May 03, 2004
iPAQ Time!
The latest toy to join the family is a HP iPAQ PocketPC 5555!
Quite a nice PDA to use, it's much larger than the Palm Tungsten and the Blackberry, and feels more like it's name (ie. a pocket sized computer), rather than a personal digital assistant. The 5555 comes with 802.11b WiFi and Bluetooth, a range of PocketPC apps including the Pocket Word, Excel, and the Jeode J2ME CDC runtime.
The iPAQ's display is good, it's as large as the Tungsten T3 (when extended), however the fonts don't seem as crisp as the Palm's, as does the feel of the display which I found not as sensitive of that of the Palm's. Application support is quite good though, the PocketPC Internet Explorer is far better than Palm's Webpro, and the support for 802.11b wireless LAN makes browsing from the couch quite easy :)
The PocketPC's GUI has a 'windows' feel to it - with a few differences (the 'Start' button is up the top and the menus are on the bottom!). The toolkit is 2D though whereas the Tungsten's has a 3D look to it.
I've yet to do a battery life comparison test yet, but I can already tell that the Blackberry will kill both of them, it seems to be able to go for days. Both the Palm and iPAQ seem to be reasonably equal so far.
It's hard to say which one I like the best. The Blackberry stands out as a separate product from the iPAQ & Palm, acting more as a very cool remote email client rather than a PDA. I like the look & feel of the Palm and it's GUI, but the 802.11b/IE support in the PocketPC. Both have the most basic PDA apps (calendar, email client, tasklist, notepad, word/pdf readers, etc) and can handle SD/SDIO cards with data (mp3, video) or hardware extensions. Perhaps it just comes down to a matter of taste :)