I'd been using my trusty Handspring Visor Platinum for a few years, but lately the touch screen has stopped responding to touches and the battery life has gone to nil. So I decided it was about time for an upgrade. After looking over the reviews, I settled on an iPaq 1940/1945 (I understand they're both the same thing, but one's retail and one's wholesale. I might be wrong).

The thing showed up at my door (got it off eBay for $230 with all the seals intact). When I opened the box, my first impression was that it was really slim. Great size (I had never seen one in person before). So far so good. I'm not sure how long it took to charge, but I went and watched TV for a few hours and when I came back it was good to go.

Switching to Pocket PC 2003, while less intuitive than Palm OS, went relatively smoothly. Some things about it are silly. For example, contrary to what I would expect, clicking the top-right "X" to close an application only hides it. It's still running in the background sucking up RAM. The only way to kill it is to go into the memory contol panel and end the task. A quick look for 3rd party software turned up a nice little task bar program that lets me tap-hold the X to kill an app, while a single tap just hides it. Good enough for me, but I shouldn't have to download something for that.

I've found Bluetooth to work very well. It has its problems, but they've ALL been related to the extremely poor Windows drivers for the USB dongles I've tried. The iPaq side always works, however. Range is good as well. I can easily get a signal from my friend's apartment directly above mine when I leave my dongle plugged in downstairs.

The yellowish tint others have mentioned doesn't bother me at all (in fact the screen is great - you don't even need the backlight if you have decent lighting). The lack of a real headphone jack, however, is pretty annoying. I have to make sure to bring my adaptor whenever I think I might need it. And the lack of a cradle is a poor oversight as well. $50 is a bit steep for a data cable with a hunk of plastic molded around it. And a case would be nice, but I got a nice leather one for it. Only downside to that is it makes it just BARELY too big to want to keep in a shirt pocket then.

One major annoyance is its dependancy on Outlook for mail synchronization. My company actively discourages using Outlook due to its awful security. So far I don't seem to see any way to synchronize with Mozilla Mail/Thunderbird.

But all in all, this is a great little gadget. It's done everything I ask of it and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a nice mid-range PDA.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 239
Recommended for: Gadget Lovers - Trendy and Hip