Rating: 
Summary: Too Cool & Lighter than My laptop!
Review: In August, I took the plunge and bought a Compaq iPAQ. HP and Casio each came out with Pocket PC's at the same time Compaq did this summer. After much review, I chose the Compaq for several reasons:* The exterior design is great looking with all the buttons in a comfortable place for my hand....Casio's buttons are wrong for the hand * I've used Compaq desktops and laptops in the past and found them to be reliable * The Compaq iPAQ is the only screen can be fully seen in full daylight * Compaq's version was the most popular by consumer response and online consumer opinions * The price was in the middle range.... I easily loaded in my addresses and schedule via the USB port on my computer (win 98). Since I travel 100%, I've found that this pda is perfect for: Why has the iPAQ enabled me to be more productive on the road?: * I download my email before I leave work or home for the airport. While on the plane, I can easily read my email and reply using the iPAQ. Although I haven't been able to secure a modem card yet, when I get to my hotel, I simply hook the iPAQ up to my laptop and sync my email. * I've started using Expedia.com to book my flights, hotels, and rental cars. Expedia allows you to download your itineraries directly into the iPAQ along with street maps/directions. This saves me a lot of paper since I usually print out a confirmation for each service I book online. * I have created a profile for Pocket I.E. so I can have certain webpages downloaded on the iPAQ. This is handy to download the current news or stock report and read it on the go. Review and edit documents using Pocket Word and keep your laptop in your bag. * One of the most difficult things to do on the road is to pay my bills. With Pocket MS Money, I'm able to connect to my bank (via my laptop or iPAQ modem card) and download my current statement as well as pay my bills via auto payment. Read e-books using Pocket Reader. The ClearType technology allows you to easily read on the small screen. * The most important item for me on the iPAQ is Pocket Excel. It allows me to complete my expense report on the fly daily or while flying home. You can't do all of that on a Palm! And if you relate to "coolness", this pda has it!
Rating:
Summary: IPAQ delivers
Review: I bought the iPAQ with hesitation becuase of some of the reviews I read here and elsewhere of people having problems with it. However, I have had my iPAQ for almost 4 months and have not had one problem (other than a snafu when trying to set up the synch the first time). It is beautiful and it works flawlessly. I moved from a Palm pilot and cannot tell you how much more I love this thing: Bright, color and simple. -- My only beef is that I wish it would come with a cover like the Palm so I don't have to use the cumbersome vinyl sleeve that came with it. It is a pain to slip it in and and out. All in all definitely worth the money (if for the screen alone!).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Product, but could be yet better
Review: I got an iPAQ about 3 weeks ago. So far I'm very impressed with it, and starting to replace the 2" thick "Brain book" I was carrying with me. The unit's capabilites are very impressive -- I use it for - Schedule planner (synch with home and work) - Read email, including Word and Excel attachments - Address/ contacts data - Notes (including free hand simple drawings) - Business applications (mainly spreadsheet) - MP3 player - Personal pictures (JPGs) although this is a small screen - Ebook reader using Project Gutenberg text files. I have not owned a PDA before, and was not impressed by friends' Palms since they appeared to be just electronic address and calendars. This is *quite* a bit more... Good Points - - Excellent screen -- very bright and colorful (although other people have reported dust under the screen, I have not found any) - Word and Excel. In my professional life I live on these. I have several self written Excel spreadsheet on the iPAQ which aid me greatly in daily working enviroments. And it's really impressive to see a client's reaction when I pull out the iPAQ and do a company valuation or financial model spreadsheet on my PDA. These are "Pocket" versions of Word and Excel, so they don't have the full features of the desktop versions, but for something I can put in my shirt pocket and take with me, they are quite functional. - Ezpandability. I picked up the Compact Flash sleeve and now have a machine with essentially 100 MB RAM, using a 64 MB CF card. Using a spare card I can swap out 64 MB of data at a time -- mp3s for music or data for work. This has replaced me carrying a 100 MB zip disk around. - Power. I've run test MPEG video clips on this in full color and sound. 