Your First Handheld?

[Dave Britten]

Now, if we're talking HP handhelds, the first would be a 95LX my father obtained from his employer in the mid '90s. He didn't have a lot of need for it, but I made use of QBasic and Memo for experimenting. A couple years later, I obtained a first-gen Windows CE handheld (Cassiopeia A-10?) but exchanged it for a 200LX due to some reliability issues and functional defficiencies. This was all around late middle school, mind you; I was and am a huge nerd. Loved the Database app then, and still do.

Eventually I fad-chased my way back to Windows CE, and later settled on Palm OS, but always kind of regretted selling the HP (though the Palm OS handhelds were generally wonderful in their own regards, and I remember most of the fondly even though I hate handwriting recognition). Got another 200LX around 2006, and won't make the mistake of selling it again, but you also won't be separating me from my iPhone and iPad either. Two very different use cases that neither can really handle for the other. I'm finding that for non-connected PIM functions, the 200LX just can't be beat even after 20 years. I'd kill for an iPad version of Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2.4. Numbers is an utter joke in comparison.

For programmable calculators, I started with a Sharp in 5th grade (EL-9200C or something along those lines), TI-82 in 7th grade (loved it, but outgrew it quickly), TI-86 and later TI-92 in 9th grade, TI-83 in 10th grade, TI-92+ upgrade module in 10th or 11th grade (can't remember the exact year), and I believe my first HP was the 48GX I purchased in 10th grade. I still have it, and bought it a 128KB RAM card a few years ago. I've also owned a 49G, whose keyboard I've always despised. I got a 50G in college, but still felt like the 48 was a more polished product. I've since obtained a number of other HP handhelds, mostly via ebay and other second-hand means.

Right now I'm in the hospital, having had surgery this past Monday. I'm hooked up to a PCA pump that I can use to dispense 0.2 mg hydromorphone as often as every 6 minutes. My trusty 48GX is sitting on my lap right now, with a small program that allows me to enter my current pain level (0-10), and also records the time at which I'm pressing the PCA button. It schedules an alarm 6 minutes out, plays the traditional "CHARGE!" fanfare to let me know it's time to hit the dosage button, and repeats as necessary. Then I can send the data over to my 200LX via IR to merge it with my pain management spreadsheet. A bit overkill? Absolutely. But the efficient dosing and great mental distraction are working wonders for my recovery and psyche.

I want to make some improvements to the program so that it automatically calculates an appropriate maintenance interval rather than always reporting 6 minutes. That's today's software engineering goal, I suppose.