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HW for Free42: how low can you go? (in price terms) - Printable Version

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HW for Free42: how low can you go? (in price terms) - Luigi Vampa - 08-08-2017 06:18 PM

It is summer time in northern hemisphere, and my Kindle has been kidnapped by my kids (no pun intended) so that I have needed to search a new body to get Free42 reincarnated.
This time I wanted a more compact device, say phone-sized, and I found a $39.9 Android 7.0 phone last week, though it seems the manufacturer has just increased the price some points due to demand.
Any other options around that price or even below?


RE: HW for Free42: how low can you go? (in price terms) - Jim Horn - 08-08-2017 06:33 PM

I have about 100 old Palm PDAs (Tungsten E and others) and would be happy to give them away to anyone who has a use for them. Their batteries are almost certainly completely dead so would need replacement.

I suspect you can find old PDAs that run Free42 just fine at second hand shops that are *very* inexpensive.

(I used to work where users sent their Palm PDAs in for repair but they were merely replaced with new ones and the ones sent in were discarded. I was able to repair many and used them for years before finally getting a smart phone.)


RE: HW for Free42: how low can you go? (in price terms) - Luigi Vampa - 08-08-2017 06:50 PM

Very kind of you!
Although I was a Palm PDA user (Zire 71, Tungsten T, and Treo) I was thinking about new hardware, and Android seems to be the preferred (only?) choice when searching for 'a la cheapo' options. A new phone gives you not only a bigger screen, but also the option to play with the GPS-related commands in Free42 and a bona fide spare phone, just in case you run out of battery in your main phone, or it simply stops working/breaks/falls...


RE: HW for Free42: how low can you go? (in price terms) - Thomas Okken - 08-09-2017 06:47 AM

Also, note that I don't support PalmOS (and Windows Mobile) any more. You can still get Free42 for those platforms, for example at http://www.hpcalc.org/search.php?query=Free42, but while those old builds still work, they are several years out of date in terms of bug fixes and improvements. Check http://thomasokken.com/free42/history.html to make sure you're OK with that.


RE: HW for Free42: how low can you go? (in price terms) - pier4r - 08-09-2017 07:11 AM

Which phone do you have?

Otherwise you can consider to pack a new smartphone with free42 and a couple more apps, it can be useful.

I am soon going to change my lenovo a816 (5'5 , 1gb ram, 8gb storage, 4 cpus - but the cpu on smartphones are monsters since years) for a lenovo k6 because the lenovo a816 does not have a properly configured default OS.

I will use the lenovo a816 as side device for free42, spotify, tunein radio, casting content on the chromecast, timers, maps, reading pdfs and so on. So it would carry quite a set of tools for me.

Of course I expect to put the free42 also on the new phone.

Otherwise the kindle itself (you talk about the tablet, right?) is quite cheap for what it can offer.