy Headrick settles into his seat on the subway in Arlington, Va., for a 45-minute journey home, he pulls out his Jornada 720 handheld PC from Hewlett-Packard Co., opens its clamshell case and begins answering his e-mail.
| GCN STAFFWhen Randy Headrick settles into his seat on the subway in Arlington, Va., for a 45-minute journey home, he pulls out his Jornada 720 handheld PC from Hewlett-Packard Co., opens its clamshell case and begins answering his e-mail.'I'm typically at meetings most of the day, so I don't get to sit and answer the 100-plus e-mails that I get,' said Headrick, the Air National Guard's deputy chief for command, control, communications and computers. 'But on the Metro ride home and the next morning on the ride back, I can respond to all of them.'Headrick considers himself a heavy-duty handheld user. For him, a tablet-style handheld just wouldn't do the trick'tapping away with a stylus doesn't cut it with the volume of e-mail he gets. So he needs an integrated keyboard.Headrick downloads e-mail from his CF-27 notebook PC from Panasonic Personal Computing Co. of Secaucus, N.J., which is his primary PC, and then uploads it to the notebook when he's back in the office.On long trips he carries both the 720, which weighs just over a pound, and his notebook.He thinks the 720's integrated keyboard keeps him ahead of the curve at a time when more people are using their handhelds for heavy messaging.'Even the Palm users are all starting to show up with snap-on keyboards now as more and more folks find that the cryptic and difficult process of replying to an e-mail or entering much data is not easy without a keyboard,' he said.While most makers of keyboard handhelds have struggled to find the right market, HP sees a niche between palmtop handhelds and notebook PCs, said Doreen Canova, sales development manager for HP's I-Appliance Group in Loveland, Colo.Headrick does more with his 720 than just answer e-mail, loading it with Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint documents when he needs to.'Using the external VGA PC Card, I can take it with me loaded with a PowerPoint briefing,' he said. 'I can walk into your office, plug it into your projector and give a briefing.'
BY RICHARD W. WALKER
Bargain in the market
 | Hewlett-Packard's Jornada 720 weighs just over a pound. It's priced at $999. |
Bargain in the market
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