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iPAQ 3800 In Photos
okiwan points to this review of the H3800, the newest rev of the handheld iPAQs, writing "New pics of the ipaq 38xx. hella neat." The photos also give a good size comparison to other handhelds, including ones you may not have heard of before.
The winner of the PDA game will be the one who finds a way to do without:
Check QT/Palmtop and handhelds.org very cool, also check pocketlinux this is really the most beautiful PDA distro I've ever seen!!
If they can only make installation a bit easier...
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
Whenever I see the phrase "hella neat," all I can think is "What? Hello Kitty? Huh?"
That aside, the iPaq is pretty sexy - and a good device, if your tastes run that way. Me, all I want is everything my Palm IIIxe (still the best Palm-made PalmOS device out there) gives me - addresses, calendar, Rogue, and RTF word processing. (rock on, Palm Portable Keyboard!)
The only new device I've seriously considered is the ravishingly sexy HandEra 330. Yee-ow.
Oh no, here come the PocketPC users, eeeee....
Karma: T-rexcellent.
So when the heck is Mavis beacon going to get off her butt and teach me how to type with my thumbs? Seriously, maybe this new thumbing keyboard style that has emerged will open the door to a new keyboard layout. QWERTY is just about as bad for thumbing as it is for typing. The only thing that's easy to type on QWERTY is the word QWERTY. Between the two-way pager, the bluetooth devices, and now this, I think my poor thumbs are going to start longing for "the old days" when all they had to do was occasionally pick up a writing instrument or fork..
I apparently forgot that sig != uptime...
- The SD slot. btw, did you know that SD means Secure Digital -- All the Secure media problems come with it. And, it would not work with linux because the specs are not available
- Better display - 16 bit instead of 12 bit display. This is really not worth it unless all you want this for is watching movies. You wouldnt notice it in day to day use, and even in games.
I feel the 3700 seems a better bet right now, specially with X-scale to be released middle of 2002.
Don't Panic
Just make sure you understand that many of the claims they make are misleading:
In reality, Qt/Embedded uses about as much RAM and ROM as a handheld X11 installation and there is no noticeable difference in performance on modern handhelds. X11 provides both anti-aliased fonts and alpha-blending. X11 also has ClearType-like subpixel addressing, support for multiple toolkits, and network transparency in both directions, features notably absent from Qt/Embedded.
I'm waiting for someone to bring out a PDA and mobile phone combined...but wait - not in the style of the Nokia communicator or many of the hybrids (although the 9210 is a nice bit of kit, which is what I use at the moment). I want the GSM technology to be built into the palm sized device, but I want a pen sized/shaped unit to use as the phone component. Communication between the phone component and the base phone could be done via buetooth. Much the way the ericsson headsets operate now - with headset -> PDA instead of headset -> mobile phone.
Also I would expect such a device to have voice recognition, so calls can be made entirely with the headset, without having to pull up the PDA to specify the call details.
Another thing that of course makes or breaks PDAs is the syncronisation software - there is no excuse for sloppy code here - and I really think that this is one area that Nokia haven't done so well with their communicators. I have about 1500 contacts, but once I start trying to syncronise more than about 900 it becomes unbearably slow. come on - why aren't the contact databases transferred as a file to the PC, syncronised on the PC, and thne the files should be transferred back - the PC is vastly more powerful than the device, so it should be doing the donkey work!
I think that the iPAQ's have fairly good syncronisation software though (AvantGO is quite impressive I understand), and this is a point that anyone else developing a PDA needs to bear in mind. the PC interface matters!Bah - just a few random(ish) thoughts anyway...
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
The new iPAQ has this awesome GSM/GPRS mobile phone sleeve, which makes a fully functional Windows CE/PocketPC 2002 organiser and all that *that* allows, plus full GSM, SMS from the sleeve (with a stumpy little aerial at the top).
So while the 560 series was looking cool for a few weeks, the iPAQ can whoopass as a Nokia Communicator beater now, for around the same price. Also, they are releasing a dual PCMCIA adaptor so you could conceivable have the mother-of-all gadgets with a GPS, GSM and 2GB Microdrive with 5 movies and loads of MP3s.
Check Compaq's site for the details on the GSM/GPRS attachment (yes there is a PCMCIA solution from Nokia, but this new one is really really slick because it's built into the sleeve).
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
I always find the best prices for old hardware come out a month or two after the new hardware comes out. Oh, and has anyone gotten Pocket PC 2/Linux running on one of the black and white machines yet?
Forgot about the Toshiba e570?
Smaller than the iPaq, yet same power and features (64Mb). Built-in CFII + MMC/SD card slots, no need for bulky add-on ugly black plastic crap for ipaq, thank you very much. Can even run 1G IBM microdrive with 'extra' power saving options specifically aim for it.
Get a WinTV VCR, automate an MPEG4 compression to approatie screen res (320*240>), copy to your 1G microdrive and watch your program on the road. Ok, iPaq can do that, but you have to shell out a hundred bucks for the plack plastic expansion first!
64Mb of 64kbit WMA is good enough while you're travelling, a 32/64Mb MMC card gives you plenty musical enjoyment too!
All in the same tiny shell, now beat that for the same/cheaper price than the iPaq
humps
Are you kidding me? Compaq has another winner, at least in the PPC market and the Linux PDA market. Even though it ships with Wince, Compaq's open-spec policy and general goodness towards "the community", as lead to the IPAQ PDAs being the best PDAs to run Linux on.
Sounds like you'd like Handspring's forthcoming Treo, unless you're married to Microsoft.
It's the first PDA-phone I've seen that isn't overly PDA-ish with a phone tacked on (Visorphone) or a phone with a PDA stuffed in (Nokia Communicator, various Qualcomm and Samsung entries).
Kevin Fox
I have to wonder if that that 12-bit color display is palletized or not. Right now 16-bit barley passes for true color with 5+5+6 (with 6 for the green). What would 12-bit have 4+4+4? 4096 colors doesn't seem that great.. then again thats what the amiga had, and it managed to look 'ok'.
-Jon
this is my sig.
"I'm not a big fan of having a bulge in my front jeans pocket, especially when I've got my mobile phone and car keys as well"
Yea! Same here... but for some reason I have been getting a hella lot of dates lately....
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG