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802.11b Cards for Handhelds?
bmetzler asks: "I am in the market for a new Palm device. This time I want to buy a device that is capable of connecting to the wireless network in my home. Apart from wanting a monochrome display, the 802.11b feature is the most important one I am looking at. Xircom makes an add-on module for the M500 series and the m125. This might be a possibility because the m125 is one that I was looking at. However, at over $220 this one is a little pricey. Xircom also seemed to have a model for the Handspring, but I'm unable to locate it for sale any longer. Handera claims support for Symbol's CompactFlash card. The Handera has a nicer, bigger screen, but is also more expensive. I couldn't locate a price for the CF card either. In conclusion, I've got to purchase a Palm, and the wireless capability is the most important feature I need. Is there a good way to do this on a Palm, or should I just go for the Sharp Zaurus?" I'm also looking into replacing my old, aging Palm VII with something a bit more modern with 802.11b support. How do the Xircom models perform on Handspring Visors?
Get an Ipaq, they have support for 802.11 through a PCMCIA card if im not mistaken, then you can strip out the crap os that comes with it, and put Linux on it.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
My school just got donated a bunch of HP Jornadas, and they've been trying them out in some of my classes. They work well with our 80211b network. I have to say, in general the devices pretty much suck, though. I used it all of twice, even with the convenience of checking my email without having to walk to a computer cluster. There's little use in having a wireless card in that small a device for most people. If you know that you need it, though, it's one to check out.
Ceci n'est pas un post
I have a windows CE device and I've looked at cards made by Orinoco/Lucent WaveLAN. They seem to be very well supported and work with most any version of Windows CE. I know you talked about palm, but unless you have a reason to go palm (I can think of several good reasons), you might want to try windows ce. Simply put, palm needs it's own drivers, where as if you get drivers built-in in some windows ce stuff if you get the right cards.
If you're not going for the Zaurus, I'd go for the Handera. Look at it this way, you can get a folding keyboard for $40 (new) and many other Palm III/VII based peripherals work. You said you have a Palm VII right?
If you don't get rid of that Palm VII, you'll want to get THIS in-cradle charging kit for it. It's a must have for the Palm VII series. IMHO.
Lob
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I was a beta-tester for the HandEra 330, so my view of the price is a bit skewed, but it is definitely one *sweet* device. HandEra (the company) had done a lot of specialized stuff for Symbol long before the 330 came out, and they went the extra mile to make sure that the 330 would work with every CF card that Symbol makes.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
It's for sale via the Intel website (backordered about two weeks).
N T1037&pfid=44&pindex=1&msc
http://www.shop-intel.com/shop/product.asp?pid=SI
Hope this helps.
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
Ah, but pad's of paper dont support 802.11b, mainly due to the fact that since the paper pad devices are so low power, they dont have the excess juice to power an addon to provide connectivity, but due to their low cost, and ease of use, they can be a viable alternative to those seeking a portable device, but dont have connectivity in mind.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
in a round hole.
What exactly are you trying to accomplish via 802.11? Web Browsing? Email? Controlling MP3's? Email is about the only thing that using a sled attached to a Palmpilot is going to be useful for. Some people will difer on their definition of "useful". I have found browsing the web on a palm pilot to be pretty abysmal (its not that much better with a PocketPC device, although at least it looks better).
The current generation Palm device doesn't really have a good integration of networking. Supposedly the newer ones (post PalmOS 5) will have integrated TCP/IP, and support for a bunch of different wireless technologies.
You mention the Zaurus. You could pick up one of those, and then get a CF Wireless card (for about 80 bucks or so, I have 2 of the d-link ones and they work great).
That really is no different then getting a PocketPC (your lack of mentioning one in your article suggests you want to stay away from Microsoft), as they fullfill the same function.
I have not had a particularly good experience with handheld devices in general, and especially not handheld networking. My last attempt involved a Casio E-200 with the aforementioned D-link card (which worked great until about 30 days after I bought the PDA, when the backlight blew). It was "neat" but not particularly useful.
I really don't have a problem wandering around with my Ibook with an Airport card built in (or substitute that for any notebook or subnotebook).
It just comes down to what your overall goal is
I tried a PIM for a bit -- it was even free! I stopped using it very quickly though. It offers no advantages over paper, but it does offer far more distractions. Just what you don't need it you're in need of time management tools in the first place :).
