** Critical Update: It has come to my attention that there is a minor issue with the Audiovox Maestro. Apparently the Maestro does not recognize diagonal arrow key presses. However, there IS an update that will fix this problem. It's proven rather elusive when I tried to track it down on the web, so for your patching convenience I have hosted the update on my webspace. You can download it at http://www.delanet.com/~drendall/files/maestroupdate.zip . To apply the update, simply download and unzip the file, copy it's contents (a .cab file) to your Maestro, and run it. Do a soft reboot by pressing the recessed switch on the right side of the machine with a stylus tip and you're all set. **
Quick - How do you get a big brand name item to compete on the market for less? Easy, change the name on it.
Well, don't take my word for it, go ask Toshiba. They really made the Audiovox Maestro, which bears a striking resemblance to the Toshiba e570. There's just one minor little difference: The Maestro is available to the civilian market, the Toshiba E series is not.
For cheap, no less.
The Audiovox Maestro / Toshiba e570 sells, at full list price, for 400 bucks. Four hundred dollars, folks. This is for a fully PocketPC compliant machine with the same specifications as all of its competition: 206 mhz ARM processor, reflective screen, directional button, CF and SD card slots, headphone jack, the whole bit, for a good 200 bucks cheaper than the rest. Ipaqs and Jornadas are still going for $600+ bucks a pop in most places, and ring up right around the $550 mark in others.
Staples went two better on us, though. They carry, for now, the Maestro for $299, and with a $50 rebate on top of that. $249, people.
Hell, I'm sold.
Let me tell you - Forget the price and forget the name. The Maestro is an excellent machine.
Now if you'll allow me one of my tangents I'll explain a few things.
Tangent 1: Pocket Confusion
The Maestro, as well as its nearest brothers, cousins, and competition, is a Windows CE powered handheld computer (Windows Compact Edition, or WinCE to us lazy people). God forbid Microsoft let someone call it Windows CE anymore, though, because ever since WinCE version 3.0 they've insisted that it be called "PocketPC". This is a hair misleading if you ask me, but it's their marketing policy and it's their nose on the capitalistic grindstone. Oh ho, but that's not all. Now there are TWO versions of "PocketPC": The old PocketPC (AKA WinCE 3.0), and the new PocketPC 2002. PocketPC 2002 is less of an operating system and more of a standard now. Microsoft has dictated that all PocketPC 2002 machines must have ARM processors and must have a certain control layout, as well as a few other niggling little detals.
As far as we're concerned, though, the thing runs what is for now the latest version of Windows CE, regardless of what Microsoft thinks we should call it. Before anyone asks me any stupid questions, the Maestro is NOT a "Palm Pilot", is not compatible with Palm Pilots, and is, frankly, a real computer. Which is something that all of you yuppie, gen-X wannabe, Palm-packing, Mac-using posers wouldn't know about.
Ahem.
Tangent two: Windows CE does not = PC
The other thing that hangs most people up on Windows CE, in all of its flavors, is that it's not directly compatible with desktop PC software. The reason for this is pretty simple, if you think about it. PocketPC/WinCE devices use different kinds of processors, have different screens, and different input protocols from desktop machines. Unfortunately no one has built a true handheld PC yet. As soon as someone does about 99.5 percent of the world's population would beat a path to his door, I'm sure. In the meantime, though, one must remember that Windows CE software is different from PC software. Don't expect to fire up Quake III or Adobe Photoshop on one of these things.
There is, of course, a whole raft of Windows CE specific software readily available. There's quite a bit more for WinCE than there is for Palm. This is a point in any WinCE machine's favor, since with the sheer variety of the software available you'll have less limitations as to what you can do. I attribute this to the one thing Microsoft's done right: They've made programming software for WinCE available for free. Now everybody and his brother can be a Windows CE software developer, and with those odds there's bound to be at least some good software churned out (And yes, even I am working on several WinCE software projects as we speak). Palm gets all the press, WinCE gets all the software. It’s a fact of life. Deal.
Got all that? Yeah, there's a review in here somewhere.
On the face of it the Maestro looks like a Pocket PC. All vaugely recent WinCE machines are vertically oriented, being taller than they are wide with a 240x320 screen front and center, whatever hardware buttons along the bottom, and various doodads, jacks, slots, and dials around the edges. The Maesto keeps its appearance clean and symetrical, with four shortcut buttons below the screen and the Directioal Button (D-button) in the center. Apparently having a four way directional button is part of Microsoft's PocketPC 2002 standard. This is a good thing for gamers, since most of the last generation's machines didn't have directional buttons (HP, Phillps machines) or had directional buttons that sucked (Compaq machines). The D-button on the Maestro is superb, however, with a smooth action and very responsive. Gamers, this may be the machine for you for this very reason. The power button goes up top and there's a record button on the side. You can remap any of the buttons to launch any program - I recommend downloading PDA Resource's ZapIt! and assigning it to the record button.
