Intro
I got this little beauty for a Christmas present this year (2001). I was going to get the Jornada 525, but when I realized I had enough money to get this one, I went for it. It cost me $479. I know that I was going to get $150 back from a Compaq rebate so that cut the final price down to $329. I got a whole lotta PDA for just $329.

The Good
I ordered my Ipaq from www.pcbin.com and was very pleased with their service. They had it drop shipped from Compaq to me.
Contents
Upon opening the box I found that there was my Ipaq, a compact flash sleeve for CF cards, a USB cradle, 2 styluses, and a case. I knew that this particular model came with the CF sleeve so that had a big weight in my decision. I planned on using my PDA as an MP3 player to, so I was going to need that extra storage space.
Features
The PDA has a safety off and on switch which can be very useful if you are traveling and want to make sure that your PDA stays off. The PDA cannot be activated when this switch is off. So after turning that on, I preceded to charge the PDA. The instructions said to charge it for 3 hours and to make sure it was fully charged before use. The handy LED light on the front blinks when it is charging, the stays lit when it is fully charged. It didn’t take 3 hours to charge the PDA so after that I was playing with it. I turned it on and was very familiar with the operating system since it is Windows. IT has a handy program called Qstart (I guess it comes with all Compaq systems) that lists all your programs, or just a certain genre if you want. It came with the following Software Titles:
Calendar – Very robust and can handle just about any optional item you need to put with a specific event
Calculator – Good, but could have been a scientific one. (You can probably just download one anyway)
Connections – A Windows style way for managing your Internet connections
Contacts – An awesome contact list. It is so robust; I don’t think I’ll ever want to know that much information about someone. Seriously, this program can hold just about anything about anyone you know
File Explorer – A familiar way of browsing through your files
Inbox – An email client. I really haven’t used this so can’t tell you the good or bad
Infrared Receive – A program that allows you to receive files and such from other PDA’s. Pretty simple and self-explanatory.
Internet Explorer. I really don’t know what this one does because I haven’t used it. I know that you can download web pages from your PC and put the on your PDS for offline browsing, but I haven’t tried that yet.
Microsoft Reader – An awesome little program for reading. You can download books, manuals, novels, and other reading materials to read from this program (too bad it doesn’t read it to you J)
Notes – A cool program for jotting little notes about something. It is faster that typing something out or having the character recognizer spell something. It does a pretty good job of following your styli
Picture Viewer – I haven’t used this program, but I assume that it is a pretty straightforward program that lets you view all kinds of picture formats.
Pocket Excel & Word – These programs are really cool. You can do so much with these two. I sync papers I am working on and edit them in Word. Also I have business spreadsheets that I look at in spare time. Word has a little trouble following some of the data in Word for your Desktop, but it does pretty well.
Qutilities – A good program for backing up your PDA, testing certain features, and managing your start up menu
Solitaire – This was the only game that came with the PDA. I guess they think that people use these things for other, more important things, YA RIGHT!!!
Tasks – A cool program that keeps track of tasks to complete that day. It sets on your start page and reminds you to buy your wife an Anniversary present, or to get your kids Birthday presents.
Media Player – A cool program that plays sound files, and mp3’s. I love this because you can store mp3’s on a CF Card and use it as a portable, non-skipping music player.
The top of the PDA has an audio out for your headphones. It is 1.5mm for standard headphones. On the side it has a button for voice recording. You can change the bit rate and kHz of the sound from very poor, to cd quality. The front panel has a nice power switch at the top right hand that is out of the way so you don’t accidentally turn it on when you’re picking it up or something. It also has 4-way dial, which is useful for games and navigation. It has 4 buttons that are customizable in the front for fast access to programs. The default programs are Calendar, Contacts, Qmenu, and Qstart. They are pretty handy. The dial has a built in speaker that plays pretty loud for a little device.
I love how rich the display is and it plays games great.
Syncing was a breeze. I already had some stuff in my calendar when I was ready to sync so I just followed the Instructions and in 5 min I was synced. It only syncs to MS Outlook, but it comes with MS Outlook 2000 if you don’t have that so don’t sweat.
The Bad

I have little beef with this product. The major thing that bugs me is the placement of the voice record button. It is placed in the top left side. When I went to pick the PDA up, I was always hitting that button and the recorder would come on. It stops recording when you let off the button so it wasn’t like I had a huge recording of nothing, it was just annoying to have to go and delete that sound file. I soon learned to take it out of the case a little different. The only other thing I didn’t like with it was something with Windows, not the actual PDA. This window is designed without any taskbar. That means that you can only do one thing at a time right? NO, you can multitask, but the way it is set up is ridiculous and hard. It pulls up one program and then if you don’t close out of that program and open up another one, it opens up on top of the previous one. After while if you don’t notice you have 5 programs running one on top of another and the thing starts to lag. To fix this, once you are done with something, you use the Qmenu program supplied by Compaq, and close out of the active window. If that is confusing, it isn’t that big of deal so don’t pay any attention.
Conclusion

I love this PDA and would pay $100 more dollars for it. It is robust, upgradeable, fast, and just about everything else. This is my first PDA so I am not experienced in the PDA field, but I like it. Some people say that this one is too big, or the screen isn’t crisp enough or waa waa waa. My heaven’s people you have a mini computer in the palm of your hand so try not to complain too much. It is al the PDA someone could ever want or ever need. Buy it if you get the chance and it will prove itself to you.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 329