Re: Ipaq 2200

From: Roy Collingwood (roy_at_roycollingwood.co.uk)
Date: 07/02/04 

Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 21:00:58 GMT

i got one on ebay, factory reconditioned less than £200, or new at lots of
places £225

roy 

-- 
Wouldn't it be nice if whenever we messed up our life we could simply press 
Ctrl Alt Delete and start all over?
Come visit me www.roycollingwood.co.uk
"Marc" <see@signature.url> wrote in message 
news:1088787374.59552.0@doris.uk.clara.net...
>
> 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.
Loading