PDA

[Bloodstein]

Ok, I might actually be in the wrong forum, but I think PDA's logically belong here

Right, so I'm looking for a PDA. Never used one before. I'm looking for a sort of midrange one. I definitely want it to play mp3's and have a battery life that'll last me 'bout 4 hrs at least on normal usage. I've got a few questions:

a) On normal usage (calender, word, excel, mp3s...), what would you recommend as a "tolerable" processor speed (on both palm and pocket pc). By tolerable, I mean just fast enough to keep you satisfied without breaking the bank

b) I've already ruled out IPAQ's and Clie's. They're far too expensive for me. I'm kindda between Palm T3 and Axim X30 at the moment. I like the T3 but it lacks wifi (a feature I don't absolutely need, but would be nice). I'm still not convinced 'bout the Axim for a few reasons. Firstly, my previous experiences with Dell laptops have been that they're great bang-for-buck but I'd prolly pay more for something more solid, in terms of hardware. How is the exterior build of the Axims? Also, not too sure 'bout the Win 2003...could anyone tell me reasons why Win 2003 is superior/inferior to Palm OS? Last reason why I'm suspicious of the Axims is cuz they seemed to be waaaaayyyy cheaper than their competitors in the Pocket PC niche.

c) Is there anything that I should be looking out for when I do buy a PDA? I mean little things that you'd only pick up from using it....stylus? graffiti area? etc...being a first time buyer, it's difficult for me to judge these things...mite end up listening to a sales pitch and falling for it. Hmm...wat do you guys think of weight of PDAs?? Does it really matter to have the lighest around (and pay handsomely for it)?

 

[LadyRaider]

I just bought a Toshiba e400 and a sd wi-fi card. Total price for those two is 265 dollars. I purchased mine on ebay. You will also need a sd card for storing your music files.

I don't know the answers to your battery questions. I just bought this one to replace my ipaq 2210 that I lost a few weeks ago. Right now I'm using a 32 mb sd card and that holds about 10 mp3s.

There's nothing wrong with the axims. I think Dell is just trying to influence the market. I didn't buy a Dell because I have a dell laptop, a dell desktop, and a dell printer!


The toshiba e400 is a little longer than my old 2210 but a lot thinner. I think it's nice to have thin ones and with the e400, you don't pay extra for it.

You can't go wrong with most pdas. I almost went with a sony tj37. It's discontinued and runs around 300 dollars. It has the camera and integrated wifi and can take the sony memory sticks. However, it has the old style palm graffiti area, and I prefer more screen space now that I've been with pocket pc lately.

Rumor has it that the e400 will also be discontinued soon, but I don't think you need to worry about that. New pdas come out fast and furious. The one you buy is always old news in a month or so.

 

[CombatChuk]

I own a T3 and I love it. The 320 x 480 screen rocks. There's a wi-fi card on the way.

 

[Wuzup101]

The dell ones look pretty solid although I have yet to play with one in person. For the money, they seem to have the best performance/feature set on the market.

 

[Bloodstein]

Originally posted by: Wuzup101
The dell ones look pretty solid although I have yet to play with one in person. For the money, they seem to have the best performance/feature set on the market.

From my research, that is wat i gathered....

But I'm still not sure if Win 2003 is more or equally as powerful as Palm OS. I'm imagining it to eat up quite a lot of memory and run tremendously slow. Of course, never seen one in action, so can't really verify that.

 

[LadyRaider]

There's no way palm os is faster than win 2003. Both os are pretty even. I thought about going back to palm os after I lost my ipaq this summer. What made me stick with pocket pc was a couple of things:

1. aesthetics. I like being able to change themes and have animated themes. Palm is getting the ability to do so, but from looking around it didn't seem as easy to do.

2. When I looked at mp3 audio and video support, it seemed a bit more complicated than with the pocket pc. There were programs to convert, rather than the automatic conversion between media player and pocket media player.

