Ipaq rz1710 question

[Headkicker]

im interested in getting an ipaq rz1710 soon, but got a couple of questions.

does anyone know if the rz1710 is able to play back video (using betaplayer for exampel) with decent quality? has anyone tried watching divx movies saved on SD cards on the rz1710?

also the cheapests price i can find is $299, anyone know where i can find it for cheaper?

thanks!

[bigheadache]

You should have jumped in 6 weeks ago. CWorld had them for about $170 to celebrate the opening of the Box Hill store. Bummer I guess.

If you can stretch the budget, I would try and get the cheapest Dell Axim (try and wait for a week when its on special) as the 312Mhz Intel processor would have no probs with the video but I'm not so sure how a 200 Mhz Samsung with jack all internal memory will go.

[AlexMJ]

Originally Posted by Headkicker

also the cheapests price i can find is $299, anyone know where i can find it for cheaper?

http://snipurl.com/g5jg

[c a l v]

I've got one of these. Cworld actually had them for $150 a month or so ago, saw it in the GreenGuide. I got mine for $268 from www.dealsdirect.com.au back in April (sold out and no longer available now).

My 2 cents worth? If anyone is interested.

I did plenty of research on PDAs, from the very low end to the smartphones. Weighed in all my options and evaluated the feasibility of each. I had a flexible budget (being a self-bought reward for my hard work at work) but I wasn't keen on spending anything more than $300 for my first PDA.

Over a period of 2 weeks I checked eBay, I really wanted a 1940 but couldn't get one. So I bit the bullet and got the 1710. $348 total including an alum. case and 256MB SD card. Wish I had also bought a screen protector, get one... it's worth the 20bux. Too late for mine.

I can report that I have no real complaints about this PDA. It does exactly what it is intended to do, be a low end organiser. Only thing I wish it didn't do was wipe all memory when the battery runs flat, even the File Store. Happened once and scared the living daylights out of me... luckily I did a backup the night before so I did a restore. I left it connected via USB to the PC without the DC adapter in and left my PC downloading overnight. The PDA being connected via USB stayed on... I've since changed that option.

Just do regular backups and you'll be right. Note, make sure you remove the SD card before restoring it otherwise it keeps telling you it's the wrong PDA... took me a while to figure that out. The 25MB of ram is low, but just install everything to the SD card and you'll be right.

What do I use this PDA for?

- Organiser, appointments, reminders, anniversaries, birthdays, events, meetings.

- Contacts, less these days as the mobile phone is generally faster to load

- Budgetting my expenses via Excel, use to do it on the PC when I got home each night but now I can do it real time

- MS Word, notetaking, restaurant reviews, movie reviews and jotting down stuff like all geeks do

- MP3, my 256MB ain't all that big to store music on but I haven't got time to continously update the songs on it anyways. You can always wack in a 1GB card and have yourself an Ipod Shuffle + PDA. You can turn the screen off and use the 5-way nav pad to control volume and tracks. It lasts for 8hrs playback without the screen (fully tested). This is using windows media player 9.

- Video playback, I've tested encoding DVDs with the shareware programs and they work very well. Even on the 200MHz cpu they run smoothly providing no other programs are running. Someone managed to overclock it to 400MHz with a registry hack and installed a larger capacity battery... will check it out when I can be bothered. When a decent program is developed to encode DivX to PPC en mass I will encode the entire Naruto (Aone) series and chuck it on the pocket pc. Keep me occupied during my 40mins train ride each way to work. The program I tested compresses the typical 170MB episodes to around 25-50MB depending on the quality you want (also tested a DivX movie 700MB to 120MB. Again windows media player 9. Anime is very crisp on the 3.5" screen and headphones make it sound pretty damn good.

- Games. I've got Monopoly, Scrabble, Bejeweled, Texas Hold'em, BoxWorld, Chess and HK Mah Jong. They all run perfectly. I've heard more advance games have problems on this model. Depends if you're a real gamer... I'm happy with the games I have now but I'll look into installing those advance games and see how I go.

- Guitar tuning. Best piece of software I've found to date. I was searching for one for the PC and saw a link to a Pocket PC version... after some more searching I found a freeware version that works like one you would buy for $30 in the shops.

- Maps. Although this PDA doesn't have bluetooth or wireless or a CF slot to insert a BT GPS receiver... it can still display maps without tracking via GPS. OZIExplorer is a great util. Want to put the directory of Chadstone or the train network on your PDA? No problem. Find the image... convert it with the free tool and copy it to your PDA. Very cool. The way it reads the map from the file as opposed to loading it into memory is very efficient. This means I can put a 256MB map on an SD card and just load it with no problems. I've got train, tram, bus, CBD, Ultra Detailed CBD and shopping centre maps. Deciding whether it's worth paying $150 for the entire Melway in PPC format.

- Other main software, Pocket Informant (Organiser that displays better than the standard MS version), GSFinder+ (very good File Explorer with extension rename capability!!!).

I set my PDA to the lowest brightness (one notch before off) and it lasts 8hrs continous use or you can spread it over 3-4 days use.

I don't really see the point of Wireless for internet access when you only have a 320x240 screen (VGA will be a diff story but you pay premium for them anyways). Also I've tried chatting on MSN with a stylus but the hassle and slowness outweighs the novelty value. I've been thinking about getting a ThumbKB for the 1710 for $75... just haven't got the cash for it atm.

To summarise this, I have no qualms with the PDA. This is a baseline organise with no fat (wireless, bluetooth). It keeps me occupied during my boring or waiting periods. I'm on top of my financials and social life. Its a small and light PDA with good battery. You can do plenty with this PDA. Don't let the advice of those with fat pockets and gurus who only go for the best cloud your judgement on what you really need.

The 1710 is probably at the bottom of all PDA in terms of specs but you get what you pay for.

Calv

P.S. If you got any questions about the PDA, post or PM and I'll answer as soon as I can.

[c a l v]

Using setclk, that was built for the 1940. I managed to overclock the 203Mhz processor to 270Mhz.

Everything runs much smoother... although it loses the USB connection to the PC. Just have to play with the settings.

Found some more funky utils last night and some new games like Texas Hold'em v2 (much much better AI...free upgrade if you already bought v1.3). Bejeweled 2 also great with the new play modes.

I'm starting to like this PDA a whole lot more. Next step... install a bigger battery.

[c a l v]

Thought I might as well update my status with the PDA.

I've found a program that can recompress/reencode DivX avi files to suit the Pocket PC. PocketDivxEncoder. It can do batch jobs, which is totally sweet.

I can now encode my 145 episodes of Naruto on my PC from an average of 175mb to 55mb for the PDA. It runs perfect smooth with the TCMP player.

I've got the first season of Battlestar Galactica to encode too. This will make my train trips to and from work that much more enjoyable.

I'll be looking at getting a 1GB SDcard to cater for the episodes.

Resco File Explorer totally rocks with it's ability to rename and edit registry and view properties. Pocket Informant 5 is also great. Now... to find a decent battery hack to increase the capacity so I have more juice to play the video files.

calv