Ageing 548

[55Kevy]

The 548 series is now over 2 years old. Indeed, the earliest devices will be 3 years old next spring. I've had mine since June, 2000. I was wondering what ageing problems, if any, people have noticed. Are batteries dieing? Are screens failing? Are there other signs of decrepitude?

My device has served me very well. I'm not a power user - I utilize it as my travelling PC, accessing email, doing light word processing, keeping track of travel expenses, reading lots of ebooks, and playing the odd game. And, of course, it is my planner.

The flip lid broke about 5 months ago and I didn't like the colored offerings from HP (that's all they had) and so bought a Vaja case which, of course, I really enjoy. The only other thing I've noticed, and is the trigger for this post, is that the screen is beginning to brighten unevenly. 540 series owners will be familiar with the slow brightening of the screen after power-on. With my device this was always uniform and occurred within about 5 seconds. Now the brightening begins at the bottom of the screen and spreads upward, but unevenly, with the left-hand middle portion of the screen the last to brighten. And it seems to take a little longer, maybe 7 s.

I'd appreciate any others' experiences.

Kevin

[gary]

My 545 is still serving me well. Its been dropped at least a dozen times. Submerged in water once and it has some screen scratches but otherwise the screen seems fine to me. The battery is not lasting as long as it once did but it has been fine for daily usage. I have surely gotten my money out of this machine.

Gary

[PPCWanderer]

My screen has dust behind it, my case screws have backed themselves out, the contacts for the sync cradle have worn out so I can't sync any longer, the system seems much slower overall and I have a yellow-brown tint to what used to be a fairly color accurate screen. The batteries will last about 30 minutes of constant use so it is definitely losing its usefulness. I bought mine in Jan 01 as a replacement for my Nino 512 which died weirdly. It has done well but I'm not sure I can say it was worth the US$500 I paid. BUt the toughness of the unit makes up for it. I have beat this thing to DEATH and it just won't stop.

[Steven Cedrone]

Bought mine right after the launch...

Battery life: still good!
Flip cover: Broke the tab that keeps it open, use a E&B now...
Screen: still looks like it did when I bought it...

Problems: I too, have noticed that pressing near the power button makes the screen turn off. This was a known issue with these units...

Other than that, I have beat this thing into the ground! Like Kevin Bacon in "Animal House" it just sits there and says "Thank you sir, may I have another!" :wink:

Steve

[Doriath22]

Hmm... My 545 is definitely showing signs of age. I bought it the day of the PPC launch in May of 2000. According to the serial number of the device, it was produced in Jan 2000, one of the first. The screen is still fully functional, but the batteries only hold about an hours worth of charge no matter what the use. The Jornada is subject to freak power drains if not charged daily. Sometimes it will charge but refuse to turn on, and a hard reset doesn't always fix the problem, so I just have to wait... I dissassembled it and reset the ROM in it's socket. That fixes the power on problem, but I don't want to do it every time I use the thing. Oh and after I took it apart, it doesn't sync reliably either, that is expected, but I have to press on a spot on the lower left of the case, opposite the speaker, for it to connect-I think it has to do with the placement of the sync connector, which is now loose. Aside from these problems, the broken tab so the flip lid doesn't stay locked in position, and a stylus that finally snapped in half from constant use, the thing works fine. I have dropped it several times from chest height, once onto gravel. Nowadays it's quirkiness has made it undesirable for use so I am now using my old newton until I save enough to buy a PPC2k2 - looking at the Axim.

Eric Jones

[JvanEkris]

My old 548 served me well for about two years. I traveled a lot these days, it was always in my bag and used it all day. I recently retired it, but it still is my backup system. It is in splendid condition. I broke off the pieces of plastic that kept the lid upright, but that was fixed under warranty. Only deteriation i noticed was the scratches on the back from moving it around the table. Still love that machine.......

Jaap

[ejoneise22]

My 548 was my main PDA from the first quater of 2000 until late 2001, when it went to back up status for my first IPAQ. I have since had an egenio, another IPAQ and am now using an HP IPAQ 5455. I have not kept any of those previous units, and entrust the 548 as my back up. Dropped, yes, many times, battery still good, screen as crisp as day one (screen protectors always), inserted CF cards probably 500 times, no wear on socket. I wish in a way that my 5455 was a Jornada in name, but at least it now says HP. And funny thing, it seems better built than any IPAQ I saw with Compaq on it. The 548 syncs right next to it, ready if duty calls.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Back when the PPC world consisted of iPaq, Casio E125/EM500, and the HP, I have to say that I loved my Casio, I secretly envied the iPaq, and I steered clear of the HP.

However, I also was the first to admit that it had by far the best form factor. Maybe not as attractive as the iPaq at that time, but it just felt like a great unit in my hands... looks good and it was the one PPC I felt I could just carry around naked if I had owned it.

Still to this day, I say you could make a pretty convincing argument about that HP having the best form factor of all the PPCs we've seen to date. This thread with 2+ year users only validates how well constructed it really was.

