Stowaway iPAQ 3800 series adaptor

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://store.yahoo.com/thinkoutside/adforcomip38.html">http://store.yahoo.com/thinkoutside/adforcomip38.html</a><br /><br />Jason Golden, and many more of you, has been waiting for this adaptor to be released. For only $9.95 you can use your older iPAQ Stowaway keyboard with the new 3800 series iPAQs. Kudos to Stowaway for making this a cheap way to extend the life of their products for users!<br /><br /><img src="http://store5.yimg.com/I/thinkoutside_1676_18367" /><br /><br />"If you already own a Stowaway Keyboard for the Compaq iPAQ 3600 or 3700 series and upgraded to a 3800 series, you must purchase this adapter in order to use your keyboard with this device (weighs 0.29 oz)."

[Dave Conger]

Dang, now I guess Jason (Golden) isn't going to sell me his keyboard for cheap! :?

[philfp]

Hmmm... :?

I wonder if all the pins are connected, i.e. I can use this with other adapters, such as the USB charging lead etc. If anybody has one of these and has tested it with other cables/devices, I'd be very grateful if they could post the results here.

Phil

[spg]

Finally! Glad they got around to it, saves lots of money for their users! 8)

[gdowsett]

Emailed Targus in the UK for info on when this would be available on Thursday night. They e-mailed back Friday morning requesting my address and an adaptor turned up this morning foc, stunning service !

[Daniel]

It'd be cool if there was a H38xx cradle to H36xx adaptor, that would be very cool. I could have USB & serial in the same one then! Hint hint?

daniel

[spg]

Emailed Targus in the UK for info on when this would be available on Thursday night. They e-mailed back Friday morning requesting my address and an adaptor turned up this morning foc, stunning service !


Wow! 8O

[Daniel]

That it pretty darn good! Champion effort.

[Chima]

This was really good of Stowaway to do. It makes my upgrade decision easier now. I was reluctant to move from a 3635 to a 3800 series model as I was not prepared to have to buy another keyboard.

The problem now though is, having lived with my 3635 for an extra 1/2 year since PPC2002 was released, I am now tempted to just stick it out till the first xscale machines are available.

My real need is actually the onboard RAM upgrade- from everything I have heard, I am not desperate for the current OS upgrade.

[Jason Dunn]

Chima - spend a few bucks and get www.times2tech.com to do the 64 meg RAM upgrade. That will tide you over until the Xscale devices ship.

[Pony99CA]

Too bad ThinkOutside charges an outrageous $6.00 for shipping, especially as it's in California like me. While $15.95 isn't too bad to avoid buying another keyboard, having shipping cost over 60% of the product sucks.

And that doesn't include the $0.75 sales tax (which they are overcharging for my ZIP code, too). It's only $0.03, but it's the principle..

I'm going to see if I can get a better shipping deal from Targus....

Steve

[JimV]

I had several conversations with ThinkOutside way back when they had killed the Casio version of the keyboard. I was actually going to try to put together an adapter to make the Jornada keyboard work with the Casio's, but then ThinkOutside resurrected their Casio project. I told them back then that they could save themselves alot of trouble if they created a base Keyboard and developed adapters for each of the different devices on the market. There are some issues with Software and the different signals supported by the different devices, but I think that those could be implemented in the adapters. It's nice to see that they are heading in the right direction. Wouldn't it be nice to buy one keyboard and have it work with all kinds of PDA's -- Kind of like what Targus has done for Laptop power supplies. So Kudos to ThinkOutside.

[Dave Conger]

I had several conversations with ThinkOutside way back when they had killed the Casio version of the keyboard. I was actually going to try to put together an adapter to make the Jornada keyboard work with the Casio's, but then ThinkOutside resurrected their Casio project. I told them back then that they could save themselves alot of trouble if they created a base Keyboard and developed adapters for each of the different devices on the market. There are some issues with Software and the different signals supported by the different devices, but I think that those could be implemented in the adapters. It's nice to see that they are heading in the right direction. Wouldn't it be nice to buy one keyboard and have it work with all kinds of PDA's -- Kind of like what Targus has done for Laptop power supplies. So Kudos to ThinkOutside.


