Palm or Ipaq

[nomdeplume]

I've lost my Palm V and need to replace it.

I liked the Palm, but I've seen very good reviews of the I-paq and I'm tempted.
Please could you help me decide by explaining the Pros and Cons.

Use mainly as a digital address book and diary. I've not tried wordprocessing on the Palm, but might with an Ipaq which seems more compatible with a PC.

Thank you.

[moku]

I was in a similar situation a few weeks ago.
For the price I went for the SONY CLie SJ30.
Can do email, word doc's etc..and an excellent Hi Res colour display, good for pictures!
Palm 4 OS. You can transfer dos'c via a memory stick
or hot sync which I have done once. 16MB DRAM

Was a very good replacement for my old palm and feels more sturdy than the I-paq.

I went to PC World to compare and play around with each before
I forked out the cash. I paid £199 at PC world.
Only thing I did not like is that it does not have a Hot Sync cradle
like my old palm. But it really is just as easy, instead of placing it in the Hot Sync cradle you just plug it in with a single
adapter and it does the same thing. I was going to pay extra and order the cradle from the Sony website, but there really is no need.

I know it was not comparing the Palm to the I-paq, but thought it might give you a different (maybe cheaper)option if you wanted

[What_does_this_button_do?]

Nokia Communicator for me!

[CAT1]

The ipaq is better than any others on the market.

[Chaffers]

You can now get Clie T425's for £77.50 plus Vat :) Cheaper than the plastic, cradle-less, sound-less SJ10's and M105's which are coming down in price.

No colour, but I wasn't looking for colour in a handheld anyway, I'd rather have the long (internal) battery life which no reasonably priced colour handheld offers. 128Meg memory sticks are only 45 quid too, thats ahell of a lot of e-books, games and useless trivia information......

[ORAC]

If you're used to and like the Palm OS, stay with Palm.

The Ipaq uses Microsoft OS. It's got Word, Excel, Internet Explorer etc and synchs seamlessly with Outlook. I have a HP Jornada using the same software and love it.

Horses for courses, up to you.

[Evo]

IMHO....

For simple applications (address book, diary) then I'd go for the Palm, mainly due to the battery life (my fr**gin iPAQ died after a week unused in my office desk over Christmas). If you need to do more than the basics and can put up with poor battery life the iPAQ is much better - mine is almost as powerful as the PC I had five years ago. I use it for all sorts of things, but I'm paid to. :)

If you can splash out a bit of money then an iPAQ with wireless ethernet (or bluetooth) is almost great. In an ideal world add in the cost and battery life of a Palm and it would near perfect, but we're not quite there yet. Battery life sucks even more, but it is wonderfully integrated with your desktop machine.

edit: pocketWord is sodding useless for anything other than very short notes. You cannot 'word-process' on it. pocketExcel is just sodding useless. IMHO ;)

[Bre901]

There is a lot of nice freeware available on the web for the Pocket PC (here is a site in french (sorry) http://ppcf.mklabs.com/index.php?setlang=French, with some parts in english http://ppcf.mklabs.com/index.php?setlang=English )
My favourites :
Scientific calculator : calc98 (http://www.calculator.org/download.html) (also available on PC's)
edit : PocketNotepad (http://tillanosoft.com/ce/pnotepad.html)
WW subway guide (http://nanika.net/Metro) (also available on the Palm)

[UK-Kiwi]

Before getting caught up in comparisons, what are your needs...

Address book, diary, and contacts?

Then go for the more basic option (just as long as it links to a PC, otherwise you've no backup like with those free "digital oganisers")

My situation...
I use an iPAQ provided by work, as such it's probably the best option, sync from microsoft to microsoft products has to be the best it can be.
But if it was my own personal buy, and as my personal needs sound similar, I'm guessing that I'd go for a basic palm, what makes the difference? it meets my needs (what no computer salesman likes to hear), at a cheaper cost,at a smaller size and much better battery life.

Cheers

[ooizcalling]

Has anyone seen this one;
http://www.garmin.com/products/iQue3600/
It has an inbuilt GPS receiver as well as regular PDA functions.
I'm a 'newbie' in this area and I'd also appreciate a little feedback. My requirements would be Address book, Diary, Contacts, and some data (Alternates, Approaches available, minima's, Handling agent, perhaps log book etc)

[Capt. Horatio Slappy !!]

Hi,

After much searching, for the missus, and the reading of an entire plethora of data on the subject, I headed out and began testing units from the Ipaq to the Dell Axim, incidentally , the Dell Axim, in addition to being better value for money actually received better reviews than the same class Ipaq, in expandability , processing and so forth.
From a newbie's perspective however actual testing of these units was required and was actually the most telling, the CRS ( character recognition Software ) on the Ipaq, was the worst, in fact of the typical shop display units that get hammered on daily, the Ipaq suffered the most, particularly with its screen, of course, even had the screen been functioning normally ( I tried 3 different display versions ) the really bad OCS rendered the device useless. The Dell faired a little better although I noticed that it required screen recalibration ( centering ) on all the diplay models I tried for it to function normally.
I ended up buying the Dell Axim 400 hz processor 32 meg rom 64 meg ram with flash expansion and room for either LAN, modem or wireless card input.
Came cheaper than the Ipaq, included a synching cradle for PC which also charges the unit and a spare battery at the same time, incidentally battery life on the Axim is awsome, played Mp3's for over 6 hours. The wife loves it and it even deciphers my chickenscratch.

Go Dell AXIM !!!! I paid $ 300.00 $ 250 with the mail in rebate.

" To infinity !! And Beyond !! "

[BayAreaLondoner]

Got to agree with Capt Horatio...
If a PPC is what you're going for, the Axim is a great device. Reports of it being "chunky" aren't false, but it is no chunkier than an iPAQ. I should know - I had an iPAQ until it got run over in Denver :(
I also have a wireless CF card for the Axim, which works well and store music on an SD RAM card that slots in the side.
Jubbly.

[Mister Slot]

I'm using the Pocket Loox from Fujitsu-Seimens. It runs Windows Pocket PC 2002.

I know that battery life sucks on all PPC devices compared to Palm, but the built-in functionality of the Loox is second-to-none. Not only does it have SD/Smartmedia and Compact Flash Type II slots - no bulky jackets/sleeves to add on. Furthermore, the integrated Bluetooth is great for syncing with my laptop and T68i, dead easy to send/receive emails and browse the web.