Hewlett Packard 660LX
 Just like the Sharp Mobilon 4600 is a minor upgrade of the 4500 model, HP’s 660LX is not very different from the 620LX that remains in the lineup. Essentially, the 660 comes with a WiseCom 56K PC Card modem, has 32MB of memory instead of 16MB, and is greenish instead of black, sort of like the late Newton MP130. The 660 also sports a flashier name plate. That’s about it. Since the primary difference is the included 56K PC Card modem, expectations for the modem are, of course, high. And, yes, the 660LX’s hardware modem delivers in more than one way.
Living the 56K way
The 56K v.90 connection worked right away on my Netcom account, and access speed was definitely the fastest I’ve seen on an HPC to date. It is still not comparable to a desktop or notebook PC with the same 56K modem, but that’s an HPC/Pocket Explorer issue rather than a modem issue. While I frequently browse the Web for hours on my NEC MobilePro 750C with its 33.6K softmodem, doing so is much more pleasurable on the 660LX with its modem card. Graphics don’t take forever to download, and text appears almost instantaneously. For a while we’ve clearly leaned towards softmodems due to their transparent operation and lesser demands on battery power. Now we’re reminded how nice brute speed (well, sort of in the case of HPC modems) is.
When you start up the 56K modem, you know you’re dealing with power. There’s the usual screeching as the modem does its handshake, and the noises go on for another minute or so. After a few minutes of web browsing, things start warming up and after half an hour you’d swear there was a little Pentium somewhere inside the 660. However, forget about the modem horror stories of early HPC users whose batteries were sucked dry in no time. The HP’s 7.2 volt 1350mAh Li-ion pack is up to the job. It was able to provide just under two hours (1:53 hours, to be exact) of heavy duty, continuous web browsing. That is definitely much more than we expected.
One bad thing about the modem is that it requires one of those gawdawful dongle connectors that you just know you’ll either lose or break sooner or later (likely sooner). Only Megahertz can make PC Card modems with those handy RJ-11 flip-up jacks. I’m all for competition, but denying something so necessary to everyone else seems extremely unfriendly to the user.
While the modem is the big deal in the 660LX, the other change compared to the 620LX is actually very nice, too: an extra 16MB of memory. As things stand now in the world of Windows CE devices, 16MB split between system and storage is sort of getting tight, what with an increasing number of third party and shareware apps. Having 32MB means you have some breathing room, at least for a while. Plus, you can never have too much memory.
Getting reacquainted with the HP
When HP first introduced the wide format 640 x 240 screen everybody was oohing and aahing and the competition quickly followed suit. When HP and others switched to color, there was more oohing and aahing and monochrome HPCs were pretty much doomed on the spot. But then NEC, LG, and Hitachi introduced their big HPCs with keyboards almost as large as those of notebooks, and with screens that felt more like notebook screens than HPC screens. They made their smaller brethren’s look sort of toylike. Last time I looked at the 620LX in our office and compared it to the magnificent MobilePro 750C, it was a bit like seeing a Nash Metropolitan next to a big, sleek Taurus. We wondered if perhaps HP had misjudged the market with the smallish form factor of its HPCs and those chiclet keyboards. Well, a few hours with the 660LX reminded me just how nice the LX series is, and also why the current models’ DOS based predecessors, the HP95/100/ 200LX stayed on the market for so many years. HP simply knows how to build these little marvels. The 660’s screen, for example, is totally razor sharp and as good as they come. The chiclet keyboard doesn’t look like something you could actually type on, yet you can. Not touch-type perhaps, but the keys are prefect for my hunting and pecking. There is no stickiness and it’s almost as if the keys somehow knew what you wanted them to do and made up for your errors. It’s an extremely forgiving keyboard.
In terms of speed, the 660LX, like the 360 and the 620, is middle-of-the-road. It’s not a speed demon like the Velo 500 or the MobilePro, but with its 75MHz SH-3 processor it’s also not a slowpoke.
The 660 also reminds me how good HP is at assessing weaknesses and fixing them. That’s what they did when CE version 1.0 didn’t include printing, and that’s what they did when even version 2.0 didn’t include a calendar that allowed a month or year look. The 660 has a month-at-a-glance and a 6-months-at-a-glance feature. CE 2.1, of course, now has it, too, but perhaps it took HP to prod Microsoft into action.
I never thought HP handhelds looked particularly great, and this one is no exception. HP is run by engineers and not by designers, but (with the exception of the OmniGo, the drab ugliness of which at least contributed to its demise) a lack of flash never seems to hurt HP. Still, you can’t look at this machine without wondering what the hand of a great industrial designer could do with it, and how that and perhaps a slightly bigger keyboard and a bigger battery are all that separate the LX from greatness.
Now that a new generation of H/PC Pros are here, we’ll soon see whether those new designs will spell the end of small handhelds like the 660LX. HP’s new Jornada 820 has a full 640 x 480 VGA screen. It is certainly a more pleasant machine to work on than the little 660, but it is also a much larger machine. You can stick a 660 into almost any pocket. You can’t do that with a Jornada. I am typing this article right into the 660. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it can be done. The 660’s form factor has enough advantages to justify keeping it around.
In fact, it’s not the shape HP should work on; it’s the battery life. Ever since the NEC MobilePro 750 showed that ten hours-plus isn’t impossible, the three or four you get out of a 660 seem inadequate. Also, whenever I see a 620 or 660 I get the impression that they could easily lose 20% of their weight and size and still have the same screen, keyboard, and functionality. Am I being hard on HP? Maybe. Perhaps it’s because I know that HP’s engineers are up to just about any challenge.
Bottom line: the 660LX remains a brilliantly engineered handheld. The 56K PC Card modem is both fast and amazingly energy-efficient, and the 32MB of RAM give you much more breathing room.
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