Help choosing a Pocket PC

F

Fixion

Guest
I have tried many palm handhelds so far (and have owned 3). I love the screens on the 320x320 ones and the colors on my last palm (Sony PEG-T665C) are great. But I have a few problems with them:
-Lack of speed
-Lack of expansion ports
-The Palm OS, even though its good, its outdated (I don't really like it)

So I decided to get a pocket pc of some type. My brother has an Axim, and I like that, but I also want to look at other ones. What ever I get, I want it to fast, and have both an SD (memory) and a CF (wifi) card slots, and support many games. I'm thinking of getting an Axim, an Ipaq, or a Zaurus (I like linux and the keyboard). If anyone has any of these, could you tell me a bit about them, what they can and wish they could do. I want an all arround good one. Size doesn't really matter.

If I get one, I will want to play movies on it (DivX, WMV, etc), mp3s, and run emulators/games. But I don't want to get one that can't play movies without chugging, or run games at full speed.

Any advice on what I should get?
 
I'm in love with the iPaq 2215. Both CF and SD slots, and bluetooth.

If you didn't need dual expansion, my buddy just bought an Axim X3i and it's awesome. But again, it only has an SD slot. I would say the 2215 is the way to go.
 
wireless is built in to the axim x3i so u wont need the CF slot...there is rumors of an axim with bluetooth coming out soon also ;)
 
They were just approved for both wifi and bluetooth. So the next gen of X3's should have both in them.

Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure they were going to do that with the current X3i's. My buddies got one and it has the bluetooth logo on top of it. I did some research only to find out that Dell was going to do bluetooth, decided to drop it, and didn't bother to remove the logo.
 
I've owned them all. I was a Zaurus developer, and had one of the first developer models. I stopped using it and sold it when they moved away from using XML to store application data.

The iPaqs are nice, but after several years with various models (the 3650 and 3850, e.g.,), I realized that the entire "sleeve" expansion concept wasn't for me. Either you leave the sleeve on all the time, greatly increasing the bulk of the unit, or you don't, forcing you to carry various sleeves around.

The Familiar Linux distribution (for which I also developed and released a few tools several years ago) runs on the iPaqs. It can run the same interface (based on QT/e) as the Zaurus.

My current PDA? A Clie NX70V. The camera's wonderful, the high-resolution screen rocks, and PalmOS meets my needs much better.

In my opinion, you only need a PocketPC if you have a need to sync Outlook with your PDA. If not, PalmOS seems to be the more mature choice. Unless, of course, you're interested in games. Since I also have a GameBoy Advance XP (for which I'm toying with development), I don't need a PDA that focuses on games.

As for wireless, I can live without Bluetooth (though both my current notebooks have built-in Bluetooth - a 12" Powerbook and a Sager 5680), and for 802.11b, I can use a CF card. I've always tried to have both on my PDAs, and invariably I find I rarely, if ever, use them. I have a Danger HipTop, which provides me with a real web browser, a real AIM client, a telnet/SSH client, and POP/IMAP client, all always-on and without needing an 802.11 access point. So I don't miss any of that functionality on my PDA.
 
I am personally a huge fan of the HP 4150. It is about the smallest unit you can get (very close to the HP 1910/1940), plus it has a wonderful screen. It has: WiFi, Bluetooth, SDIO, 400MHz PXA255 Xscale. The 2215 is also a rockin' little PDA, the screen is almost as nice, it has dual expansion slots (but only bluetooth onboard) and is still smaller than most devices. Those are my picks of PDAs. If you need the Video/Music funcitonality as well, I would probably get the 2215 as 1GB CF cards are cheaper than 512MB SD cards if you need the storage. I am not the one to ask about Palm OS models, they just aren't for me as I do most everything in Outlook.
 
Axim x3i buit in wifi :) got one today .. very very kewl love it nothing like *** driving with a pda :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top