Ceci n'est pas un post
On Handspring's website: SpringPort Wireless Ethernet Module. Not cheap; MSRP US$269, but it looks nice.
I use this combination at home, and at work. Being able to ssh and irc while in meetings is fun. Don't even get me started on pr0n browsing. it owns for that.
The only problem I have with the wireless nic is that it's really wide, so I'm probably going to have to file down the edges so I can get at the audio jack/stylus when the card's in the slot.
I have no complaints otherwise.
I've never understood this fascination with the wireless world on a PDA anyway, but here's my two cents:
If you've got an 802.11b wireless network card going, it's going pretty much all the time. And battery life suffers horribly, especially if you're using a high-drain PDA anyway, like a bright color screen. My boss has an iPac with a Xircom wireless LAN PCMCIA card, and it destroys his battery life - it goes from maybe 5-7 days between charges to maybe 5-7 *hours*.
So here's my advice. Either get an adapter that has it's own little battery pack and won't cripple your PDA proper, or get one that's hot-swappable, tiny, and convenient to slip in and out when needed.
That's if you really think you're going to get that much use out of the thing. Myself, I'm happy to just get in the habit of syncing every time I'm at my computer, and letting the information exchange happen then. Honestly, though, I still don't see the attraction.
GMFTatsujin
You can charge the Palm and the sled at the same time, by plugging the Palm cradel charger cord into the sled. Since I got it, I've been hot-synching over the net and don't use the clumsy Palm cradel any more. However, I don't think it's as fast as hot-synching over USB, because of the serial interface.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
You won't be able to read porn on it anyway.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
No matter what PDA you have, 802.11b is a battery drain. Partially from the radio and partially from the likelihood that your PDA will spend more of it's time actively being used than in standby mode.
The Handera 330 does indeed support the Symbol Wireless Networker Type I CF 802.11b card. The Symbol lists for $180, but there are a few online places that have it for around $150 (including my webstore). None of the other CF wireless cards have Palm drivers (with the exception fo the Socket CF Type I which is an OEM of the Symbol)
As for the Xircom 802.11b Visor and m500 series modules, pricey is the right word. Go to pricegrabber and do a search on Xircom Visor and you will find retailers who still have the Visor module.
The nice thing about the Visor module is that it has it's own battery separate from the Visor, but web browsing from your Visor will eat batteries from the extended continuous usage.
As for the m500 module, I've never used it, but it also has it's won battery.
If you go with a Pocket PC based device, you have more wireless options. Either PCMCIA (Ipaq) or CF Type II and Type I. And you'll be able to run more things that will make having wireless access more useful. Like VNC, Windows Terminal Services, stream MP3s, access windows file shares. Pocket PC devices are meant to be laptop replacements, Palm devices aren't.
I've seen several posts on the Linux-Aironet mailing list of people using stuff with Linux on handhelds. http://csl.cse.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/aironet
I don't have one but I've read many accounts of the handera's having problems with build quality. Many have complained about the stylus silo cracking or breaking, and i've seen several complaints about the screen failing to responde and black lines appearing on the display. You should probably go check out the handera forums at http://www.pdabuzz.com and http://www.brighthand.com and asking around there before making any big purchase.
Wrong. A lot of CF 802.11b cards are supported and most if not all of the pcmcia cards the work in the standard linux kernel work in the ipaq also. Linxsys makes a CF 802.11b ( WCF-11 ) that works very good.
A few hours grace before the madness begins again.
According to this review over at Visor Central and one at O'Reilly its a pretty nice card.
But I remember reading another review saying that its speed was nowhere near the 11Mbits advertised. This isn't really surprising considering the speed of the Dragnball processor that runs the Visor. But I'll be it beats the heck out of the VisorPhone's data mode (which is really an analog modem connection to your ISP over the cell network).
Brian
Remember Lexington Green!
We've played witht the idea off and on of putting a wireless network out in our plant for ease of our use (the sysadmins). It would be so cool if I could just whip out my iPaq (or whatever) and use many of my often used admin utilities over the network, such as Windows usermanager (playing with those stupid permissions) or a shell to see what my 'nix server is up to and if that damn 3Ware card has barfed all over itself again or running one of several custom apps that we've developed in house. I could see this being *extremely* useful in this situation, rather then having to either a. find a nearby computer to kick a user off of to login as admin or b. walk all the way back to your office because you need a utility there.
