Hewlett-Packard has announced that it is discontinuing the Jornada line and will no longer support the Pocket PC devices three years after purchase. I love the News.Com headline, which makes this sound like something positive: "HP to support discontinued Jornadas."

Thanks, HP! It's extremely heartening to know that the Jornada 540 I bought in April 2001 for $550 is the Microsoft Bob of PDAs. I was beginning to worry that I might someday make use of the device, which doesn't support the only thing I bought it for: secure ebooks.

The Jornada 540 is one of the company's only Pocket PC devices that can't be upgraded to Microsoft Reader 2.0, presumably because there's some kind of hardware anti-piracy support cooked into other Jornadas. I found out about this undocumented feature after buying the 540 to purchase and read commercial ebooks, which Reader 1.0 does not support, so my Jornada is the world's most expensive task manager.

Comments

You have my deepest sympathy. I'm currently eyeing my Jornada 720, and sighing. It is the best PDA I've ever used, and it is the red-headed stepchild of the whole movement. Sigh, again. What I could do with a modern clam-shell PDA.

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