I would be all for that, as long as the price for the base keyboard stayed the same as well as the price for the adapter. Right now, the prices tend to chage with the popularity of the device (going down mostly) which with a Universal Keyboard, that would only happen with a new keyboard coming out. I would also want them to say that it will be compatible with future devices, because I wouldn't want to buy it now and then find out they are like Iomega (100mb drives can't take the new 250mb disks).

[dochall]

Emailed Targus in the UK for info on when this would be available on Thursday night. They e-mailed back Friday morning requesting my address and an adaptor turned up this morning foc, stunning service !


Thanks for that. I did the same at it should be on its way. I still find it hard to believe that they aren't charging for it. It looks like however that they are going to be including it in the Ipaq keyboard like the right angle power connector that they included in the box. I therefore suspect they won't be doing a 3800 series as a seperate keyboard.

Kudos to Targus.

[Pony99CA]

I would be all for that, as long as the price for the base keyboard stayed the same as well as the price for the adapter. Right now, the prices tend to chage with the popularity of the device (going down mostly) which with a Universal Keyboard, that would only happen with a new keyboard coming out. I would also want them to say that it will be compatible with future devices, because I wouldn't want to buy it now and then find out they are like Iomega (100mb drives can't take the new 250mb disks).


Wow, talk about apples and oranges. The keyboard adapter just routes output pins to input pins differently. If the electrical signals or voltages are different from one Pocket PC to the next, I doubt a simple adapter would work.

Disk capacity is a completely different issue. I would never expect a higher capacity disk to work in a lower capacity drive (unless you wanted to format a 250 MB disk as a 100 MB disk, which would be foolish unless you could no longer get 100 MB disks).

To get the higher capacity they either need to pack tracks more closely on the disk, write the information to disk more quickly, spin the disk faster, or some combination of the above. I would be shocked if an older disk drive could handle a disk designed for the newer system.

Also note that Iomega's Peerless system does support 10 GB and 20 GB disk cartridges, but I suspect that was designed in from the start. I doubt Iomega ever planned to have larger Zip disks, but when competing manufacturers started coming out with larger systems, they had to design a new system.

I think the more important thing to ask is why Compaq felt it necessary to change the serial connection and eliminate the power connection (which is why the older iPaq keyboard doesn't work with my 3870), and why Microsoft doesn't specify the synchronization and, possibly, the peripheral I/O system the way they do the processor and other hardware components.

I'm all for the hardware companies allowing additional methods of connecting devices, but the standard items should be, dare I say it, standardized. Microsoft knows that every Windows CE device will have synchronization capabilities, so why not specify the synchronization hardware? Then one cable would work with any device you may use (cradles may not work, of course, because of the different case sizes).

Steve

[JimV]

Wow, talk about apples and oranges. The keyboard adapter just routes output pins to input pins differently. If the electrical signals or voltages are different from one Pocket PC to the next, I doubt a simple adapter would work.

...


I'm all for the hardware companies allowing additional methods of connecting devices, but the standard items should be, dare I say it, standardized. Microsoft knows that every Windows CE device will have synchronization capabilities, so why not specify the synchronization hardware? Then one cable would work with any device you may use (cradles may not work, of course, because of the different case sizes).

Steve



Steve,

The basic idea was that ThinkOutside must have an interface "module" that they redesign for each keyboard with the base keyboard remaining the same. So, they could probably save themselves some packaging and distribution issues if they simply reformated these interface modules into standardized adapters. The wouldn't be simple adapters per se, but they probably wouldn't consist of much more than what needed to be in the keyboard itself to begin with.

I do agree with you about the apples and oranges thing and that the hardware should be standardized. My thought on why it isn't is that it allows each hardware manufacturer to develop their own accessories to help differentiate and sell their hardware. If it was standardized, then the base hardware would become a comodity.

I think that this standardization may occur in the next generation. Out of the current generation, there may eventually be a clear standout - like the IPAQ was for the previous generation. If that occurs, then the method and connectors that the standout uses will become the next standard. Steve Bush has an article about this topic in Jan/Feb issue of Pen Computing (If I remember correctly).