Great - but look at a 548 first
Written: Oct 22 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice screen, good applications, good looks
Cons: Limited memory, no support for IBM CF drive
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| ianbetteridge's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Jornada 545 Pocket PC |
Epinions / Jornada 545
After a couple of years of using Palm machines, I decided I needed something else: colour. The choices came down to Palm’s IIIc, and the Hewlett Packard Jornada 545. Given that the Jornada was only £50 more, and came with a whole host of better applications, I bought the Jornada, and I haven’t regretted it since.
Coming from a Palm, the first thing you’ll notice about the Jornada is the size – it’s thicker and heavier than any Palm around. Although it’s still easily pocketable, it’s not shirt-pocketable, so if that matters, stick with a Palm V. But in terms of hardware and software, you’re getting an awful lot more than any Palm has to offer.
The screen, for example, is simply gorgeous. Although it supports only 4096 colours, it’s of such quality that, had I had to guess, I’d have said it supported at least 16-bit colour. One drawback is that, like most cheaper colour screens, it ‘washes out’ and becomes unreadable in direct sunlight. If you intend to use your handheld out of doors, you’re better off going for a mono machine.
The lid of the machine, which pivots up like a Star Trek communicator, also houses the stylus, which is one of the most unusual parts of the Jornada. Unlike most styli, it is slightly flattened, which allows it to be easier to store but takes a while getting used to. The lid is solid, and offers excellent protection to the screen.
USB is the method the Jornada uses to connect and synchronise with a desktop machine, and after the serial connections of the Palm, it feels incredibly fast. I have something like 400 contacts, 200 notes, and a large number of appointments in my PocketPC at any one time, yet the Jornada takes around a minute to synchronize. Even the first time, when all the data had to be transferred to the Jornada, it only took about fifteen minutes to complete. The Jornada charges while in its supplied cradle, or you can plug the power supply directly into it. The power supply is small enough to take on trips, so you won’t have to worry about battery life unless you’re totally away from power. Even then, I’ve never had a problem with battery life, going for up to a week without charging. This is fortunate, as the battery is of the kind that you can’t remove, so there’s no possibility of running on standard cells if you run low.
The Jornada features all of the standard PocketPC applications, including Pocket Outlook, Pocket Word, and Pocket Excel. All are as you’d expect them to be – cut down versions of the desktop applications you know and either love or loathe. Word, for example, comes without a built in spelling checker or word count, two tools that I live by on the desktop versions. You’re not going to write that novel you’ve been planning on the Jornada, but at least if you’re writing it on your desktop machine you’ll be able to read and edit it on here. Both Word and Excel do a very good job of reading and writing to the file formats of their desktop counter parts, so much so that I rarely create documents in their native formats. The pocket versions of Internet Explorer and Outlook both do a fine job, and Outlook is capable of use both by synchronising with a desktop machine, and connecting directly to the Internet using a Compact Flash modem.
One of the main reasons I bought the Jornada, though, was the bundled version of Windows Media Player, which means I no longer have to drag around both handheld and an MP3 player on trips. Media Player supports both MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA), and allows you to store multiple play lists. Audio quality is good, although there’s no equalization, so if bass is low on your original file, you’ll notice it. Media Player can, though, be a little sticky about the MP3s it plays, failing to see some MP3s as sound files. I have yet to find a reason for this, but it happens so rarely that I’m not bothered about it. Unsurprisingly, WMA files never have this problem.
Media Player highlights two of the big drawbacks of the hardware. With 16Mb of RAM, you can’t actually fit many sound files in there – you need to use the Compact Flash slot to add extra memory. In my case, this wasn’t an issue, as I had a spare 64Mb CF card, but if you want to use this machine as an audio player, remember to budget for a card of at least 48Mb. Using Media Player also drains the batteries quite heavily, although a handy option to turn off the screen while in use limits to the damage to your battery life to tolerable amounts.
The other limitation is in the Compact Flash slot, which doesn’t support IBM’s amazing Microdrive (a hard drive of up to 1Gb capacity that fits in a CF slot). With Microdrive support, you could effectively store a huge chunk of your music collection on a tiny card, and use it wherever you needed to. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option on the Jornada.
Overall, the Jornada would suit anyone wanting to take a step up from the limited applications bundled with a Palm, and who wants colour. Since I bought my 545, HP has released the 548, which comes with twice the memory (32Mb compared to the 545’s 16Mb). Unless you’re on a very tight budget, I’d recommend getting the 548 rather than a 545: 16Mb is cramped, thanks to the poor memory management of the PocketPC operating system. Other than that, the Jornada is fine machine.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
ianbetteridge
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Member: Ian Betteridge
Reviews written: 3
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