The Siemens SIMPad...

Here's a review from back in the days when animals still spoke:

http://www.pocketpcmag.com/_archives/May02/SIMpad.asp

Just as with the Newton, I got an immediate feeling of "this thing was ahead of its time", but -- again, just as with the Newton -- SIMPads remained excessively expensive, even after the platform was -- Newton-like senitments again, I'm afraid -- brutally cancelled by Siemens.

I bought one today, for almost a tenth of the price the thing went when it was new. There are obviously differences with the 770: the SIMPad doesn't have WiFi or BT on board, its USB controller is strictly slave-only and it relies on an ancient 16-bit PCCard slot.

Oh, and it runs WinCE. Yikes.

But... the Zaurus OpenLinux/OPIE distribution runs on it without any alterations (and, regrettably, with the same clunky, Palm-like character recognizer), people have found a way to -- with some opening of the device and soldering involved -- add an internal BT-controller and even an internal MMC/SD reader, it runs for seven hours on a battery (WiFi would reduce that time significantly, of course), it has a big, 8" transflective screen with a resolution of 800x600 and, most of all, it was cheap!

So is it a competitor? Well, yes and no: it certainly is a Web tablet (it was even advertized as such!) but, like the Newton, Nokia should not be too afraid from it.

Because noone makes it anymore.

To follow up on my previous post: it appears Sandisk produces (d?) a combo CF card with WiFi and 128 MB flash on board that is compatible with Windows CE 2.11 and upwards. They go for relatively modest amounts of pecuniae on eBay. I'll let you know if it works.

See? That's the advantage of having one of them big, old card slots; even Nokia's Cardphone (does anyone remember it?) works with the SIMPad.

On the other hand, the SIMPad definitely won't fit in my pocket.