People often ask me what I do most of my writing on. A lot of people think I would have the latest, most powerful PC or Mac. I don’t. I buy my computers when they go on clearance. My PC was obsolete long before I bought it. It still does what I need it to do.
When it comes to writing on the road, however, my equipment is state of the art—
Or at least it was in the 1990’s.
When I’m on the road, I use a Jornada 720 I bought on EBay for sixty bucks. Yep, it’s an antique by computer standards, but I love my Jornada.
The forerunner of PDA’s and Palm Pilots, HP discontinued them in a fit of corporate insanity. I can’t even hook my Jornada to the internet anymore, but it still does what I need. (I gave up on keeping up with the computer Joneses years ago.) It has a miniscule keyboard that barely accepts my stubby two-fingered typing. Its battery lasts about three hours on a charge. The docking cradle for synching to my PC broke long ago so I have to pull the Flash card to transfer files. It has no grammar checker, or word count, or print preview, but I still love my Jornada. In fact, I do most of my heavy writing on it.
Why?
The Jornada works. My Jornada will fit in a jacket or vest pocket and go where I need it to go. Bad weather? Or where I live, high water? No problem. The Jornada doesn’t need a high-dollar neoprene skin. A ten cent Ziploc bag does nicely. Okay, so I can’t run the latest version of Adobe or play Doom v75. Big deal. I wouldn’t if I had a $2,000 laptop. The Jornada has survived flooding, rain, direct sunshine, hot car interiors, cold mornings on a deer stand, a fall down an Ozark mountainside, more flooding, and a host of conditions that would turn said laptop into a pricey trotline weight. So far my Jornada has proven nearly indestructible. I am often tempted to paint it Razorback Red, substitute it for our UA quarterback’s butt pad, and further test its limits.* Plus, the Jornada fires up at a touch of the screen, INSTANTLY. It’s ready with no wait time for boot up. Try that with your $BM.
If my Jornada crapped out tomorrow, you can bet I’d scour EBay until I found a replacement. Then I’d pull the Flash card and continue my ersatz adventures in torture testing. To tell you the truth, if HP or some other company came out with a new Jornada that had wireless internet, faster gizmos, and purple fringe around the screen, I don’t think I’d buy one. Like old tractors, old kitchen stoves, and cars without computer chips, sometimes the old technology is hard to beat. (And did I mention it was cheap?)
Long live the lowly Jornada!
TA
*Historically, the butt pad has been an Arkansas QB’s most important armor.
