The iPAQ Desktop Personal Computer in its various incarnations was a

legacy-free PC A legacy-free PC is a type of personal computer that lacks a floppy and/or optical disc drive, legacy ports, and an Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus (or sometimes, any internal expansion bus at all). According to Microsoft, "The basic goal ...

produced by the

Compaq Computer Corporation Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

around the year 2000. The iMac-inspired

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

iPAQ was primarily designed to be a portable

desktop computer A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply ...

that could be used as a simple internet capable computer.

Hardware

The iPAQ had very few limitations on upgradability; hard drives,

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

, CPU and 'Multi-Bay' drives can be readily interchanged, although the iPAQ did not contain sockets for expansion cards. It featured an interchangeable 'Multi-Bay' slot that could accept a 3.5 inch LS SuperDisk drive (the only way to read a floppy disk - standard Multi-Bay floppy drives do not work), optical drives, or a secondary hard disk device. The slot was the same as those found on many

Compaq Armada Armada is a discontinued line of business laptops by Compaq. They started as a more affordable version of the Contura line, but after that, they replaced Contura as a mainstream laptop line, and then the high-end Compaq LTE line were merged wit ...

and many other HP/Compaq

laptop computer A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

systems. By a method of

convection Convection is single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity (see buoyancy). When the cause of the convec ...

for cooling, these computers were commonly found in

office An office is a space where an Organization, organization's employees perform Business administration, administrative Work (human activity), work in order to support and realize objects and Goals, plans, action theory, goals of the organizati ...

environments due to their low noise ( dB) output. The iPAQ ran on either an

Intel Pentium III The Pentium III (marketed as Intel Pentium III Processor, informally PIII or P3) brand refers to Intel's 32-bit x86 desktop and mobile CPUs based on the sixth-generation P6 microarchitecture introduced on February 28, 1999. The brand's initial p ...

processor or on an

Intel Celeron Celeron is Intel's brand name for low-end IA-32 and x86-64 computer microprocessor models targeted at low-cost personal computers. Celeron processors are compatible with IA-32 software. They typically offer less performance per clock speed comp ...

processor; ranging from 500

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

to 1

GHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

processor in a PGA370 socket. The internal RAM was upgradable to 512 MB of 100 MHz 168pin SDR SDRAM. Due to the RAM limit of the Intel 815 series chipset, the BIOS in the iPAQ prevents the system from booting if there is more than 512 MB installed, instructing the user to decrease the amount of RAM in the system to no more than 512 MB. The first version came in two different models, "Legacy free" which had no parallel, serial, or PS/2 ports and instead 3 additional USB ports on the back; and the traditional one which included the parallel, serial, and PS/2 ports but only had USB ports on the front. The second version had different styling and had a backpack which added the "legacy" ports. iPAQ Desktops were typically sold with Windows 98 or Windows 2000 already installed. They are easily upgraded to Windows XP and can also technically run Windows Vista and Windows 7 despite the low RAM limit. In the case of Windows 7, the only way to utilize the onboard video chip is to install th
Intel815 Windows XP Drivers.

Internet appliance

For a short time, around the year 2000,

released a few models of an iPAQ that functioned as

internet appliance An Internet appliance is a consumer device whose main function is easy access to Internet services such as WWW or e-mail. The term was popularized in the 1990s, when it somewhat overlapped in meaning with an information appliance, Internet com ...

s. They did not have a

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

drive and offered very few ports to connect to for very basic use. There were two variants of the flat-panel iPAQs, a common Windows CE based version in a white case, and the less common blue version known as the 'Clipper'. The Windows CE version was sometimes called the '

MSN Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger ser ...

version' and worked exclusively with the Microsoft Network over a dial-up connection using the

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

version of

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

. The Clipper appeared to be designed more for commercial environments and used a compact operating system based on

BeOS BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in 1990. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform that could be used by a substantial population of desktop users a ...

called BeIA. The built-in "Wagner" web browser application was a customized version of the

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

browser. The Clipper also included a standard

10BASE-T 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

Ethernet port, and shipped with the ability for the end-user to access the command line in order to tailor the device to use a company logo on the start-up screen. It also included a

Minitel The Minitel was a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, and was the world's most successful online service prior to the World Wide Web. It was invented in Cesson-Sévigné, near Rennes in Brittany, France. The service was ...

client for use where Minitel was available (mainly Canada and France).

References

External links

* Drivers and Software
Hewlet Packard website with official Compaq iPAQ drivers
{{Compaq Desktop computers