I know there is a vnc client for WinCE.
Anyone know of other useful admin type utilities that would make this venture worthwhile to us?
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
Two words:
Battery life.
Seriously, I prefer the monochrome because they are very readable and the batteries last forever.
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
Hi, I have a Handera and I was pleasantly surprised when I went into a London Drugs (Canada computer retailer) and saw a open box Linksys cf wireless card. I asked the clerk to try it and because I already loaded all the software upgrades in my handera for a demo a while ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had no troubles loading up and connecting at all.
:)
One thing you should keep in mind is if you can use your keyboard after you plug on the 802.11b sled from the Palm Models. It sucks chatting with graffeti.
So I think you should get a Handera because they seem to work with more models then just the symbol card. Although I'd get it because of form factor. I wonder if you put it into a CF Card reader if you could use it in a PCMCIA slot? Also your batteries will die fast because of the power drain from the card so a Handera with all it's superior battery life is ideal. (i.e. 4AAA or Li-ion battery pack extra) Sorry but Pocket PC's just don't have Batter life. Even Palms too. Although the palm 802.11b sled I think has it's own battery pack.
Paul
The Xircom springport for the visor is very, very buggy... the user interface to setup the SSID, DHCP, Ip, Routing, DNS, etc is all over the place. It took a good three hours to set the thing up correctly with linksys wireless router... then it actually crashed the router! no other 802.11 device could connect after getting a connection from the visor.
On another router that didn't crash, the palm OS would hang at random, or disconnect for no real reason.
Save your money if you have a visor, and are thinking about getting the xircom spring port 802.11 adapter.
If you go Zaurus, make sure you get the SMC compact flash card, it's the only one I've found that has an antenna that is only as wide as the CF slot. Why is this important? All the other cards I looked at block either the headphone jack, the stylus slot, or both.
-mudge
Remove the non-food to email.
I would caution you to stay away from it if you aren't certain beyond a reasonable doubt that it'll work with your equipment (e.g., borrow one and test it with your access points).
:>
Here's the deal with the WiFi Springboard module: It contains what is essentially a Cisco wireless card. The card is a fairly nice one (from what I've read), but it communicates to the Prism as if it were a PPP serial device. In other words, it emulates a modem under PalmOS. That means that you're limited to the highest speed the device can do -- and trust me, that's relatively slow.
It's not all bad... Two nice features of the unit:
1) It has a built-in Lithium Ion battery that powers the module itself when the wireless is active (in other words, it doesn't drain the Prism's internal battery).
2) It has a bit of built in flash memory that you can use to load utility programs on -- I have the Blazer browser loaded into its memory so it's immediately available to be launched when I pop the unit it the slot.
Beyond that, be aware that I've had problems getting the unit to work with most Linksys access points with WEP enabled. Trust me, folks, I know I got the settings right because I have other cards configured the same way that work fine. I've also had some oddities with D-Link access points.
I've even tried to use an ad-hoc mode with the unit and a Linux-based wireless router. I can get a wireless link up (WEP included) and get a DHCP address, but after a while, the card starts ARPing for the router and _ignoring_ the replies that it gets. That pretty much wraps up your browsing, trust me -- when you can't see the router on your segment.
Your choice of web browsers is pretty paltry, too. There's Handspring's Blazer, but it forces you to browse through the Blazer proxies that compress everything for you (and log everywhere you go, most likely). Then there's EudoraWeb, which doesn't support images. And a few more that are mainly forgettable, including a "screen scraping" browser client.
On the other hand, when I was using the unit with VNC via the Cisco wireless APs in the office, the thing worked like a champ (albeit a slow one). And when I used it with Lucent APs, it worked very well, too.
The combination of other problems and the fact that it seems that Intel (the owner of the product line now) doesn't intend to release any updates to the unit have made me move to a Sharp Zaurus and a Dlink CF 802.11b card.
I have a Xircom 802.11b module for my Handspring.
General impressions:
Throughput sucks. You're stuck at serial speed because that's the interface to the module. That's great when you've got nothing else but it's worse than a 14.4 dialup.
Connectivity is spotty. Generally I've had no problems with getting connected at home or work, but last week I was attending Networld+Interop and the damn thing locked up my Handspring.
