PDA Advice

[FormerFlake]

I am considering bying a WIFI capable PDA in the very near future. Just looking at basic e-mail access, MP3, wma, picture storage etc and use of word and excel. Any one got any tips or reccomendations?

Thanks in advance.

[iandanescourt]

Have had great success with a hp4700 works for me

[Conan the Librarian]

I use a Dell Axim X-51V wich has been excellent to date. Quite powerful too. Often, Dell do a promotion on this one and cut quite a lump off the asking price. Wouldn't be without mine, that is for sure.

Conan

[FormerFlake]

I use a Dell Axim X-51V wich has been excellent to date.
Thanks, I have had a look and see there are 3 versions. The mid range one is currently got 15% so I am wondering what you get for the extra £100 for the top of the range, in real terms? It does look a good bit of kit though.

[Conan the Librarian]

Faster processor. The V version is a 624Mhz model, the others somewhat slower. The day after I ordered mine, Dell reduced the price from around £315 to £259, which is enough for a pot of tea somewhere pleasant. I have seen them do this price drop a few times since, so it might be worth biding your time a little bit, if this is what you really want.

Conan

[Tinstaafl]

I'm very happy with a Sharp Zaurus 5600 I just bought via eBay for US$200. Really wanted a Zaurus 6000W with both WiFi & Bluetooth (and 480x640 resolution!) built in but they're just about impossible to find (and expensive). Both the 5x00 & 6000 Zauruses (Zauri?) have SD & CF card slots, a qwerty thumb keyboard & use Linux as their operating system. You can adapt/change the OS if you wish.

The 5600 I bought was in as-new condition and was in original packaging with all its bits and pieces plus a CF wifi card.

Built in software includes M$ Office compatible wordprocessing & spreadsheet programs + the usual PIM stuff. I use mine to stay in touch with work via the 'net, flight planning through the web service we use & to do W&B spreadsheets.

Being Linux based means it's suitable for hacking. There's quite a lot of software available plus modified OS setups that you can flash onto it to replace the original.

[IO540]

I have the HP 4700 and like it.

Warning: don't expect this to be reliable. Windoze 2000/XP isn't reliable but a PDA is a couple of orders below that. The whole pocket/pc / windows mobile system is a piece of cr*p. I have been using PDAs for several years and they are OK for very specific applications. As soon as you start to load them up with stuff, they become very unreliable.

Tonight I have to drive about 100 miles somewhere, then more tomorrow, then a lot more on Saturday. I had TomTom 5 installed on the HP 4700. It never ran for more than 30 mins without totally crashing, but now it has just stopped accessing the GPS receiver. Other apps I have on it (Oziexplorer, Memory Map) use the GPS receiver just fine. A reset doesn't help, neither does a restore of a known working config from an SD card.

Luckily I am able to borrow my partner's Mitac 168 with TT3 on it. TT3 is a lot better than TT5 (well it works, for a start).

A PDA is a toy designed for business executives performing a narrow range of tasks, for which it can excel.

[Saab Dastard]

Warning: don't expect this to be reliable. Windoze 2000/XP isn't reliable but a PDA is a couple of orders below that. The whole pocket/pc / windows mobile system is a piece of cr*p. I have been using PDAs for several years and they are OK for very specific applications. As soon as you start to load them up with stuff, they become very unreliable.

Agree 100%!!

[Evening Star]

Tried a number of PDA's over the years. Every time came to the same conclusion as IO540 about the toy for business executives and reverted to one of these (http://www.filofax.co.uk/store/SEURLF/ASP/SFS/DISPLAY./SIZEID.4/RANGEID.15/DSIZEID.4/SFE/organiser.htm). Has absolutely years, has never crashed, never suffered a virus, memory effect refers to the notes contained therein, always instantly available and cheaper then most PDA's.:ok:

[Mr Lexx]

I have a HP iPAQ 6910 provided by my work. Bloody great piece of kit, the TOMTOM works fine (except it will not "remember" my home locations or any favourites), and all other functions seem to work well also. The only downside is the battery life. With just the phone function turned on, the battery will only last about 6-7 hours. If you use the gps without being plugged into a power sourse, the battery life drops to about an hour.