200 MHz is more than my last generation desktop's processor power. - Excellent handwriting recognition without needing to learn a new language. Still not as easy as just writing and took me a day to get used to, but for taking meeting notes etc it is very good. - Versatility. Excel, word, email, mp3, games, ebooks, voice recorder, jpg viewer -- I'm very impressed to get this in one device. Some of the wireless connectivity options through the expansion sleeves (CF or PCMIA wireless modem and through the installed Internet Explorer) look very impressive, although I have not tried them yet. Could be Improved -- Most of these are quibbles or personal preference... - Connectivity. I use the provided USB cradle at home and aserial cable at work. I had to buy the serial cable for the workmachine (no USB port) and I think Compaq should have provided it.Autosynch works pretty well, but I have had some duplicate meetingsshow up on my schedule. Part of that I think, it that I am learningto use it, and switching between Outlook at home and MS Exchange atwork. Other people have reported connectivity problems that I havenot encountered. - Battery. The unit has an internal wired inbattery which is rechargable from either the cradle or an externalpower adapter. I would have preferred a replaceable (and rechargable)battery just in case. I get from 4-6 hours of standard usage out ofthe battery now. - Software availability. There are severalhundreds of programs availabe and more being added each week -- but Iwould like to see more available including standard business products.In particular, I am *VERY* surprized there isn't a pocket version ofPowerpoint -- although I understand one is near release. -Earphone volume is loud with earbuds, so I run it at near minimumvolume. - Case or cover for the iPAQ. Compaq provides a smallsimple case, and aftermarket vendors have others available. I'm usinga surplus HP65 calculator case which works very well. I would havepreferred a snazzy case from Compaq to show off the machine -- butthat is my personal preference. All in all, I am *very* impressedwith this machine. There are things that could be better, but overallit is very good. People who have seen this being used by myself droolover it...
Rating:
Summary: AMAZING
Review: This is an amazing product. Irecently bought it after playing with 2 other pocket pc's: The journada and The casio, The handheld pc's (W/ the key board) are way too bulkey. Having an on screen keyboard is not that much of an Inconvenience as many people may think.
Rating: 
Summary: Great innovations, needs a little more maturation, lousy OS
Review: I've had my H3630 for about a week and a half now and I can say that I absolutely love it with just a few reservations. (FYI - the H3630 and H3650 are identical hardware and only differ in that one is the "mail-order" model number and one is the "storefront packaging" model number.) First, the pros: The unit is *extremely* powerful and fast! The 206Mhz StrongARM CPU makes quick work of just about any task you throw at it. A whopping 32MB of RAM is amazing to have in a unit this size! The design is fantastic, I love the rounded aluminum case and the overall size of the unit amazed me. (I really expected it to be much bigger. As it is, it's just barely larger than my Palm IIIxe. Or, to put it another way: "INCREDIBLE COSMIC POWER! Itty bitty living space.") The color and resolution of the screen is wonderful and battery life is great, especially considering the amount of power they've packed into this unit. The "Expansion Sleeve" system is a fantastic addition as well, a bit like the expansion units you can get for Handspring's Visor. While the unit is extremely powerful "out of the box", the ability to add Compact Flash or PCMCIA slots, wireless modems, GPS units and so forth makes it even more powerful. I personally have a 340MB IBM microdrive on the way, and I'm still giggling over the fact that I'll have a 200+ Mhz, 32MB RAM, 340MB computer that fits in the palm of my hand and runs for several hours off of an internal rechargable battery. Now the cons: The unit as a whole, while nicely designed, seems like it could have used another month or so of engineering. The "rocker button" that also makes up the speaker enclosure just doesn't have a very finished feel to it. It makes "squeaky springy" noises when I use it, which is a little unsettling. The screen is very nice, but needs some sort of protection to prevent it from getting scratched up, and there are numerous reports of getting dust or other "gunk" under the screen which show up as annoying bright spots when the backlight is on. Finally, I can't help but feel that the mechanism that holds the stylus in is just going to break and stop working some day. It's nice having a mechanical action to "pop" the stylus