What PDA?

[turkster]

Been thinking of getting a PDA. I need it for taking notes etc on the move. I cant really stretch to a laptop at the moment but I will need the PDA for text input etc. I would probably get a small partable keyboard for it as I may well be putting quite considerable amounts of text into it. I dont know wether anyone has any experience of these or can tell my how well they work?

Anyway the ones I was thinking of were the
Palm Tungsten E at around £149

HP iPAQ H4150 at around £280

HP iPAQ H2210 at around £270

or possibly the
Palm Tungsten T3 at around £300

The extra functionality of the more expensive ones is something I ont really need althought the CF card slot on the HP2210 would be useful as I already have a 512MB CF card. I wouldnt really use bluetooth much I dont think. I am inclined to go for the Palm E as it is considerably cheaper.

Any ideas?

[menthel]

I have the 2210, which is nice, but apparently the 4150 is just a real step up in every way. Don't go for palm as the technology is getting old, and you can do lots of cool stuff with a pocket pc!

[Flibb]

You can get a 2210 for £225, lots of people getting them for in car satnav. Pricerunner and dealtime turn up some good prices, Dixons have them for £229 not shure if thats in store or not.

[turkster]

Thanks
Yeah well the 4150 whould attract me because of the WiFi which I am much more likely to use than Bluetooth. The problem is that both the 4150 and 2210 are way more expensive than the Palm E. And as I will need a keyboard and SD card the price will end up being quite considerable. I know the Palm E is older but is a lso a lot cheaper and it seems to do What I want. What kind of cool things can you do with pocket PC menthel?

[Shorty]

4150 kicks ass.

I have one and could not live without at it with how hectic my life is currently!

The onboard WiFi sold the deal for me

[headbrace]

My dad has a tungsten T3, which is pretty good, but the posh handwriting, Graffitti 2, can be a real pain at times.

How about a Newton? Good HWR, decent keyboard, Wifi, upto 4gb storage, bluetooth and pretty damn good battery life too

[turkster]

Thanks for the info guys.
I'm definitely erring in the direction of the HP 4150 at this stage. But How good is the handwriting recognition Shorty?
Do I really need to get a keyboard because the compatable ones are v expensive

[shamus21]

i have 4150 and i say it has done everything i have asked. The only problem is battery life if you are going to use it a lot get the extended battery. Also the WiFi is a must these days.

[turkster]

Ok guys against your advice I went and got the Palm Tungsten E. Mainly because it does what I want, I could get it easy here, and its darn good value . Also at that price I had no qualms about a getting a 512MB SD card for it so I can use it as an MP3 player. So far I am pretty impressed. I've never had access to a PDA before and they are pretty cool .

The only problem is that it seems a bit unstable when dealing with the SD card and MP3s (sometimes it locks up and then you have to reinstall Real player to get it to play properly again )but I can get over that.

Thanks for your advice anyway. I may have a bit more money at the end of this month so I might selll the Tungsten E to my brother (he likes it too) and get the Hp 4150 .

[shamus21]

Ok guys against your advice I went and got the Palm Tungsten E. Mainly because it does what I want, I could get it easy here, and its darn good value . Also at that price I had no qualms about a getting a 512MB SD card for it so I can use it as an MP3 player. So far I am pretty impressed. I've never had access to a PDA before and they are pretty cool .

The only problem is that it seems a bit unstable when dealing with the SD card and MP3s (sometimes it locks up and then you have to reinstall Real player to get it to play properly again )but I can get over that.

Thanks for your advice anyway. I may have a bit more money at the end of this month so I might selll the Tungsten E to my brother (he likes it too) and get the Hp 4150 .

turkster don`t tell your brother you are going to get ipaq 4150. As for the 512mb sd i have a kingston 512mb in my ipaq 4150 and i have no problems whats so ever if that is of any help.

[Skyrunner]

Turkster.. dumb real player it is awful, invest in pocket tunes (gives mp3, ogg, wma), the T|E is one of the best value PDAs on the market currently, and Palm are catching up on PPC for multimedia (checkout www.mmplayer.com).

[turkster]

Well that slight instability with the SD card degenerated into a complete inability to read it atall. It was overwriting the data with sh*t and generally being a b****x .

Anyway took it back to Argos and they gave me a replacement straight away .

This one works fine

I found Plucker the html viewing/riping tool is very cool. That MMplayer seems good but it is a bit unstable. I found the beta of Aeroplayer better. It runs fast and uses very little system resources and has some cool skins .

[[GSV]Trig]

I was looking at the 4150 and the 5550...
The 4150 being cheaper and less ram but out of the 2 I'd have prolly gone for the 4150 tbh...

[turkster]

Yeah the 4150 seems very nice and good price at the moment. Wifi is nice

Only thing is battery life aint as good as Palms .
Saying that my Tungsten E seems to last for a very short amount of time in comparison to a MD of Mp3 player etc. There is still a lot of work to be done on the power consumption and battery technology in portable electronics

[M3ta7h3ad]

I've got a 2215 here... rocks my socks off to be honest, came on thursday.... and I've been getting about 2 hours kip a night.

Ripped out the 4gb microdrive in my mp3 player, lobbed it in the cf slot of the ipaq and works a dream, only thing it is lacking is wifi, but that'll be soon resolved with a £70 sdio wifi card which apparantly uses less battery when being used than a 4150 with the wifi on, and the 2210 apparantly has a better power consumption... not sure how true that is mind. Just what i've read elsewhere.

Lovely bit of kit, and glad I chose it instead of the 4150 tbh, the cf slot is a godsend.