Tight. I had to reset. After the second time this happened (yeah, shoot me for being a glutton for punishment), I lost all my data. Yes, it was backed up, but that's not the point.
Now, in the past I've had no issues. Blazer (the browser that comes with the Xircom module ) is sweet and if you've got a Visor the color is great and the quality is decent. I liked it, until last week.
But after last week I'll not likely be using the module again. I just can't afford to lose everything on the road like that.
As always, YMMV.
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
dang...
you beat me to my obligate post about the newton, in which i traditionally point out the continuing viability of 5-year old apple technology compared to whatever the latest and greatest handheld happens to be.
i'm considering getting a wavelan card and one of the PCMCIA->compact flash adapters (once all the drivers are out of beta and i can use encryption on my home network), so i can have some more storage space in my 2100. 2 real PC card slots really comes in handy sometimes...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I've got my Handspring Visor Prism setup on the home network with a DLink Access Point and a LinkSys router. The access to the internet is via DSL.
It works and works great - particularly for email, NNTP and wireless hotsync.
The transfer speed is nowhere near 10 mbps, but I think that is due to the DragonBall 33Mhz processor. The reason I think this is because last week I installed AfterBurner 3.1, which overclocks the CPU and I saw a very noticable improvement in the speed of browsing and of downloading messages from the news server.
Comparing bluetooth to 802.11b is like comparing USB to 100bt ethernet. They are not intended to fill the same niche at all. When was the last time that you saw an 802.11b headset, keyboard, or mouse? Now when was the last time you saw a bluetooth gateway for your LAN? Bluetooth is intended to replace cables between small, low-power devices (PDA > cell phone, MP3 player > headphones, etc.)
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The Zaurus SL-5500 supports the D-Link DCF-650W out of the box. Just plug in the CompactFlash 802.11 card, and configure the SSID and WEP settings in the standard config app, and you're off and running.
The included Opera browser does a good job of scaling pages to the small PDA display.
And, since it's Linux, there is no end to the cool apps you can run on it. Check out Kismet. It's an 802.11 sniffer program, great for "War Driving". Between my office and home, I picked up 80 different 802.11 networks on one trip. I am in Silicon Valley, so your results may vary. But, it's great for finding public access points too (whether they are intentionally or accidentally public).
I've browsed the web on the Palm, iPAQ and Zaurus. They ALL suck for the all in one web browsing thing you're looking for. If you want to really do web browsing, wait a bit and get one of those oQo devices that are coming out later this summer. (Hopefully someone will gut the OS on the thing and get it to run Linux). Having said they all suck, they suck in varying degrees. Mostly it's the power consumption. The developer Zaurus absolutely sucks down the batteries big time. So does the iPAQ running WinCE. Believe it or not, the iPAQ running savaJeOS can browse the web for a Loooooong time. The other thing is that things just won't render the way they will with a "real" web browser. You can get the info from most pages, but some pages won't come up at all. (And clearly, something like Flash will just not work). having said all that...if all you're looking for is something to have to use during those boring meetings, just about anything will do. Just be aware of the limits all these devices currently have. They're not quite there yet. Oh yeah, one more thing. The Blackberry. Hands down, the best device out there. Problem with that is, no 802.11. And it's quite expensive (more than $50 per month just for the e-mail version, higher with the cell-phone e-mail combo). If they had one with 802.11, it'd be time to sell the Palm stock, they'd blow Palm away. It's that good. They're probably making money with the cell-phone networking stuff they have now, but it would pale in comparision to what they could do if they had an 802.11 device.
Going wireless is a godsend for me. My Kyocera Smartphone allows me to sign onto the mainframe anywhere as a terminal, and I have been reasonably satisfied with the text-only Eudora browser and Blazer or Vagabond for pictures (although no darn online comics, proxy rendder servers screw them up).
Yeah the juice gets sucked out, but 5-7 hours on a phone beats hell out of 4-6 from a laptop, plus I don't have to leave the game to fix an easy problem at work.
Since I've been toting this around at work, most of my coworkers have been motivated to check into webphones. I don't know about the particular combination asked about in this article, but the demand for webphones will go through the roof.
Hey, maybe the webphone will finally be the NC (Network Computer) Ellison, IBM and the rest have been lusting for.
