Rating: 
Summary: Has Everything
Review: I recently upgraded from a Compaq 1500 I'd been using for a couple years. I was looking for a unit to continue using as a PDA and also double to play .WMA files. The Compaq 1500 was only lasting 1 hour playing music files off the CF and I needed something to last a few hours. First, the difference in sound quality is amazing. Using good headphones, the e740 is a great .MP3/.WMA player. I've been using the CF slot but will soon switch to SD so I can swap music between the e740 and my Rio 30S. The display is excellent and the speed is such an improvement from CE 2.0! Connection between my Win 98 via USB works flawless and I have a second connection between my laptop at work via USB and IR. Wireless works although I haven't been able to get ActiveSync to connect via the wireless connection. Need to check with Toshiba but haven't had the time. My only two complaints are the record button. Worst possible location but you quickly learn to work around this short-coming. The second complaint is stopping apps. Clicking the X only closes the window but keeps the app running. Am I missing something? Overall, I would highly recommend this device. If you don't need the wireless and 2 memory slots look at the cheaper and slimmer Toshiba model.
Rating: 
Summary: Performs better than expected - excellent device
Review: I moved to the Toshiba e740 from a venerable Palm IIIx after the Palm died. Quite a few people at my company have various different Pocket PC variants - mostly Compaq, with the most common options beting Compactflash memory cards and wireless. Since the Toshiba had built-in flash and wireless, this seemed the way to go. The display is beautiful, readable in full sunlight. The wireless works great, I get about 80 percent to 90 percent of the range of a PCMCIA in a notebook - measured using a wireless network at home vs. my Orinoco Silver card in a notebook. I find that satisfactory, since the Toshiba is on a fairly small battery. In short, the wireless works throughout the house. I recommend that people put the wirless gateway as high in the house as possible, it makes a remarkable difference in performance overall. I find using a PDA with wireless at home addictive, and use it more than I originally thought I would. Earlier units had battery problems, this is a post-recall serial number. Swapping batteries causes no loss of data. Toshiba has apparently fixed their earlier production problems.
The Sandisk 512mb and Kingston 256mb Compactflash work without a glitch. That's a LOT of MP3 or WMA files! And plenty of room for backup. Overall, this is an excellent unit and a lot of PDA for the money.
Rating:
Summary: Great PDA- has everything you need
Review: This is a very solid PDA. I considered the new Dell products but when I saw them in real life they seem cheap and made of plastic. One of the reviewers complained about the sound recording capability. I thought it was terrible until I learned how to adjust the recording sampling rate. Once you take it off the lowest rate and pick a decent rate the sound is very good. I used to have a Compaq 3630 which was great, but this is slightly lighter, has the two expansion slots built in and wireless to boot!
RD
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not great
Review: The unit does most of what it promisses with decent performance most times. I'd like to point a couple of areas that require improvement:
- Online support goes from good to awful depending on who answers the emails
- The voice recording button has to move. I turned it off to avoid accidental recording
- Sound quality is poor, you cannot use this as a walkman unless you don't care about noise and "crack" noises. Good headphones help, but not much
- Many CF card brands are not compatible. I had problems with SanDisk, Viking and Mr. Flash. BTW, their online knowledge base never mentions the incompatibilities. The online live support immediatly acknowledged the SanDisk CF problems, but not the others
- Large CF cards will turn the overal performance into a crawl. Inserting any card larger than 64Mb into it (independent of brand) and opening Notes or Word will cause the unit to become unusable. Other apps will work fine until you try to run one of these.
- After complaining about the performance problems and 16 emails later (really) they agreed to take a look at it. Their solution was to upgrade the BIOS. It didn't solve the problem and made the unit slower on average. I gave up and decided to use SD cards (no problem with those).
- By the manual you have to turn it off before inserting or removing CF cards which is stupid. I don't know who to blame on this one, Toshiba or Microsoft. Probably both. BTW you must have the patience of a monk to deal with their support. I had to write my personal info, address and email 5 times within those 16 emails. They simply don't read the whole message and you'll have to explain the problem again and again. They also never made a follow up to see if their "solution" (upgrading the BIOS) solved the problem (it didn't). In short: the device is fine but not great. And the user and technical support are not. Try it in person before buying and check if you like what you see.
Rating:
Summary: Great Unit
Review: This exceeds my expectations for a PPC. The sync issues seem to be resolved when using the newest software from Microsoft. Since the record button was getting in the way, I just remapped the button since I won't be using the feature. The only downside might be the weak speaker, but I'm not using it for a stereo therefore it's not an issue. The price is probably the best feature, I would have spent more money to get a comparable iPaq after expansion packs and WiFi card. As far as CF campitibility, I guess that may vary by user. I do not have a single problem with my 256mb ScanDisk card and can insert and remove when the unit is on. It is slower than I would like, but I know that is due to the large density.
Rating:
Summary: Not so hot!
Review: Having lots of technical problems with it. Have returned to twice to the factory (once for the recall and once for dropping all the information every other day). Seem to battle more with it than really have it be my companion. Nice features when it works.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Device, but...
Review: The e740 PPC is great. Got everything working (including WiFi connectivity) ten minutes after unpacking it. One big flaw, especially for those familiar with the PalmOS Desktop, is ActiveSync. ActiveSync does not work...period. I've tried installing it on 98 and XP, and have yet to establish a reliable link between my laptop(s) and the e740. BIG PROBLEM. Especially if you've got a ton of contacts, scheduled activities and to do's. If you buy the e740, hoping to export your Palm data and then import the data to the e740...think twice. You're probably going to have to enter everything into the e740 manually. Haven't found a solution...yet.
Rating: 
Summary: Think twice before purchasing.....
Review: After owning this e740 for a week, I can say that I am experiencing the problems reported by most other people. While the system is feature rich, these problems make using the system a little frustrating. The synchronization will drop intermittently. I have used the USB connection on 2 different computer systems and the IR connection and they all drop, so I am convinced it is the unit. I even upgraded the ROM to the latest version posted by Toshiba and this did not fix it. I bought a Sandisk 128MB SD card for the unit and it doesn't work. I replaced it with a Lexar and it worked flawlessly. I also had the problem of bumping the recording button, which accidentally turned the system on. Not the best place to locate that!
I did email a problem to Toshiba support and heard back within 24 hours, so I would say that their support is very responsive. Overall a nice system, if you can live with the quirks.
Rating: 
Summary: Buggy Device - Worst Support of any PDA Co.
Review: Aside from Toshiba being the only company in PDA history to initiate a recall, they are also extremely incompetent in their service dept. I've had Palm's, Ipaq's, Jornada's and never had a problem. Since getting this PDA, I've had nothing but problems!! Don't be fooled by the price- you get what you pay for!! But don't take my word for it- Search the web and newsgroups for the words "e740" and "problems", sit back, and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Very good PDA... but others are right about record button
Review: The Toshiba E740 is everything it should be. ...and I considered it a very good value when compared to the IPAQ and Dell Axion. Two areas where it is weak is in assessories and the voice record button. Hopefully there will be more third party vendors offering assessories in the near future. Users must be careful not to accidently bump the record button. I have drained the battery by accident numerous times. Thankfully I have all files backed up on the SD memory card. I have also found it hard to get the CompactFlash Type II memory cards from local stores or on the internet.
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