See my reviews under the PALM III, The PALM IIIc, The Aero, and Jornada for comparisons.
I have used my IPAQ now for about six months and I am very impressed. It is fast and easy to use and looks absolutely great, I can do everything that I need to do and more and best of all is the ooooohs and aaaaahhhhs from my very jealous friends ;-))
I have the 3630 but I am looking to upgrade to the 3660 and my man in the know from compaq said there is a new one coming with a massive 340mb capacity and integrated mobile phone.
But let us take the features in order and rate them against the other organisers mentioned above.
Opening the box --------------------- Well my first impression was wow, the equipment looked slick and neat, I had problems turning on the equipment because of the battery baffle located on the underside of the unit. Once we had the unit started the set-up was impressively easy and quick then we were
in business.
Hardware ------------ The unit is visually stunning and if you bear in mind you can get different colour jackets for it, anyone’s taste. I have a nice silver unit that is brilliant. The screen is very clear when the backlight is on or when the viewing environment is perfect. The Backlight seriously damages the battery life, though this is adjustable.
The buttons are all well designed but after six months usage the pain has come off some of them, the button feel is very tactile and it is comforting in a mobile device. The Recording button is the only annoyance as you can be walking around and accidentally fill up your device with background sounds. I found it better to re-assign the button to notes.
Bundled Software ----------------------- Bundled Software includes a number of very good applications: -
Word and Notes - though they seem at first glance to do the same job are very different and the bundled Word is a very good cut-down of the desktopapplication, it is a shame about the lack of spell checker and the feel of the word processor does not really inspire a great amount of confidence to start with. Notes are good but I think superfluous.
Excel - is great, when I had my Palm devices I searched everywhere for a good excel compatible spreadsheet program and it was a major source of anguish that one is not readily available. With the Pocket Excel you can work on basic spreadsheets and it even includes a large amount of functions.
Tasks - are what you would expect from a Microsoft product, though I do not use them generally on my desktop, I have found myself using them on the IPAQ as useful reminders.
Contacts - are by far the best of all the organisers I have seen. They follow a similar format to the desktop Outlook version of the product and so are familiar to outlook users. One nice feature is paging through the contacts. If you press and hold down the down part of the rocker and hold it down it scrolls through the letters of the alphabet making it quicker to find the contact you are looking for. The search facility is not very good and only searches the name and no other details.
Games – Solitaire, we understand and love but nothing else was a surprise to me but there you go.
Other Software ------------------- Here we enter the numinous area of other software, this can only be opinion and everyone is different. The software I installed first was Cubicle Chaos from www.pocketpc.com and it is good fun, easy means easy and hard is impossible but all are good fun. Finding your way around the screen in that game is hard at first but you soon get the hang of it. The Microsoft reader. A fantastic piece of software and a brilliant service, I have almost filled my IPAQ with e-texts everything from Christian Religious works to old masters and contrary to what I thought at first they are very easy to read.
Remote Access ------------------- I come to my favourite bit remote access, now I think the most sexy set up at the moment has to be the IPAQ with a Nokia 6210e via infra red. In fact take a look at 28.8 connection speed through the mobile phone and orange networks and I think you will agree that it is very good. It was quite easy to set up once you have downloaded the file from Nokia (see separate article on Nokia careline) you are away. If you use orange you need to give the cell operator a call and get some modem strings to take advantage of the extra speed. If you wanted to you could get the mobile jacket attachment and put your orange chip into it but I have not seen this working yet. Though a little fiddly setting up the mail and Internet access was quite easy. You can even do Hotmail on the web browser.
Battery ------- I forgot to mention this in the first post, the battery life sucks badly, the unit needs to be recharged very day at high usage especially if you use the backlight.
Handwriting Recognition ------------------------ AND This one. The handwriting recognition on the IPAQ is very good, you do not need to learn to write again and the writing area can be switched for a keyboard with ease. the keyboard itself has many options and you can fine tune the way it works. - Great
Peripherals ----------- Compaq do a good range of peripherals like memory expansion and modems but they are far too expensive so I have not trialed any.
Overall ---------- The IPAQ steaals a march over the opposition with good looks and a very wide range of additonal features which are easy to use and work well in conjunction with the desktop PC. I would say that the IPAQ is for the person who requires easy to use diary/organisation applications and remote access. If you are looking just for the Organiser features without remote access then any of the Palm products would be better and cheaper.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Handheld - 64 MB RAM - Screen: 3.8 in inch - Display: TFT active matrix - CPU: SA-1110 - Infrared, Bluetooth - Microsoft Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2002
Handheld - 128 MB RAM - Screen: 4 in inch - Display: TFT active matrix - CPU: XScale PXA310 - Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi - Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Classic
Handheld - 64 MB RAM - Screen: 3.8 in inch - Display: TFT active matrix - CPU: XScale PXA250 - Infrared, Bluetooth - Microsoft Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2002
Advantages: Quick, easy to use, easy sync of Microsoft programs Disadvantages: No support for non-Microsoft software, crashing, battery life, user manual... what manual
Advantages: Fast, sleek, expandable, runs Windows, lots of third party support Disadvantages: Difficult to get accesories in UK, bit pricey, shame it's not 64MB
Jul 22nd, 2001
very helpful by (94%):
helpful by (6%):
