Pharmaceutical Physician, Midlands-based. Married with a daughter, 2 psychologically-disturbed dogs ...
Pharmaceutical Physician, Midlands-based. Married with a daughter, 2 psychologically-disturbed dogs and 2 relatively normal cats. PS3/XBox 360 addict, "Musician" (of sorts)...
Member since:22.10.2001
Reviews:8
Members who trust:1
OK, I admit it. I'm a technophile. I'm one of those people who believe something that has 20 extra buttons and 100 extra functions must be inherently better than something that doesn't.
And so the time came to upgrade my basic, and, quite frankly, boring, Palm personal organiser (can't even recall which model it was - but it was black-and-white, and had hardly any memory with no expansion sockets...)
And, as many technophiles do, I researched... and researched... and researched. In fact, I read around the subject so much, I almost forgot what it was I wanted one for in the first place.
So what did I want?
Affordable. Much as I love the top of the range Compaq Ipaq, I don't feel I can justify £500 to my wife.
Function. I was sick of just having a portable address book/diary. I wanted easy connection to my pc, I wanted games, I wanted full colour screen, I wanted mp3 playback, and video, and photo storage. I wanted easy storage upgrades.
Looks.
Less important, but, hey, it has to look good too, right?!!
And so after looking through websites and magazines endlessly, I settled on the Dell Axim.
Why?
If you compare raw power/memory, like for like, you'll see that the Dell Axim X5 Advanced is on a par with the top of the range Pocket pcs, such as the Ipaq. but it's less than half the price!! In fact, it's the same price as most machines with 1/3 or less of the memory/power capacity.
That was the main draw. It also has support for Compact Flash/mmc and SD memory, so I could swap cards from my digital camera (SD), and also buy a cheaper CF card for permanent use in the Axim. Which reminds me - one slight low point of being a technophile is that you tend to "experiment" with your new toy a lot. Buy a large capacity storage card - you'll need it. My 256mb card is already full...
In terms of connection to my pc (running XP, although it works with anything from Win 98 up, I believe), things really couldn't be simpler.
The Dell Axim ships with a docking cradle, which looks lovely (with a nice blue light spelling out "Dell" on the front), but, in all fairness, is a bit fiddly to line up with the pocket PC during docking. Once the Axim is connected, the software takes care of updating all the information, synching with Microsoft Outlook 2002 (which is included with the Axim). THis takes care of the business side of things (Address Book, To Do List, Calendar, E-Mail Inbox). Then you can use the ActiveSync programme to add programs or files, use Microsoft MediaPlayer to download MP3s.... the world's your oyster, really.
The screen is full colour, and generally brightness is very good. The viewing angle is quite narrow, so you can't really have more than one person watching the screen at a time, but looking directly, you find the images are sharp and the colours are clear. In fact, the output is so bright, I've occasionally used it as a makeshift torch in the dark...
Sound quality from the inbuilt speaker is about as bad as you'd expect, but you can certainly recognise tunes etc. (despite slight distortion at higher volumes). Plug in the headphones, however, and you really notice a difference - the quality is fine - not quite CD, but perfectly OK for a portable device.
Video playback depends on the compression and size of the original video, but is generally good. I've had a few clips "stutter", but these tend to be the bigger, higher quality ones, and, really, on a screen this size, they should have been compressed more.
OK, so, there must be something to moan about, surely.
How about the general design of Pocket PC 2003. As everyone knows when you finish with a programme in Windows, you tap the "X" in the top right, and the programme closes. Not in PPC03 it doesn't... It minimizes. And so does every other programme that you open and then "close". Until, without realising it, you've got 8 programmes running, and a top of the range PPC running close to melt-down. There are free add-ons to easily close programmes down, but, to me, it seems a bit of a design fault in the programming.
And sometimes the machine does move very slowly indeed. But then, I suppose we're used to powerful PCs, and this is only 400MHz....
Many people moan about the size of the Axim, saying it's too big to be a handheld. Actually, it's very comparable with the IPaq. Yes, it's chunky, and you'll know it's in your pocket, but I consider that a good thing... I'm less likely to lose it!
As to the day to day use of my machine....
Text input is great. It uses one of 4 methods - text input via an onscreen keyboard, character recognition (like Palm-based machines), block recognition (a bit like that too...) and transcriber, which really cleverly takes your handwriting, and converts it to text - even in full sentences.
The buttons are recessed, and not easily pressed by accident, although easily usable when needed. It goes without saying that all buttons can be reconfigured, as can the start menu, the desktop background, the sounds....
Battery life is goodish. Expect to get about 6 hours continual multimedia use out of the machine before recharging. (More if you're only using the diary etc.) As a general rule, I charge up each night - it also gives me a chance to download the day's news in the morning.
And I haven't even mentioned the fantastic customer support offered by Dell. I purchased my Axim just before the release of Pocket PC 2003. Dell ensured the CD was shipped out (from the US, no less!) on the day of release, and then shipped out a separate update CD.
All in all, if you're after a powerful pocket PC, which could easily be considered "top of the range", but at a fraction of the price, head to Dell.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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, 32 MB RAM - Screen: 3.5 in inch - Display: TFT active matrix - CPU: XScale PXA263 - Infrared, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi - Microsoft Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2003, Microsoft Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2003 Premium
Handheld - 64 MB RAM - Screen: 3.5 in inch - Display: TFT active matrix, Transflective - CPU: XScale PXA270, Intel® XScaleTM PXA270 - Wi-Fi, Infrared, Bluetooth - Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0
Good detailed review. A bit of structure would be nice, as I have to fish around for bits of information I was interested in. The effort is much appreciated!
barney_mcrury 03.12.2003 22:13
these look smart, not sure i could warrant the expense at all though
Kukana 03.12.2003 19:34
That was a great review - although you didn't mention what the actual price was! Sue
very helpful by (92%):
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