Compaq iPaq Pocket PC
May 2001By David Dritsas
I'm sure you have heard a lot about the Pocket PC. Its introduction has been hailed by some as the death nell for the Palm computer and the new king-of-the-hill for the PDA world. So naturally, we wanted to see if the ballyhoo was for real. Compaq was kind enough to loan us its iPaq Pocket PC, one of the slickest PDAs I've come across.
I say slick because, out of all the PDAs I have ever seen and held (which is just about all of them), this is one of my favorites in terms of style and feel. It's quite lightweight (about 6 oz.) and, with rounded edges, is very comfortable to hold. The silver metal chassis is attractive, almost futuristic and "retro" at the same time. The version of Compaq's Pocket PC I reviewed had a color TFT liquid crystal display with 240 x 320 resolution, 32 MB of RAM and a 16MB memory for storage. Physical buttons include four programmable "hot-key" buttons that take you to specific applications quickly, and a large center button serves as a four-direction navigation control and a speaker. On the side is a button for doing automatic voice recordings—for when you have those brilliant ideas while you're walking to lunch. Also on the top is an infrared port for beaming information to other Pocket PCs.
The iPaq works out of the box pretty easily. It has a rechargeable battery, so you'll want to charge it up before using it. For that, it comes with a USB hot-sync cradle that also works as the charger base for the device's lithium-ion battery.
Optional backpacks can be purchased that add expansion for CompactFlash cards, PC Cards or wireless sender/receiver modules for Internet connectivity. It may seem annoying to make users buy more accessories, but there are so many different kinds of media—Smart Media, Memory Stick, SD cards, etc.—it's a good idea keep the PDA from being tied to one format.
Bundled with the iPaq is Microsoft OutLook, a personal organizer program with a calendar, contact database and the ability to sync with e-mail and Internet applications. Unfortunately, the process of syncing the Pocket PC PDA was not so seamless. My PC had trouble connecting at first, and there were a few communication errors and freezes before I was able to get it working. I found that several times I had to disconnect and reconnect the USB plug to get it to communicate properly. I suspect it was a software problem.
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