Oct 28, 2003 07:35 PM
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(Updated Oct 28, 2003 07:39 PM)
Pocket PC is gaining upper ground over Palm handhelds due to high speed processor, microsoft's push, replaceable battery and lots of other significant reasons. However, the discusssion is not about pocket pc vs palm products and neither I won either of one. I got the opportunity to play with dell Axim 5 as it came from one of my relatives who came from US for a month long vacation.
It was a brand new product and my relative has no time or energy to fool with it. Good for me, she gave to me for reading the manual, play with it and when time comes to show her how to use it. Here how Axim5 looked in my eyes and for my finger tips:
- Out of box, it is a beauty. You need to install the battery (both main and backup) and then charge it around several hours. The adapter is fine for India as it covers the world-wide specification (120-250V with 50-60Hz cycle).Once it is charged (I took it out after 1 hour: too hard to leave it alone), you need to tap around the screen as suggested and you could work it out with brightness etc.
2.The resolution of the screen is excellent and with multitude of color display, you can look at screen hours with out getting fatigue.however, if you take it under bright light, the screen looks like monochrome but very useable. The stylus is a silver colored stick with unusual shape but quite egronomic to input and manipulate the menus.
3.Regarding horse power, it has a 300 mhz x-sclae cpu builtwith 32 mb of flash-rom and another 32 mb of memory. Intel x-scale processor has advantage of running the programs as the requirement dictates and save you some battery power. You can set the cpu in three mode:normal, power saving, and auto where speed changes according to system status. I leave it always on normal to test the maximum speed of the pda.
4.For storage, it is nicely equipped with the both compact flash type1/typeII cards (on its top) and secured digital card (on left side).The flash rom is also another area which give out around 5mb of storage and referred under built-in storage. Please dont remove or insert the card when the PDA is on. Switch off the pda and then enter the card and switch on. Also do the same while taking the card out. When not using the cards (plenty of memory built to cover your first few months of adventures), place the cover or dummy card (provided to keep the dust away).
5.The pda itself fits very nicely over your palm and you need both hands to enter the data unless you keeping the pda over a desk top. If you reading some thing, possible to use one hand only and can scroll very effectively using the scroll knob on the left side. Both sides of pda is equipped with anti-slip material to have better grip.
6.For cleaning the LCD screen which gets spoty in my home, it is recommended to use a microfiber cloth slightly wet with water.I also put a light clear polyethylene material to protect from dust and accidental tea drops.Dell provides a vinyl cover for the pda which is handy and you can also hang it from your belt like a mobile phone. However due to its size, it is better to keep inside your shirt pocket with out the cover during the working period.
- For synchronization and backing up on desktop, dell provides you outlook 2002 and actviesync package on a cd.It is quite easy to install both of them on your desktop and the realtionship between the pda and desktop can be made on two levels. You can choose to synchronize with your email, files, calender however I choose only guest relationship to transfer files between pda and desktop and install some games and programs on the pda.
8.For better memory utilization and faster program running, I found to soft reset the PDA at least one time a day. All you need to poke the stylus on left side under the record button as marked soft reset. It releases the memory and restart the pda. Nothing is lost and what ever saved on your pda stay saved.
It has built microphone, so you can record something and listen to it with out a ear phone. However I found using ear phone, the voice seems much clear. It has built pocket window media player so you could listen mp3 very clearly with or without using the ear phone.The same goes for watching pictures from digital camera and if any small movie you made using your camera. However it does not support mpeg format but you can download pocket-tv which works fine.
The best part is the microsoft reader which is already installed in the box. After activation, you can download free so many classic books to read at your pleasure. It has also pocket microsoft word and excel which are equally easy to work with less formating. The data entry goes either with poking the virtual keyboard (easy and quick) or writing recognization, and transcriber. You can write free hand on the screen and then stop, the software will try to recognize it. If you go slow and write clearly on free hand, there will be no trouble.
The battery is long lasting and replaceable. It takes less than 1 hour to fully recharge it. Once recharge, you can use it almost one day.If you sitting down to read some thing or workign in home/office in one place, you can put the adapter to it and with long cable, you will have no problem using it while it getting charged.
12.In summary, it is a beautiful and practical gadget and it is up to you how much you can take advantage of it. It will definitely make your life easier and more productive. Too bad, I cant afford it for my use ($199) and I have to give it back to my relative. On the brighter side, my next project is to evaluate a sony digital camera about which I will write soon.