The case design isn’t too shabby, either. The face of the machine is two tone silver, with blue highlights on the sides (neatly matching the machine’s default color settings, no less). The buttons are silver as well, matching the front of the machine. The back is silver, too, but it’s only one tone. To me the Maestro just seems so much more graceful than the rest of the machines currently on the market. There are no gaudy off-color logos to be seen, no strange and useless moulding, no pointlessly shiny bits, and generally no design clumsiness to be found. Overall the Maestro just feels like a quality piece of gear. Given the old Jurassic Park item-heft-to-item-cost ratio (demonstrated in the movie with a pair of binoculars), this thing feels like it should be worth about seven hundred bucks. The fit and finish is truly superb.
The screen on the Maestro isn't too shabby, either. It's a 240x320 reflective touch sensitive job. All WinCE machines have touch screens, since there's really nowhere to put a mouse on something this tiny. The usual method of engaging the touch screen is with the included stylus, but the eraser ends of pencils, fingers, and retracted pen tips often find their way into service as well. I advise using something that's designed for PDA screens only - Your fingers probably won't hurt anything but will get smears all over your screen, and anything else runs the risk of mangling the coating of the display. You can also buy stick on screen protectors for most handhelds. I suggest you make a pack of these your first investment in your new machine.
The Maestro's screen is a hair smaller than most of the competition. It comes natually, though, since the Maestro itself is a hair smaller than the competition. It's a reflective screen meaning it uses outside light to make itself visible. Previous generations of WinCE machines had backlit displays, like those on laptop computers. Backlit screens can give you an excellent picture, but wash out and become very hard to read in bright light (like sunlight). The incoming light from the sun (as an example) overpowers the outgoing light from the screen. The net result is one washed out picture if you’re lucky or one uniformly black or grey one if you aren’t. Most unpleasant. The Maestro, however, as well as most other current generation handhelds has a reflective screen that if anything will look best in bright light. The drawback with a reflective screen is quite the opposite of a backlit one – Instead of being invisible in bright light it’s invisible in dim light. The Maestro comes with a built in light to remedy this situation, so you can have the best of both worlds.
You (most likely former) Casio E-200 users can stop wincing now. There are no known or immediately evident problems of backlight burnout on the Maestro.
You can set your backlight (which WinCE calls a frontlight, don’t ask me why) preferences in the WinCE control panel. Once you’ve got your brightness and auto-dim timeouts set you can toggle the backlight on and off whenever you want by pressing and holding the power switch. Trés Palm, no? I thought it was a nice feature. It’s not a documented one, mind you, but in this day and age things rarely are.
Backlight aside the Maestro’s screen is crisp and clear and all of those other adjectives that reviewers are supposed to come up with. It displays colors (as well as straight black and white) surprisingly well without the backlight and quite superbly with. It can display true 16 bit color, so (most likely former) Ipaq users can quit wincing, too. Some of the Ipaq models had some serious color depth issues, but nothing of the like is found here. Photographs and movie clips are simply beautiful on this machine. The screen’s quite responsive, too – There are no shadows, blurring, or any other quirkyness to deal with. Longtime users of laptops, Gameboys, and other toys with LCD screens will breathe a sigh of relief here.
Despite it’s sleek appearance the Maestro doesn’t come lacking any features. Beneath the spring loaded flap on the top of the machine are two slots for memory cards. The larger will accept any Type II CompactFlash card, as well as any of a number of CompactFlash accessories like cameras, modems, and network adapters. Directly behind the CompactFlash slot is a smaller one that accepts SecureDigital cards and presumably MMC cards as well. At the moment the MMC/SD slot is a storage-only affair, but I hear there are accessories besides memory cards for this type of slot in the works. Either way it’s good that the Maestro accepts both kinds of cards. It beats being stuck with MMC only (Casio EM-500) or just CompactFlash (HP Jornada). The Maestro, of course, makes a wonderful portable viewing platform for digital pictures and whatnot that various cameras you own may store on these types of cards.
Also housed on the top of the machine are the headphone jack and stylus slot, as well as the power/backlight button. Along the left side is the record button and recessed soft reset button, and on the bottom live the cradle connector, power connector, and hard reset switch. The Maestro’s internal speaker is mounted on the face of the machine, just to the right of the D-button. The speaker’s pretty weedy, probably just a little piezoelectric job, but it gets the job done for playing back the little beeps and blips that WinCE makes as you navigate. It’s horrible for listening to music, but that’s what the headphone jack is for.
Speaking of buttons, I should take this opportunity to note that the Maestro has no multiple button press issues so the rest of you (most likely former) Ipaq users can quit wincing, too.