What Palm desperately needs is a fully-rendering browser without the proxy and tieins to other Palm apps. If AOL was smart they would be all over this, but hey this leaves an arena open for a smart developer that ties in the browser with a PDA suite.
Consider that 90% of the bulletpoint features are not used by the average user, there is a lot of room for small apps that make the webphone the laptop.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Spend the money and get the Zaurus. I just purchaced the D-Link 802.11b CF card for $99 at my local Fry's Electronics and it worked flawlessly with my Linksys WAP. The Zaurus is just a good piece of technology all around.
"Keep on Tuxin"
What has stopped me from buying, however, is the claim that this card does not work under current Linux drivers because it uses a currently undocumented MAC chip, although the rest of the hardware is supposed to be standard Intersil Prism.
Does anyone know if this problem is still the case? If the hardware were documented I would probably feel comfortable enough buying the chip and adapting one of the Prism drivers to it. (One the other hand, I would use a different card or do without rather than run a proprietary driver.)
By the way, the SMC card the MicroCenter had for $140 looks identical to the Socket card from the outside. I would be intersted in knowing if they are the same, and if anyone has used the SMC card under Linux.
Two words:
Battery life.
Also two more words: bright sunlight. (Vampires and such don't have to worry about this but I have enough outdoor uses for my PDA that I am still swayed by it.)
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
More recently, Fry's has had the Casiopeia E-125 on clearance for $200-225. The E-125 has a CompactFlash slot, a 150MHz MIPS R4000, 320x240 16-bit color display, USB and serial base unit. There is some magic file name my Casiopeia E-105 runs if it is booted with a CompactFlash card in its slot, which is handy for booting Linux, although I have only booted a precompiled binary that I downloaded.
On the other hand, I should warn you that it looks like Linux-MIPS development has been pretty quiet for the past two years, and MIPS-based PDA's seem to be disappearing. Also, I think that you have to go through the base unit to plug it in a USB device, which impedes my interest in possibly using an E-125 as a USB analyzer.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I'd recommend springing for the Handera 330. I did, and I haven't regretted it a bit. You say: Handera has a nicer, bigger screen, but is also more expensive. I couldn't locate a price for the CF card either.
That's an understatement -- the Handera screen is very sharp and clear. The backlight is bright and clear in the dark, and because the grafitti area is part of the display (instead of being silk-screened on like all the other Palm devices) you can actually see what you're writing in the dark. In bright light, it's fantastic and quick to respond -- no screen artifacts. Folks used to rave about the b/w screen on the Rex units -- this is nicer.
As for the price of the Symbol 802.11b card, I've seen ~$175us. Note that the Symbol card is significantly smaller and less succeptable to damage than the Linksys -- the dongle on the latter is huge. From outside appearances, the Symbol card looks to be the same as the Socket brand 802.11 card. (Anyone?)
There are a lot of other benefits to the Handera 330 -- the battery life with the LiIon batter is great (important if you're using CF devices that require more power such as a microdrive or 802.11 card), the flexibility of the MMC/SD memory slot is great (and I'm hoping to see a bluetooth SD card soon). The power tap can rechange the battery while you're using the unit yet doesn't interfere with a Palm Portable Keyboard. The folks at Handera did a great job on this one; I'm very happy with it.
Handera 330 ($300) + battery ($50) + Symbol card ($175) + charger ($40, or you can pick up a Nokia ACH4U charger for $2 at a discount place or thrift store) and you're set for around $550us.
I think not...(*poof*)
What exactly are you trying to accomplish via 802.11? Web Browsing? Email? Controlling MP3's?
One word, War-Walking as opposed to War-Driving. Can't think of an easier way to look for open wireless networks than putting a wireless PC-Card in an Ipaq and going for a walk around the city. A little less conspicuous and bulky and a laptop, just keep it in a pocket and set it to make a noise when it finds a new network.
I have a Palm m515 and the Xircom 802.11b sled. It works pretty well. It has its own battery, so it doesn't drain from the handheld itself. The biggest limitation is speed; it connects via RS232 serial and basically acts as a PPP "server" for the Palm.