Whether I would have one if I have to pay for it myself is another matter. I think that the £400+ could buy something with a better battery :ok:

[FormerFlake]

I think it would be a lot of hassle to get the Orange SPV M600 working in Portugal, although it does look good.

The Sharp Zaurus looks good too, just cant find it for sale in the UK, in europe people want 600 Euros, to much really and everything will be in French or something.

So far the Dell and the HP IPAQs are looking like favorites, thank for all the advice.

[Conan the Librarian]

On the OS front, my first Axim did crash around a bit and I was miffed. A call to the local Dell tech rep, (Dell tech has been impresive too) somewhere east of Cairo, resulted in me loading new firmware and it hasn't missed a beat since then. The Axim uses Windows Mobile 5 and I am impressed with it. Funny how MicroDoze can get such a small operating system, when you look at the monoliths they insist we use in desktop land. The Axim goes for months without a soft reset, just the odd trickle of power each day from the main PC.

Conan

[Keef]

I'm on my second (now quite old) Ipaq. This one's a 5555. It does all I ask of it, but it's slow when the tasks get complex. It's got the whole of our Churchyard records on it - full details of about 6,000 burials - which is a file several MB large. It takes a couple of minutes to load, but once that's done, it's brilliant.

It's not crashed in a long time (but does do so). IO540 is spot on with his analysis.

I'm not sure there's a lot to choose between the brands - they tend to leapfrog each other as developments proceed. Way back, I had a Psion 3a which I reckoned was a pretty nifty bit of kit. It's quietly decomposing in a drawer somewhere now.

I'm very glad I chose the Ipaq and a separate (small) cellphone. I don't carry the brick (Ipaq) in my pocket when I don't need to. Having looked at "all in one" devices like Blackberries, I prefer my way!

[IO540]

PDAs have many many more drawbacks than has been mentioned here so far.

Stupid memory architecture and stupid power management ensure the battery is flat nearly every time you want to use it - unless it lives in a charger.

The support mechanism is dreadful too; it is entirely up to the hardware vendor to provide support. M$ don't support their O/S directly via updates - same with tablet PCs incidentally which is another can of worms.

[tired-flyboy]

stupid power management ensure the battery is flat nearly every time you want to use it - unless it lives in a charger

I wish i knew that before i bought my Dell.

The problem here is that unless it lives in a charger every additional thing LIKE TOMTOM will be dropped from the memory meaning EVERY time you forget to charge it for more than 2/3 days you will have to load all the software.

This gets really really tiresome. :mad: :ugh: :{

[redsnail]

I use a Palm Tungsten T3. Great device, works well, battery life is good and has only let me down once (but it wasn't really the machine's fault).

Software is designed for it and it just works.

[Farrell]

Am with Redsnail on this one.
I have a T5 that I bought at KORD after my iPaq caused me a tremendous amount of grief.

The guy at the service desk said to me "Always back up your files to a permanent media." WTF? Twice the work!

The Palm has never crashed once since I got it. It looks great, has good memory card options and is a happy little interface to work with.

Oh, the if I ask it to do anything....it does it! None of this stupid spinning circle Windows crap for ten seconds while it thinks about whether it can do it or not.

[FormerFlake]

I wish i knew that before i bought my Dell.

The problem here is that unless it every additional thing LIKE TOMTOM will be dropped from the memory meaning EVERY time you forget to charge it for more than 2/3 days you will have to load all the software.

This gets really really tiresome. :mad: :ugh: :{

Surely you can save software onto an SD card etc and it will stay? My digital camera does not lose all my pictures if the batteries go flat. ?????????????????????:confused:

[Conan the Librarian]

I honestly don't get any troubles with my Axim at all. Battery life seems quite good and I never have to use the extra High Cap battery that I purchased at all. I treat it like a mobile phone and give it a trickle once every few days, but I have not seen this issue of the software crashing on flat batteries either. My own GPS solution, "Co Pilot 6 live" just saves data to either the CF or SD card and it is there as soon at the electrickery allows. I Have run out twice in twelve months, yet it all fires up bootifully. I would have been pretty miffed to find any of the above complaints, but I do agree that this is no laptop. Conversely, the laptop is clumsy to lug around and the PDA isn't, so it is there when you need it.

