Well I bought it at Christmas 2006, put it on charge and began loading up all my contacts, calendar entries, wifi settings and games. The next morning, it was dead. And I mean dead, it wouldn't switch on, it wouldn't charge "oh no" I thought, "I've been sold a dud!". After some assistance from HP we discovered that I had a faulty power supply at home and after reconciling that, was able to charge the ipaq. "So why did it go flat?" I hear you think. Well, the problem is a known one and is easily resolveable with a simple download from HP.
When the unit is switched on it works fine, add an SD card and that's where the problems begin. You will find the battery starting to drain, quickly. Even with life still in the battery, if it's switched off it can only be turned back on using the 'soft reset' function. You don't lose anything, all that happens is any running programs are stopped, kind of like the old ctrl-alt-delete restart on older PCs. This is one of the cool features of this model - persistant storage. This is where everything you do is stored in memory that is not affected by having no battery available.
Moving on then, I downloaded a flash upgrade from HP and installed it. Since then the unit has performed as it should have, and what a piece of technology it is.
I have been able to:
- Save ALL of my contacts and calendar entries with the ability to back them up whenever i'm at home (via cable or wifi connection to activesync)
- Write documents
- Do monthly budgets in excel
- Play games
- Surf the net via wifi
- Bluetooth communications with my mobile phone
- Connect to my office PC desktop using citrix client for PDAs
- manage e-mails remotely
and much much more.
My unit is loaded with Windows mobile 5 and office mobile. It's very easy to integrate with my PC and document transfer and amendment on a different platform is painless.
The PDA is very versatile. It offers a good combination of performance, security, connectivity and expandability. It's light-weight but has a large 3.5 inch colour screen. It is powerful and has plenty of storage and the expandability allows the addition of SD and CF memory cards. It has a built in speaker and microphone so it can be used as a digital recorder and also to listen to music and watch videos on windows media player. It also has an earphone socket.
It utilises 802.11 b wireless making web browsing/e-mail management possible from your favourite hotspots. The touch screen and the ability to rotate the screen 90degrees helps with web browsing.
Integrated bluetooth allows connecting a bluetooth keyboard if you type a lot.
It's very solid and gives a good sound feel to it with slight curves making it easy to hold.
It is very easy to use, I didn't look at the documentation at all, one thing that I have picked up on that the PDA didn't tell me about itself was the ability to rotate the screen through 90degrees so you can view everything as if it were on a normal screen.
It's not badly priced and I would definately recommend it to any potential buyers.
Some facts for you:
Integrated wireless
Wi-Fi (802.11b) and Bluetooth wireless technology
Processor
Intel PXA270 processor 520MHz
Operating system
Genuine Windows Mobile 5.0 Software for Pocket PC, Premium Edition
Display
3.5" viewable size, 16-bit color transflective
Built-in camera No
Memory
256 MB total memory (192 MB ROM 64 MB RAM); up to 192 MB user available persistent storage memory
Weight 5.8 oz.
Battery
Removable/rechargeable Lithium-Ion (1440 mAh)
Expansion
Integrated SD and CF slot
Audio Integrated microphone, speaker and one headphone jack
Included accessories USB desktop synchronization cradle, stylus, AC adapter, charger adapter, protective plastic flip cover
Dimensions 3.01 W x 0.65 D x 4.71" H
08.02.2007 14:14
A good throrough Review
08.02.2007 13:06
Nice review Barry