One neat feature is that no software install is required; you simply attach it to the Palm and it installs its driver automatically. I did download and flash a firmware update for it; it corrected a few bugs and limitations of the software that came with it. (main one I noticed was that you HAD to specify a SSID - with the updated software this isn't necessary)
Overall, it works pretty well. Web clipping is a heck of a lot faster than with a Palm VII, and browsing via things like AvantGo and Blazer isn't all that bad. I also setup network HotSync which is obviously slower than USB HotSync via the cradle but works well. I've used it with a few different access points from Linksys and Cisco, and the range is pretty much the same as I get with my laptop.
I purchased mine from eBay for under $200
Matt
I recently got the Xircom Springport wireless module for my Visor (Manos, the Handspring of Fate). It has worked well in most all of the situations I have tried it in, and is a lot of fun. The built-in battery makes things easier too. The only setup I have run into where it didn't work with the default settings was on a friend's Linksys with a Win2k computer acting as a DHCP server. In that case I had to give it a static IP and other information. However, since that same setup gives that friend troubles with his Macs too, I won't blame the module quite yet.
Overall, it was a great buy. By the way, I got it NEW IN BOX!!1! from Ebay for $100 instead of for the $300 or so it tends to be at other places.
Posted from the wireless couch.
Network hotsync is slow, but adequate. PalmVNC and Top Gun ssh both work, but they're not usable enough to be more than curiosities on that tiny screen. The only browser I've found that works at all is the one that comes with AvantGo's mobile Internet service. I've never managed to get a static IP address to work, but that's a minor problem; the DHCP client works fine. More serious: the MultiMail email client built into the 802.11b module won't talk to a recent UW IMAP server; it doesn't grok the server's CAPABILITY response.
This is a modified orinoco_cs driver with firmware loader. It supports wireless extensions. I use it on i386 and ARM systems every day without any problems.
Netstumbler only workes on cards with the orinoco chipset (lucent wavelans), and they don't make compact flash versions of that chipset.
True, what I use is a Orinico Based Lucent PCMCIA card in the Ipaq's PC Card Sleeve. Ministumbler works quite well in that configuration.
I tried a PIM for a bit [...] It offers no advantages over paper[...]
Aside from backups, you mean.
William
Whatever you do, don't make the mistake of not buyng a Zaurus. This is the highest quality device of any type that I have purchased in the last five years. The Zaurus is built to last, from the rugged, incredibly cool built-in keyboard (thumb-board) that is exposed when you slide down the bottom cover, to the world-class color screen built by Sharp, to the Linux operating system that comes pre-loaded. I am running my own personal Python applications on my Zaurus right now, form the Bash shell command line. (You can download them for free, their new, their GPL'ed, and their crafted especially for the Zaurus, just go to http://www.awaretek.com ) This device is more expandable than the IPAQ, having both a Compact Flash slot and an SD Card slot. You can buy digital cameras taylor made for it, wireless LAN cards, extra memory (although I am having trouble filling up my full 64 MB RAM with programs, the Linux operating system by Lineo is so compact and efficient that the Zaurus gives a lot more room in RAM than the IPAQ). Running scritps from the BASH shell is way-cool. The machine is based on Trolltech's Qtopia desktop, with full Trolltech QT toolkit developer's platform, plus the standard JEODE JVM Java environment. Not only Python has been ported to the machine, but also most of the Python libraires and also PyQt. This baby rocks!!! Developers all around the world are busy coding new applications for the Zaurus. New apps appear every day! Lastly, why in the world would you want to support Microsoft by buying an IPAQ running Windows CE, even if you do plan on loading Linux on it? Do youself a favor, buy a Zaurus! And then download my Python programs for the Zaurus at http://www.awaretek.com rs
If you think $220 is pricey, and the HandEra 330 too expensive at $300 (MSRP; it's widely available for less), then there's no way you're going to be able to afford a $499 Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 plus the extra cost of an 802.11 wireless card. Or any of the Pocket PCs for that matter, which can run from the $400 range up through almost $700.
If you want wireless LAN connectivity on the cheap, the HandEra is the cheapest (and one of the best) solutions out there. In addition to a well-designed device, they have great service and support. And frankly, if you don't like the HandEra, your only other option is to spend lots more money.
--Mythos
The handspring wireless ethernet modem is compliant with the 802.11 standards. It's expensive though.
internet like monkeys'
WooHoo! I can already hook up my Apple Newton MessagePad 120 to any 802.11b network with readily available 5v PCMCIA cards!
:)
10 years old and still ahead of the game!!
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