I was very impressed with the Maestro’s performance. The faster processor makes a clearly noticeable difference between this and older model machines. The interface is quite snappy overall, excluding any flat out poorly coded third party programs you may install. There’s just not a whole lot you can do about those, unfortunately.
I was quite pleased to find that the Maestro will run PocketGB at a full 60 frames per second with sound and all the bells and whistles enabled. (Those who are out of the loop may wish to visit www.pocketGB.com to read up on what I’m babbling about.) Impressive, indeed.
The battery life isn’t too bad. I can play Mp3’s over my Maestro for at least three and a half hours before I get little warnings about battery life, and a good 20 minutes more before my cells run dry. Music playback is pretty processor intensive, though, so you’re likely to get a good deal more doing lighter computing tasks like word processing or playing solitaire. For on-again-off-again intermittent use you’re likely to have an uptime of days or weeks, probably limited only by the shelf life of the built in lithium ion battery.
The only major drawbacks I could find with the Maestro are the ones that plague every PocketPC 2002 machine, namely those that are caused by PocketPC/WinCE itself. For starters, Microsoft has dictated, without any particular thought behind the decision, that as of version 3.0 (the “old” PocketPC) you will no longer be able to close programs.
Yeah, I told you it was stupid.
Microsoft’s logic is that since WinCE is such a superific multitasking environment you should never have to close applications. I’ll grant that for the most part this works. You can leave all sorts of things running in the background with no real performance hit, but eventually you’re going to run out of system resources due to the sheer amount of junk you’ve got open and you’ll need to close something. This can be done, but only by going into Control Panel, flipping to a secondary tab, clicking the “Memory” icon, flipping to another secondary tab, selecting what you want to close, and hitting “Stop”.
Yeesh.
There is, fortunately, a third party solution to this. I highly recommend PDA Associate’s ZapIt!, which is a free utility that will close the current application for you. I usually map it to the record button on the side of the machine since I never really feel compelled to have a shortcut to a function that I never use (the voice recorder, that is), and it makes life a lot easier.
There are other quirks of the WinCE operating system, but most of them are pretty minor. By default all file extensions are hidden from you, for starters, and I find the interface of Microsoft’s File Explorer leaves a little to be desired. There are third party file managers available for free that do things much better, but I think it’s a bit irksome that other people have to come in and clean up Microsoft’s messes for them. The close buttons on the corners of windows are misleading, too, since they don’t actually close the application in question, instead tossing them into the background. They should have put a minimize icon on the things instead of the X symbol, since they’ve spent so much time conditioning us to believe that the X means you’re going to close something.
On the software end things are pretty complete. The Maestro comes with Pocket Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and a calendar and contact manager in its ROM memory. (ROM stands for Read Only Memory. The programs in ROM cannot be deleted, corrupted, or otherwise mangled. If you don’t like them they can be ignored, though, and take up none of the machine’s storage space.) WinCE itself is contained in the ROM as well, so for now operating system upgrades are impossible. I’ve heard nothing on weather or not new versions can be flashed to it, but for now it’s safe to say that they can’t be. Microsoft has been pretty good about keeping all versions of WinCE compatible with each other, though, so this shouldn’t be a problem. The Maestro comes packaged with a few other tidbits like Toshiba’s excellent menu applet (by default assigned to the “home” button), which walks all over the built in WinCE programs menu. Also about are Microsoft Reader (which now requires online registration, don’t ask me why), a calculator, solitaire, some system tools, and things of that ilk. Microsoft Money and Outlook are included on the CDROM packaged with the machine, but not installed by default.
As is the trend nowadays you don’t get a print manual with the machine. You do get two “quick start” sheets, though, a comically translated readme sheet, a catalog, a leather slipcase, and three (count ‘em) replacement styli. Not bad. Also included is a cable to connect the Maestro to certain cell phones for wireless internet browsing and the USB cradle, witch which you connect the machine to your desktop PC. You will need a USB compliant Windows OS to use the Maestro with your PC, by the way. Linux, Mac, and Win95 drivers are not available. NT4 users are left out in the rain, as well, or at least as far as I know.
You need to install Microsoft’s ActiveSync to connect with the Maestro. The installation package tries to trick you into installing Outlook first, but you don’t have to. Once you’re up and running you can transfer files back and forth with ease, as well as use automatic installers to upload various pieces of software to the machine. You can also transfer email, Internet Explorer favorites, and automatically sync personal documents, but the procedure is a little trickier. The USB file transfer speed isn’t too exciting, but it’s quick enough to shove some Mp3’s around without waiting more than a few seconds for each one.
Once you choke down the little nuisances of the WinCE operating system, though, this is a nice machine. It’s not something everyone will need, mind you, but for those that do I can say with confidence that the Maestro is the cream of the crop. Recommended.
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