Ipaq 2200

From: Marc (see_at_signature.url)
Date: 07/02/04 

Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 17:56:13 +0100

iPaq 2200 – My thoughts

At £279 this PDA deemed to good to be true. It has 56mb of usable
internal memory, a compact flash slot and secure digital slot. It also
has Bluetooth, infrared, backlight and a replaceable battery that lasts
about 8 hours, depending on usage and backlight brightness.

Out of the box you get everything you need, except one thing, which I’ll
come to later. If like me you decide to buy from Dixon’s and take
advantage of the “buy now, pay in 9 months” option be aware that SD
cards and CF cards are sold at much lower prices on Amazon.co.uk –
although at £279 you need to spend over £300 to use the “buy now, pay in
9 months” option. If you don’t want to pay later, then the PDA is also
available cheaply online.

The 2200 is a good size, with a brilliant screen. If you have a digital
camera that takes wither SD cards or CF cards, then you will find much
use for this PDA as you can view your photos on a much larger screen
than most cameras, crop photos, adjust brightness and contrast, and even
email your photos – without even stepping near a proper PC. The small
size and lightweight can be a disadvantage. Coming from a Palm m105, I
was used to having a PDA with a built in screen protector. The iPaq has
no such thing, the screen is exposed much of the time like that of a
phone. A soft case included does partially solve this issue, but it is
no way near as convenient as the flip-top my Palm m105 had. It’s
annoying when using the iPaq as an MP3 player when you want to skip
songs on the move. The build quality of the device seems good, however
the 5 way directional button does pop-out on times (it has been made
removable for cleaning purposes) and the rubber side grips seems to peel
off within a month – THIS IS A BIG ISSUE! Many users have reported this
problem, which is why I suggest HP include some superglue in the box, as
that seems to do the trick. Having said that, the battery door seems
very secure, the CF and SD slots are well built, even if it is all too
easy to eject the SD card while pushing the device into your pocket. I
guess having a door would have made the device bigger, so I can’t really
complain there. The 5 other buttons seem solid.

The software included is very good. You get Outlook 2003 for your PC,
and Outlook for your iPaq. This consists of Address book, Inbox, Tasks
and Notes. Pocket Word and Pocket Excel are also included. Pocket Word
really is nothing special, more a glorified notepad application than a
word processor. It has basic RTF formatting but no images sadly; I don’t
see why support for images has been omitted. Maybe because Microsoft
need some sort of reason for people to upgrade to the next version,
other than a few new icons like we seem to get on the desktop
counterparts. Excel however does have what you’d expect, since images
aren’t really needed in a spread*** the fact that again they are not
supported doesn’t matter. Viewing large sheets can be awkward, when the
start bar, toolbar and input panel are being used – luckily there is a
full screen option.
Windows Media Player Mobile edition is also included, and it does a fine
job of playing back MP3 and WMA. Windows Media Videos are also
supported, but there’s no support for rival formats like .mov, which is
a shame since most other mobile devices (cameras, phones etc) seem to
record in the QuickTime format. Still, rivals will be rivals but it
happens to be a shame.

Perhaps the best bit of included software is ‘nevo’. A universal remote
control. Have fun switching off TVs in shops that have them at the front
showing CCTV footage. Apart from that obvious use, you can control your
video, DVD, stereo, projector, lights – in fact anything that supports
infrared control. What Nevo doesn’t know, Nevo can learn from the
existing remote control.

Getting online is easy too. That’s if you have a Bluetooth phone with a
modem, an infrared phone with a modem, or a WiFi CF Card. You can easily
send and receive email, as long as your ISP allows you to use their SMTP
server from other networks (assuming you use a different ISP on your
phone than you do on your PC). For some stupid reason, the Inbox
application can’t have different usernames and passwords set for POP3
and SMTP – they have to be the same. The web browser (Internet Explorer)
is great, and thankfully has an option to switch off images – because
GPRS costs a lot, and I easily spent £5 in one session. MSN is a good
addition, and integrates well into the OS when you place it in the
background.

The operating system itself is a typical Microsoft affair and resembles
early versions of Mac OS. With a main menu in the top right. Sometimes
you get “OK” in a window at the top right title bar, other times it’s a
command button on the actual form. Standardisation on issues like this
would be good. Having said that, I did make a conscious decision to
choose PocketPC over Palm because it has better multitasking abilities,
and better built in software. Switching between tasks is badly done; the
iTask application is inconvenient, having to press a hardware button to
bring up a list of tasks. Instead I use a 3rd party program called Magic
Button, which is far better.

Overall a good buy. The dictaphone facilities, mobile net access and
music features have come in handy, so much so that my iPod hasn’t been
used since I got the PDA. Well worth the money. As after all this is a
Pocket PC. 

-- 
Marc
See http://www.imarc.co.uk/ for contact details.
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