3.The big thing was that the cheaper palms didn't have wifi support. You can't even buy a card for them yet. I think the sd wifi card is compatible with the Zire 71 and that's it. Of course the sony tj37 has integrated wifi and it was definitely a temptation...however...

4. It has the hard graffiti area that is there taking up space all the time. I'm used to having the whole screen now in pocket pc.

 

[vegetation]

Look for the Tungsten C. It has built-in wifi and uses the 400MHz xscale. Palm OS IS more efficient and therefore applications feel bloody fast with this processor. The beauty of Palm is using all the high quality application software already out there. If you want to play around with a PDA, especially to play games and watch streaming videos, then get a Pocket PC. If you want to do real work with a PDA, then get a Palm.

 

[CombatChuk]

Originally posted by: LadyRaider
There's no way palm os is faster than win 2003. Both os are pretty even. I thought about going back to palm os after I lost my ipaq this summer. What made me stick with pocket pc was a couple of things:

1. aesthetics. I like being able to change themes and have animated themes. Palm is getting the ability to do so, but from looking around it didn't seem as easy to do.

2. When I looked at mp3 audio and video support, it seemed a bit more complicated than with the pocket pc. There were programs to convert, rather than the automatic conversion between media player and pocket media player.

3.The big thing was that the cheaper palms didn't have wifi support. You can't even buy a card for them yet. I think the sd wifi card is compatible with the Zire 71 and that's it. Of course the sony tj37 has integrated wifi and it was definitely a temptation...however...

4. It has the hard graffiti area that is there taking up space all the time. I'm used to having the whole screen now in pocket pc.

The T3 doesn't have the hard graffiti area, and playing MP3's is just a matter of putting the song files on an SD card and RealPlayer detects them automatically.

 

[eigen]

The Sharp Zaurus. It owns all the others. Get an older version SL-5500 if the new is expensive,It can do everything you have asked for so far and much much more. Even if you decide not to go with it at least look into I think you will be impressed. OH, there is lots of good free software for it.

 

[Bloodstein]

cool...i checked out Tungsten C, don't know how that slipped off my research. Where I live, it's around the same price bracket as the T3, so it's also a possibility.

I've also had a look at Sharp SL-5500....it's linux!! (din know linux was on PDAs). Well, for me that's great news, but I still need to find out how much it costs.....oh and I'm not as fortunate as you guys living in the US, with all your great ebay deals

One other thing I need to find out from you guys....how good is the software development platform on Palms? Wat do you use? I couldn't find anything on google. I would like to play around with writing software for my PDA as well....

At the moment I'm leaning towards the Dell Axims...it's cheaper than the Palms...

 

[Bloodstein]

Oh and another thing. I read that with PocketPC, if they say 64MB Ram, only 32MB is really available to you. Is RAM availability really an issue with PDAs? I mean, do would you really use up 32MB Ram?

 

[LadyRaider]

Only the top of the line palm was interesting to me. I believe that's the Tungsten c? Well anyway.. .it was too expensive for me.

The memory thing is a non-issue. Palms are more efficient with memory so they have less than Pocket PCs.

As for using the system memory for much... well I never did that. As I said I just replaced my ipaq 2215 with a toshiba e400. The e400 has this flash rom disk. I'm saving a few things there. I hope I'm supposed to. Hah. Anyway.. most things I just put on an SD card.

 

[Bloodstein]

Originally posted by: LadyRaider
Only the top of the line palm was interesting to me. I believe that's the Tungsten c? Well anyway.. .it was too expensive for me.

The memory thing is a non-issue. Palms are more efficient with memory so they have less than Pocket PCs.

As for using the system memory for much... well I never did that. As I said I just replaced my ipaq 2215 with a toshiba e400. The e400 has this flash rom disk. I'm saving a few things there. I hope I'm supposed to. Hah. Anyway.. most things I just put on an SD card.

ok cool....i think i'll get an axim and an sd card....that should be good for having extra apps, don't u think?

 

[LadyRaider]

I think that's a good choice.

 

[jmalm]

Yeah, the Axim's have come a long way. It's definitely a solid product.