Best Price/Performance PDA available!
Written: Jul 29 '01 (Updated Jan 17 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Designed by Engineers. TWO standard expansion slots. Virtual Grafitti. High-res screen. Reasonable price.
Cons: Designed by Engineers. Many great features, not very pretty. Only buy online or Sam's Club.
The Bottom Line: Buy this device if you want a PDA and tiny is not a requirement. You won't miss color, and will love the other features.
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| pshan's Full Review: HandEra 330 |
I have owned several Palm PDA's, starting with the PalmPilot Pro (still have it), Palm III, Palm V and now Handera 330. I have decided to buy a non Palm Computing device because I believe that Palm has lost its way, and the competition has caught up or passed Palm in the market. My decision came down to two devices: the Sony Clie S710C and the Handera 330. I chose the Handera for three reasons: Price, features, and Palm operating system.
Before I buy anything, especially something that will be carried with me every day in my pocket, I must be able to carry it comfortably. Therefore, I must handle the device before I buy it. I was able to try out all the new devices including the Handspring Prism, Sony Clie S710C, Palm m505. Note that all of these are color devices. After owning monochrome devices for a few years, I decided I really wanted color. I was not able to try out the Handera at first because the only real store I could enter to try the device is Sam's Club. Fortunately a new Sam's Club opened in my area, and that is when I decided that what the Handera provides greatly outweighs the need for color for me.
Handera is not a new company. They have been around since about the time the PalmPilot Pro was a new device, offering memory upgrades. They have recently changed their name, however, from Technology Resource Group (TRG). Their first product was the TRGPro, basically a Palm III with a Compact Flash slot built in. This was the first PalmOS device to have an expansion slot, in spite of what you may have heard about Handspring being the first. From the start this company has catered to the enterprise business, which is why they are still a relative unknown in the Palm market.
In designing the Handera 330, Handera decided that the Palm III form factor, while an old design, is more or less an industry standard, and therefore designed their new device in that form factor. The decision has both won them business and lost it. The way this has won business is that many peripherals exist today for the Palm III form factor, and the Handera 330 can take advantage of that, and any company that has an investment in these peripherals can continue to use them, saving them money. It has lost business in that this is a relatively thick device, and with the Palm Vx, m505, and Visor Edge, people like this thin form factor and don't care for the old Palm III size. The size of the device was not a problem for me because the Palm V I own lives in a Palm hard shell case, which makes my Palm V the same thickness and width and the Handera 330, and one half inch shorter, which isn't a problem for me. Another decision to maintain compatibility is a serial port for hotsyncing. Many new Palm devices include a USB port, which give them a speed advantage over the Handera 330.
So since there is more room to work in than the competition, what did Handera do with it? Plenty.
1) They have replaced the standard 160x160 LCD screen and grafitti area with a 240x320 LCD screen with a virtual grafitti area. When active, the grafitti area takes up the bottom of the screen, limiting the size to 240x240, or 1.5 times the resolution of a standard Palm screen. As a result, icons, buttons, and fonts are smoother and easier to read.
***There is built-in software that changes the resolution of old software so that it still fills the screen ad works as originally written. The software also allows you to keep the original resolution, but smaller, and remain compatible to old software, even if it wasn't written well. So far I have found only one program that did not work on my Handera 330: BlockParty (a Tetris clone). In the months since I originally wrote this, this observation hasn't changed, although AvantGo is a bit stubborn about providing a new version that supports high-resolution screens.***
When the grafitti area is minimized, the extra screen space can be used for applications. All the built-in applications take advantage of that (address book, Datebook, Memopad, ToDo and Calculator). In order for other applications to take advantage of this feature, a "Handera 330 aware" version must be downloaded (I highly recommend BigClock as an example). The only feature it does not have is color; this is a monochrome screen (16 shades of gray).
2) TWO expansion slots. They kept the CompactFlash slot of the TRGPro, and added the same slot as the Palm m125, m500 and m505. This slot is the SecureDigital/MultiMediaCard (SD/MMC) slot. It is about the size of a postage stamp, and promises to be an industry standard, even though the only cards available at this time are memory cards. This provides more expandability in the Handera than any other PDA in the market today, PalmOS or WindowsCE. Both cards can be installed at the same time, so one card can hold memory, and one can hold a modem card. And since IBM has a CompactFlash Microdrive that holds 1Gig of storage, the options are virtually endless.
3) Standard, multiple power options. This device runs on four AAA batteries. That is twice as many as other Palm devices that have removable batteries. This means that batteries can last longer than typical Palm devices. Also, the battery compartment was designed to handle a Lithium-ion battery by removing the AAA battery contacts. This is the weakest design feature of the device, as the contacts are very fragile. But this feature means that if you are away from your recharger when your Lithium-ion battery dies, you can run to the store, buy AAA batteries, and replace the batteries and keep using the device until you get a chance to recharge the battery pack. Also, there is a built-in jack on the side to plug in a recharger, so a cradle is not necessary to charge the Li-ion batteries (this jack doesn't recharge AAA batteries though).
4) Jog-dial and "select" button on the side. The jog-dial is not a wheel, but more like a rocker switch. It, along with the select button allows you to find information in your device without using the stylus with one hand. It is located on the left side, so if you're a lefty, this could be hard to use. The select button doubles as a record button for the next feature...
5) Microphone and speaker. The speaker in this device is very loud, much louder than any other Palm device. This speaker was introduced in the TRGPro, so it is a tested feature. It is located under the memo button in the corner front of the device. A microphone is also included under the Handera logo on the front. The select button, when pressed and held down, can be used to take voice notes in your device. If you start the voice pad from the application launcher, you can record without holding the select button down. The voicepad application supports MMC or CompactFlash memory cards, so recording directly to external memory allows a full meeting (60 minutes) to be recorded on a 32MB memory card. This can replace a microcassette recorder.
With all of these new features, the device is the same weight as the original Palm III, even with four AAA batteries in it. But the real usefullness of these features comes when using them together. With a memory card, using the Backup application, you can make a complete backup of your device without the need to hotsync. Now, if you are away from you PC and you lose your data (like if you drop the device and the batteries fall out), you can restore your device from the memory card. Another possibility is to get a memory card for the MMC slot and a modem card for the CF slot. I am still finding new ways to use his device.
Best of all, the price for this device was $350, or $330 if you buy it from Sam's Club. For this price it is the best device you can buy today. The only thing missing is color and a USB port, and I can live without USB, as serial speeds are adequate for me.
***Update: CompUSA has started selling these devices for $299.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 329
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Epinions.com ID:
pshan
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Location: Northern Virginia, USA
Reviews written: 18
Trusted by: 4 members
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