Re: LCD w/touch (Fujistu Stylistic 3400 info, too)

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"John, SW Missouri" <jmjones@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1160102331.528746.303190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Bob,
>
> I've looked at the 3400 several times on eBay.  The only thing that
> held me back was I have no idea how to make it work with my HA system.

Once you have one, you'll find a number of uses for it that weren't obvious
at first.  I think I'll finally have to break down and get a wireless LAN PC
card for it.  The charm of a tablet PC is that you can take it around with
you around the house pretty easily.  It's turned out to be useful to have a
PDF reader I can set out next to the washing machine to look at the repair
manual.  It would be more useful if I didn't have to preload things from the
server but a 2GB CF card inside a PCMCIA adapter makes it pretty easy to
move stuff on and off the machine.  Much faster than the USB 1.1 port.  The
place I bought them on Ebay has 4GB cards for $66 and they're next on the
list.

> If the Smarthome has no backlight - no wonder it's so cheap - I
> wouldn't use it myself.

I searched the ad and the PDF file for "color" and "back" and "light"
without much success.  I was kind of surprised since I didn't think there
was much demand for non-backlit LCD's.  Someone's whose actually got one
should confirm this.

> I don't know that I really need a touch screen, but it is nice to have
> an LCD display.  Some months back I was using a 4x20 bright blue
> backlit serial LCD from Peter Anderson to display various messages from
> my Homevision controller.  I have 5 Elk keypads in the house and I can
> send various text messages to them by the M1G which could be triggered
> by a serial message from HV.  These are only 2 lines by maybe 23
> characters.

It's a beautifully sharp display - the angle's just a little too restrictive
for my taste, but as I've said, most LCD's are.  I've loaded up some of the
sample JPG's I got from the Charmed Quark site and they really look nice.
You can design some pretty nice, personalized status displays using it and
some of the other tools available.   Display screen real estate is like
closet space or hard drive space.  There's never *really* a problem in
finding things to fill them all up!  I may end up buying CQ because I like
the look of what some people have done with it so much.

> I have a Universal Remote MX3000 which I "intend" to use for HA was
> well as as a TV remote once I get HV back in service.  This can do all
> my lighting/security control and the wife has adapted to it - which
> isn't always easy to get her to do ;-(

I'm married to the X-10 8-in-1's for the same reason although it's really
not as workable as it used to be with all the new keys appearing on DVD
players and satellite and cable boxes.  I've bought a URC-9910 from OFA for
$30 that controls 8 devices, has learning, macros, RF, X-10 via IR and comes
with a combo RF receiver and IR blaster WITH a little IR stick on emitter.
Upgradeable over the phone, too, but ONLY via a corded, landline phone with
long distance access.  With everyone INLCUDING ME (!!) switching to
cellphones as the main line, no wonder it was on sale.

> I also have a ADI Leopard touchscreen which was in use prior to the
> storm.  When I find the box it's in I think I'll give that another go
> as well.  Obviously the 3400 can do everything a serial LCD and the
> Leopard can do, plus run software like Homeseer to boot.

And the 3400 costs a boatload less!  It actually boots pretty quickly
compared to a lot of other machines I own and goes in and out of the
hibernation state without the truckload of issues slightly older PC's faced.

> Most of the 3400s I'm seeing on eBay come with no OS or Windows 2000.
> What option do you have to replace the OS if necessary - most do not
> include a cdr IIRC.

I was lucky enough to buy from a guy (Tim Coeling) who had configured all
the handwriting recognition and touch drive software on the W2KPro that came
pre-installed.  At first I thought it was broken because I was too chicken
to press hard enough with my finger or fingernail to get a response.  Once
you get the hang of it, it's really quite easy to use for both taps, double
taps and even triple taps.  I have pretty stubby fingers yet I can pretty
reliably pick songs out from the Winamp list, close windows, operate program
menus, etc. without problems.  I think W2KP is your best bet with the
machine.  It seems to be the OS it was born and bred under.

I read somewhere in my continuing search for more data about the 3400 that
Fujitsu has over a 50% market share for tablet PC's and it shows.  It's a
very well though out machine from what I have seen, so far.

As for backups, there are a number of ways.  First, you need to buy a
special floppy drive (got mine for $20 but the prices vary) so you can boot
something like Ghost independently of the HD.  The 3400 supports only
floppy, HD and network booting, and the network booting I believe requires a
port replicator or a cradle.

Then, the bootable hard disk needs to have a logical drive or partition
created that you can place a compressed image of the C: drive backup on.
After that, you can plug in a USB DVD writer and burn that Ghost image to
DVD.  At least that's the theory.  What I will probably end up doing when
the FD disk arrives is to take the 6GB drive out of the machine, mount it in
a 2.5 to 3.5" adapter and clone it on my desktop machine so that I can
repartition the drive into two volumes and the reload the OS to the first
partition, saving the second one for temporary storage of the boot image.
There are a number of other options.

The 3400 takes a PCMCIA adapter with a 2GB CF card (and maybe even a 4GB
card - haven't tried one yet), so I could also write the boot image to that
device.   The real way to go is via the desktop cradle but I've not seen too
many of them come up for sale on Ebay.  I also have a PCMCIA card with SCSI
and an old HP 4GB tape drive that supports complete backups from a C: drive
without having to partition it into two volumes.

Needless to say, it's been a lot trickier than I expected, and my heart
nearly stopped when the machine recently booted to the infamous BSOD with
the nasty "Inaccessible_Boot_Drive" message.  That occurred just after I had
plugged in an 80GB shirtpocket drive that someone on Ebay had thrown in with
an old digital camera thinking it was a CF card reader.  (Boy oh boy was
that the deal of the week!) Anyway, after searching and searching the web
for clues, I finally decided I would unplug the CF/PCMCIA card I had been
using and it booted up just fine.  That's when I decided I had better leave
it alone until the floppy arrives and I can Ghost the HD to preserve all the
effort Tim went through in setting up the machine for me.

Anyway, when I open the machine, I'm going to ID the HD and try to buy some
backup 6GB HD's that I can keep preloaded with a clone of the primary drive.
I'm a little rusty on the IDE boundaries of that era, but IIRC 400MHz
Pentiums often supported up to 32GB drives.

If anyone's running a hard drive greater than 6GB in their 3400, I'd like to
know the make and model.

It would be nice to replace the little 6GB with a 32GB HD.  Being able to
buy WD250GB HD's with 8MB caches for $50 after rebate has spoiled me, I'm
afraid.  (-:  6GB is just too damn little space!  Hard to believe my first
(and at the time so seemingly capacious) HD was a 20MB CMI with 100
millisecond seek times.

--
Bobby