I also believe Dell are pretty good with updates too, though they have just cleaned me out for £21 for three replacement styli.

Conan

[FormerFlake]

I have been trying to contact Dell about an Axim. I e-mailed them some question, but rather than simply answering my questions they asked for my phone number and said a sales advisor would call. When no sales advisor called I phone them, but they have no sales staff for PDAs working Saturdays.

So far not impressed with their customer service.:ugh:

[IO540]

An essential procedure with a PDA is this:

Install the software you need
Verify it all works
Restart the unit
Run the Backup program and make a backup to an SD/CF card (this will be 10MB-50MB according to how much software you have loaded)

and then when the battery is found to be flat (or when something has stopped working for no apparent reason, which can be quite often) you can just restore the backup.

The PDA market is reportedly declining year on year. Perhaps tablets are taking out some of it; they are getting smaller and WinXP is a whole lot more reliable than Pocket/PC. The downside of tablets is that a hard drive stops working at about FL140 (it crashes). The fancy mobile phones will also be taking out a chunk; a decent phone can do everything which a typical exec is doing with a PDA.

A really nice PDA I saw recently is the IMate JasJar. It still uses Pocket/PC so the above comments will apply, but the build quality appears solid, it has a fold-up keyboard, a 640x480 display, and built-in GPRS. If I was getting a PDA again I would get that one.

[FormerFlake]

Still not impressed with Dell's customer service, but have ordered an Axim.

Top tip is not to buy flash memory from them, £140+ for a 2Gb SD card when they are less than £25 from 7day shop and 50 euoros in my local supermarket!!!

[Conan the Librarian]

Think I saw in the last few days (I stilll have the Times somewhere) that the Axim X51V (624Mhz) is on offer again at £259. Bargain. If they have sold it to you for more, PM me today and I will dig the ad out for you.
Conan

[FormerFlake]

Conan,

Thanks, but I did get it at the Special Offer price which is even lower than your quote (I asume that is £259 with VAT?), before VAT. If people want an Axim51v 624 now is the time to buy.

[Conan the Librarian]

Happy with that one. Good result.

Conan

[mdc]

Having a main flat battery on most modern PDA's be then PalmOS or WM5 powered is not a issue today. As these devices now have backup batteries that maintain.
Also if you intend to use WiFi extensively then choose a device which allows you to swap batteries, as WiFi is very power hungry.
If you're bothered about applications mysterioulsy failing to run, then with the cost of large memory cards (miniSD,SD,CF) plummeting. Just purchase a large card, say 2Gb and either keep the applications installers (CAB files, prc files etc) on this card or as previously suggested use a back up solution to back up the current state to the card. I have found both SpriteBackup for WM5 and BackUpBuddy for PalmOS invaluable.
Michael

[Basil]

I've had problems with the backup battery on two O2 XDA IIi PDAs.
On both occasions when removing the main battery to insert a different SIM card they've lost all RAM data.
Internal battery should provide 20 min power.

The backup facility on the ActiveSync link doesn't work properly - when I queried this with tech support they said "Oh that doesn't work very well."

O2 have just really p1$$ed me off by being obstructive when asked for an unlocking code so that I could use an Australian Vodaphone SIM for a month.
Unlocked it myself in the end.

[Groundbased]

I use a Palm Treo. It works for me because I wanted the main functions of a PDA, i.e calendar, contacts etc plus Bluetooth and MS applications like excel with something that I could realistically use as a phone aswell.

I get all the benefits of a Blackberry without having two devices.

Works for me.

[FormerFlake]

Well, the Axim has a fault so Dell are going to send me new one out to swap. Can't really argue with their response especially as I bought it from Dell UK, and Dell Portugal are replacing it.