[KDF9511]

I have a J520 that I bought in November of 2001 to replace my stolen Palm IIIxe. I have used it daly since then for reading e-books and some other stuff and have had no problems other than breaking off the tabs that hold the cover up. I bought a leather flip cover off e-bay for 10 bucks and it works great. I haven't had any problems with the batery life even though I use it for 1 to 3 hours at a time when reading. I just plug it in on my nightstand when I go to bed and it is allways ready to go in the morning.

[Bradskey]

I had a 548 for over a year (now use and love the 568). It was very solid and comfortable, but a little quirky on sync, and had occasionally short that caused power loss to the display, etc. With my interest in games and programming the inherent sluggishness of the device eventually became a liability. I think using SH3 was a mistake, but given the early date/first to market release that HP made with the 540's it was probably the best chip that met their price model and hardware designs at the time. And, although the screen was bright and vivid indoors, side-lit TFT is just the way to go. Overall I liked it, and I was happy with the $150 I got for it on eBay.

The battery cells in these units are designed to last about three years. You get best performance/battery life when you keep the charge near full, ie use for 2-4 hours and recharge each day, rather than leaving it lying around until it just has to be recharged, or using it 6-8 hours each day until it is drained (this accelerates deterioration of the Lithium cells).

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

And, although the screen was bright and vivid indoors, side-lit TFT is just the way to go.
It was on the short end of the stick when it came to display (in comparison to the Casio and iPaq at that time). It wasn't as brilliant indoors as the Casio and it wasn't nearly as functional as the iPaq outdoors. For all-around versatility, the sidelit-reflective was the way to go. It no longer is now as backlit-reflective is the new demand.

[D.psi]

Okay, I had a 430, and have had a 548 for well over two years now, it is my only PPC. My wife has had matching units to mine, no jealousy in our house, but it's also a built-in statistical sample of two.

My usage pattern is different from my wife's. I charge at work, since I also am continously hooked up for synching. She charges hers on a more irregular basis. I can't say that I have a good feel for my battery life, but probably still get 2-3 hrs of useful gaming out of it. (I've always advocated that 1) if it's not a toy, it's not with you, 2)if it's not with you it's not useful as a PDA.)

Symptoms we've encountered for our 548s:

1) broke of the plastic tabs to keep the cover up.
2) various scratches on the cover, and back
3) lost one screw in for the back cover
4) one of the screw recesses/dimples (actually two if you include the one for the lost screw) has sheered off from the back cover
5) screen warm-up issue as mentioned by others i.e. screen gets progressively brighter as the unit is powered (~15 seconds)
6) battery wear may be an issue, but I'd be hard pressed to quantify it
7) the most grievous offense is the locking up that my Jornada has been subjected to, I've posted about this in a alternate Jornada forum(s), my solution is disconnect the battery, and reconnect it, data loss but Jornada funtions
8 ) touch screen seems to have develloped some shorts on my wife's unit
9) the little CF slot door has fallen off, and been repositioned
10) the stylus holder is less effective than it used to be

We have used and abused our Jornadas. They've been dropped, and bumped, the kids have played bubblets with fervour. The units have kept working since we bought them in the summer of 2000. They're still ticking, but we're considering replacing them.

[ebrandwein]

I only recently switched from a Palm to a Jornada 548 (which I got for almost nothing in beautiful shape) and while I realize it isn't considered a front line machine anymore, I'm still very impressed. I use a program called Facelift which gives PPC 2000 the look and feel of PPC 2002 along with the ability to skin the Today screen and close programs with an X click. I know that MP3's, Compact flash cards and accessories and a big colorful screen are all old hat to you folks but coming from a Palm M130 with its tiny screen and no multimedia capability I'm having a blast. I figure I'll hang on to the 548 until affordable PPC 2003 machines have been released.

[Stephen Beesley]

I used a 545 for a little over year as my daily use PDA - lots of note taking, web surfing, book reading etc. I carried it everywhere and dropped it more times than I could count. I found it a very tough little dude (although like others I did snap off the part of the lid that attaches it to the body). The biggest problem ascetically was the accumulation of scratches on the black paint - this was probably from carrying it unprotected in my pocket so much.

Still it was a great machine and it is hard to beat the cold feel of real metal!

BTW - Pocket facelift was/is a great program for mimicing the PPC 2002 look etc. Indeed I still used it on my 568 sometimes.

Goldtee

[kingraf01]

I've had mine for almost 3 years now :| worked fine up until last year when I moved to NM from Cali. Lot of static in my house caused my Jornada to freeze if I didn't ground myself. :devilboy: Only way to unfreeze was a hard re-set, sent it back, came back the same, no changes. Another year went by and it was fine as long as I ground myself first. Then a few months ago it just froze and even a hard reset didn't save it. :evil: Have a warranty w/ Circuit City but they send it elsewhere to get fixed. Sent it back HOPING they would just replace with a current one, but noooooo... :? They refurbished it and it has only froze once since. Although it came back without the cover and the 128 compctflash card I forgot to take out. 8O Oh well still works, it's my MP3 player for the gym and still my only organizer. Got my moneys worth and will upgrade to the newest HP whenever it finally does die.
:roll: