HP 95LX - 0. First Thoughts; About This Book; About Your Palmtop

0. FIrsT THOUGHTS
About This Book
This book gives you short, clear answers to your questions about the HP 95LX
Palmtop PC. It does not replace the User’s Guide that came with the machine.
Rather, itis a companion book, “a pocket guide.” The User’s Guide documents each
command of the machine—helpful as a reference, but not so much for prioritizing
information. By contrast, this book distills out answers and anticipate your
difficulties, so that, for common topics, you need not search in the User’s Guide.
About Your Palmtop
What It Cannot Do
The HP Palmtop is a real PC—roughly equivalent to an IBM XT with a mono-
chrome display and MS-DOS version 3.22. And just like any such PC, itis limited
by the software available for it. Some programs for a desktop XT-compatible will
not work on the Palmtop—especially if they need a graphic display or extended
memory (see pages 111 and 123).
What It Can Do—If You Really Insist
The Palmtop is not really designed to write books, publish elaborate spreadsheets,
develop software, etc. You can do those things, but you’d be working harder than
necessary; far better to use a desktop PC for such tasks. For example, the Palmtop
has a Memo Editor with some standard word-processing features, but its keyboard
size is not the best for touch-typing a lengthy document. Likewise, the built-in 1-
2-3 program is great for analyzing, but you'll find it more convenient to prepare the
final presentation output of a spreadsheet on a desktop system.
6 0. First THOUGHTS