@smackpotato - slide rule ??

hmmm... My first portable computing device ever was a palm III, then a palm Vx. After that became too underpowered I bought a Zire 72 and used it happily for several years. The sound card died though and the battery was going downhill fast so I bought an N810, and I must say it's by far the best mobile computing device I've ever tried out

oh, and I also owned a powerbook G3 years ago that no longer works

Ignoring things that were designed as computers, but were small,

Casio FX-702P & a similar one
Sharp PC-1210
Something by casio with character recognition
These were all pretty similar, basic programming and not much more than calculator

Psion organiser II
This was getting better - good programming, but an alphabetical order keyboard! Also quite heavy
Psion organiser 3 & 3A
Like a proper computer. Programmable, decent battery life, could connect to a modem etc. 3a as the three but improved.
Newton OMP (not called OMP until later). Fantastic toy, not actually that much use
Newton 120 - getting much better
Newton 130 - proper handwriting recognition, decent battery life, fantastic operating system
Newton 2100 - The pinnicale of handheld computing. Damn that steve jobs!
Compaq iPaq 3600 - work gave it to me to write some software with. It worked and was the first thing I had a GPS on.
Compaq iPaq 3800 - Same but more memory
[COLOR="Purple"]Zodiac Tapwave - Great little palm, could have been so much more if the company hadn't gone out of business, and the sony PSP hadn't come out at the wrong time
Sony PSP. Not much to say - it is a PSP.
iPod Touch Well, I also had several previous iPods (back to the week the second generation came out), but didn't really count them as much as portable computing devices.
TomTom Go, TomTom 510 - great GPS devices.
Nokia 770
Nokia 810

Atari Portfolio

Those are the little things, then there are the bigger things:

Apple Powerbook 160, 190, 5300, G4 titanium 400, titanium 800, 12" 867
Macbook, Macbook Pro 2.3GHz
Sharp old win95 laptop, Fujitsu 700 laptop
Viewsonic v1100 tablet PC
Fujitsu Stylistic 3400
Fujitsu stylistic ST4110P
HP TC1000
HP TC1100


I think I still have most of these. Apart from the little machines that are all gone, and the older psions, I have the 3 (not the 3a), the tapwave,psp,both nokias, the touch (and two other ipods),the iPaq 3800, the newtons, all the powerbooks apart from the titaniums, the macbook (wife has), the macbook pro (typing on), the ST4110P & TC1100.

I should make a group photo of all this one day!

Nintendo GameBoy
Nintendo GameBoyPocket
Sega GameGear
Gamepark GP32
Tapwave Zodiac (rulez)
TigerTelematics Gizmondo (börks)
Nokia N810 (wohooooo)

Dang! I forgot my Timex!

My first portable device was a gameboy advance then a gameboy advance sp then a sony psp and now a nokia N800 and i will soon be getting a samsung q1 ultra-v with windows vista home premium

Movin' on up, huh? I started with gamin machines too, but my first real "portable computing device" was the n800.

Cassiopeia BE 300 - Great device! Windows CE based, but there was a community behind it and tons of free software. There were even different OSes you could choose form. It was cheap and you could add accessories as you pleased. Lacked CPU power and adequate ram though.


Zaurus SL3200 - Another great device. Linux based with tons of open source software and various OSes. It was PDA so it had a PIM suite that I now miss dearly. Expensive as hell, not sold in the US, and needs accessories to do every little thing. A wifi adapter here (b only!), a bluetooth adapter there... it was not pocketable at all. As it turns out, the Nokia IT's are really way better than the Sharp Zaurus line.

Nokia 770 - Excellent device. Can't say enough about this little thing. Only to be surpassed by the N800.

Nokia N800 - Excellent device, but I hated not having a keyboard and the fact that I couldn't read the screen in the sunlight. Will sell this soon.

Nokia N810 - Excellent device. I just got this one and love the keyboard and sunlight readable screen. I am still upset about the lack of a good PIM but I am relatively happy about most other things, especially the hardware. GPS sucks, but I don't mind. MiniSD is less common than microSD but it is actually a little cheaper and comes in the same speed and sizes so it's not that bad. A move to microSD will save space for the N900 though. Keyboard has flat keys, but it's really not that much of a problem. It sucks to type on with big hands and nails though. Software could use a major improvement.

EDIT: Oh, and the Nokia tablets are all way too unresponsive! How is it that Apple manages to make the iPhone so responsive even with all those fancy gimmicks? Is the iPhone really that much more powerful? Does it have that much more CPU processing power and RAM? Come on Nokia.

Sharp Zaurus PI-3000, Apple Newton MessagePad 100, Sharp Zaurus MI-10DC, Sharp Zaurus MI-E1, Sharp Zaurus MI-C1-S, Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D (first Linux-based Zaurus), Sharp Zaurus SL-A300, Sharp Zaurus SL-C700, SL-C860, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6680, Nokia 770, Nokia N800, NintendoDS Lite, Nokia N70, iPod Touch 16GB, Nokia N810.

Best user interface is probably the Newton MessagePad although if "data detectors" makes it into the iPod Touch OS it'll be close.

Well, if we are going to go back to prehistorical times...

TI-53, TI-57, TI-58C, Casio FX702P, Sharp PC-1250, Canon X-07, HP-41CV, Atari Portfolio (the one you see in the terminator 2 movie...), HP-48SX, HP-95LX, HP100LX, HP-200LX (I love those), HP48GX, HP Omnigo (junk), HP Omnibook (more a sub-laptop than a pocket computer), HP-48G, Olivetti quaderno (not used that much, a buying mistake), Toshiba Libretto 50CT (*), Palmpilot, Palm V, Garmin iQue, Sharp Zaurus SL-5500, Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 (*), Sharp Zaurus SL-C760 (*), Nokia 770, Nokia 6630, Nokia N80 (upgraded to Internet Edition), Nokia N800, HP-50G, Nokia N810, Nokia E51.

(*) imported from Japan.

Powerbook 160
NEC something or other laptop
Newton 110. 130
Powerbook 520
PB Titanium 400
Fossil Wrist PDA (still going strong)
12" PB G4
N800