Posts: 489
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Joined: Jan 2005
I'm not a collector, just a 41 enthusiast, so I may be talking out of turn. But my guess would be "None of the above, just different." The Halfnut name comes from the fact that the internal product name at HP for the 41 family was Coconut. When the Coconut series was redesigned to use about half the number of chips (fewer components means less manufacturing cost and fewer potential points of failure), they were called Halfnuts. Some users had complained of "bleeding" (dark areas) around the edges of some 41 displays (I've never seen this myself), so a mask was added to cover the edges of the display and hide any minor bleeding. This mask is the easiest way to distinguish a Halfnut from a "Fullnut" 41.
The CX wasn't the only Halfnut made; there were Halfnut versions of the C and CV as well. By this time the C was no longer being sold in stores, but some Halfnut 41C models were sent out as replacements for older units that had been sent in for repair. I suppose that would make a Halfnut C more collectible than a Halfnut CV or CX, since there were never as many of the C versions released to the public.