pocket pc/pda question??

[pingu]

hey everyone,

i really really want a pda atm, and im very interested in the toshiba e740. it attracts me because of the 400mhz cpu, built in wifi, has CF and SD slots. has anyone had any experience wiht ont of these before? and how is the sound quality of them, i might want to use it as a mp3 player as well. and i have a budget of $400, which is how much the e740 cost brand new on ebay.

please recommend me others with similar specs, most important is both the SD and CF ports in one unit.


thank you.

[dcunneen]

I think the e740 is OK, I've heard things about their reliability though in comparison to the iPaqs. If built-in wifi is not vital I'd recommend looking at an iPaq 2210 - is slightly faster, has SDIO and CF slots, and built in bluetooth (not wifi). I think it's smaller as well. You can get a wifi CF card for ~$50 these days.

If built-in wifi is vital then I guess it's the best bet, as AFAIK there aren't any PPCs in the same price range that include it.

Wormhole Creations is a pretty decent Aussie forum for PPCs.

edit: iPaq 4150 has wifi but I think it's a bit more expensive.

[pingu]

i considered that unit, but as i understand it only has one CF slot. atm i have a 4gig CF microdrive. this means that i would have to take out the microdrive if i want to acces wifi. that is a real bummer. and i assume SD wifi cards are really costly?

[dcunneen]

SD wifi cards are more costly yes, I think the cheapest you'd find one would be $180 (been a while since I've looked).

[pingu]

another question, will pocket pc 2002 be able to support a 4gig microdrive?!?

[dcunneen]

No idea mate sorry. You can upgrade to PPC 2003 with the e700 series though, so that's probably a good thing to do.

I've heard tales of 4GB microdrives only having 2GB usable after formatting, but I don't know the circumstances.

[V_Max]

Are you sure you can upgrade e740s to PPC2003 dcunneen? I was under the impression that it couldn't be done, and many e740 owners (including myself) weren't awfully impressed about it. If it can in fact be done I'd be very interested to know how

Pingu, the Toshiba e750 also apparently has both CF and SD slots (link) but no onboard WiFi

[dcunneen]

Sorry, I was getting it mixed up with the 750 which you can get an upgrade pack for.

Oh and there's the e755 which has onboard wifi as well

[V_Max]

Ahh OK. Damn, you got me all excited for a minute there

pingu, with those criteria I would probably go for the e740, with the following caveats:
-If possible test one out doing whatever you need to do with the WiFi first.
-I seem to recall mine had a little note in the box saying something along the lines of "If you use WiFi and a Microdrive and all your data vanishes, don't blame us". I'll try to find that bit of paper and tell you exactly what it says if you like (I might be remembering wrongly here)

Sound quality seems fine to me, I use mine as an MP3 player on the bus every day, but it's playing through earbuds (Senn MX400 or MX300 or something) and it's obviously a fairly noisy environment so I couldn't tell you if it's just acceptable or if it's stunning or what - I'd say it'd do the job fine though. Some issues I've come across with mine (which may be related to the unit, to the PPC Media Player, or to my CF card) are:
-If you pause the audio in the middle of a long track (20+ minutes IIRC) you can't unpause it, you have to stop and restart (and you can't skip around inside the track either)
-When changing tracks there's a noticeable stutter and it will miss out the last 1-2sec of the finishing track and the first 1-2 of the next one
-Sometimes (may be related to the layout of data on the CF card or the speed of the card) it will seem unable to access the next track in the playlist in time, and will skip it completely and move onto the next one
-If I copy full albums onto the CF card (via the sync cradle) they will be automatically ordered into a default playlist into reverse order (i.e. 12 11 10 9 etc). Annoying to move files up and down the playlist because you appear to have to taptaptap the up/down arrow on the screen which takes ages.

Gee I made it sound pretty bad didn't I? Hrrrm :\
Still, I'm a bit unimpressed about the WiFi issues and the lack of upgrades, but overall I find it's an OK PDA. For $400 it'd be hard to find anything that would do all that stuff at all, let alone perfectly, I would imagine.

Hope that helps some

[dcunneen]

Originally posted by V_Max
-I seem to recall mine had a little note in the box saying something along the lines of "If you use WiFi and a Microdrive and all your data vanishes, don't blame us". I'll try to find that bit of paper and tell you exactly what it says if you like (I might be remembering wrongly here)

LOL that's a scary bit of paper! I'd be interested in finding out what it says as well

[V_Max]

Ahhh actually I think it must've been the Microdrive issue mentioned here - so theoretically not applicable to 4Gb Microdrives, and fixed in that update anyway. I'll still try to check it out tonight if I remember

[pingu]

i decided on a PDA to buy, Asus A620T. its costing me around $500, because friend can get it wholesale for me. my other choice was a Ipaq 2210, which would have cost me the same proce. but i chose the Asus because it is non to be the best for games and multimedia playback, it has very good battery life and has a very very nice screen. although it does only have ONE compact flash slot, i think it will be alrite. i wont be needing 256mb or more of storage while im browsing the net through a CF wifi card.

also some more questions. i will most likely be using the built in blue tooth to surf the web at home. i have one computer in my bedroom which has bluetooth and one computer in the lounge which DOESNT have bluetooth. as i understand it the bluetooth range through walls and stuff is only around 10metres, and the rooms are more then 10metres apart. if i were to buy a usb bluetooth dongle for the lounge computer, wuold it be possible for the PDA to automatically switch connections from the bedroom computer to the loung room computer automatically?

and will any brand CF wifi card work on the Asus?

thanks again

[KyocEr@~*]

Doubt it'll switch simultaneously... pretty sure it won't work.

If it's further than 10 metres, I'd say you're outta luck.

[dcunneen]

Just get a class 1 BT dongle, they have a range of 100 metres. I use one and it works perfectly anywhere in the house.

[Moogar]

My Palmm515 died a few months ago, and I just got a Toshiba e800 and I love it. I remember reading some average reviews on the e700 series though. Can't remember exactly what the problems were but there were some common gripes among them.

The e800 is simply amazing. It can play mp3, ebooks, movies (with appropriate memory card) and I have installed a kanji dictionary on it as well. It has handwriting recognition and a 640x480 screen. Now the e800 goes for about $1k in Australia, but I got mine from the US for around $650.

If you want something cheaper I recommend the iPaq 2210/2215. They support both sd and cf cards, have a really nice screen, good battery life and are reasonably compact. You can get em for around $350 bucks if you look hard. All the reviews I read for this model were nothing buy positive.