out of its socket, but it would be much more reliable to use friction to hold it in, the way the Palm units do it. And then there's the PocketPC software it runs... I've gotten very attached to my Palm IIIxe over the last few months I've had it and I really appreciate what it can do for me and understand what it's *not* supposed to do for me. Without being too critical, I'll just say that I haven't found anything that PocketPC really offers me that PalmOS doesn't, and a lot of unneccesary overhead. If PocketPC is a revolutionary improvement on the WinCE codebase, I'd hate to have to use an older version! I must say though, I'm getting very spoiled by the speed at which the PocketPC software on the iPAQ responds as opposed to PalmOS on the much less powerful Palm I have, but that's a tribute to the power of the hardware more than anything the OS offers me. Further, despite what I've heard others say about it, I find that the "Microsoft ActiveSync" software to be abysmal at best and nearly useless as a sync tool on average. It will only allow me to sync to *two* different desktops?! I have my work machine, my home machine and my laptop: pick any two. I have had no end of trouble with conflict resolution and invariably wind up just deleting everything off the desktop and re-syncing everything from scratch off the iPAQ. If you want an iPAQ to make it easy to move data from one machine to another, you will be sorely disappointed. (Of course, my issues with PocketPC and ActiveSync are soon to be a moot point for me as I'll eventually be running Linux on my iPAQ full-time, thanks to the Open Handhelds Project. Software availability for PocketPC on the StrongARM CPU is currently miniscule at best, although I expect it to quickly increase considering the popularity of this device. All in all I'd say that it's a little pricey, maybe released a couple months early, and despite what I percieve as serious drawbacks of the PocketPC OS, it is without doubt one of the hottest (and coolest) geek toys on the market today. If you're at all into geek styling, you *need* one of these devices, if not for its power and expandability, at least for its cool-factor. (But good luck finding one!)
Rating:
Summary: I love this thing!
Review: This is the best gadget to come along in quite some time. Trust me I know, I LOVE TECHNOLOGY! I have both a Palm Vx and the ipaq....anybody wanna buy a Palm? There is no comparison. In my opinion, the Palm has been replaced. Window CE has been drastically improved, it is very good. I can now use all of my work programs just like they are. The ipaq opens programs as fast as I need them. This baby ROCKS! Compaq really designed a great unit, too bad they didn't make enough, but it is well worth the wait. Advertise those Palms and make room for the new King of the hill, The ipaq 3650/3630.
Rating: 
Summary: Palm II or V vs. Compaq iPAQ H3650
Review: I'm an x-Palm user, had three versions of Palm by choice, all worked wonderfully, never had a problem, support was great! Bought a Compaq iPAQ 3650, wanted to try the "latest" PocketPc. Might be this year's worse mistake. Within one month, I've experienced hardware and software failures and an apparent lack of concern by Microsoft AND Compaq. Recent inquiry re: software failures including inaccurate info reflected on "Today" screen (future dates data presented as currenct schedule) and other software failures resulted in the following comment from Compaq: "...back up all of the data on the unit (because this will erase everything) and turn the unit off, using the switch on the bottom, and then back on. That may fix some of the problems you are having." No further suggestions or offers of assistance were offered. I can't wait for Palm to release an updated version. It will provide me with an excuse to convert back to Palm.
Rating:
Summary: Makes Palm look like a miltary toothbrush
Review: This thing is so cool and so sexy, it makes the palm pilot look like a miltary toothbrush. There is almost no way in which it is not better than the Palm. More memory, better screen, better applications, better synching. Check out the amazingly beautiful color screen, to start with. The typical Palm has 4-8Meg. This has 32Meg and with a CF card you can add an extra 96Meg for fun. Why need so much memory? to play MP3's, high-res images, videos -- try that on your Palm. Tired of the Palms simple little apps? Pocket Outlook, Word, Excel are more like real PC apps than the little things you get with the Palm. For exapmle, you have many more fields you can use in the address book. Finally, synching is really cool. To synch your Palm, it goes in the cradle and you press synch, but don't leave it there as the cradle drains the battery. With the iPaq, leave it in the cradle--it charges the battery--and synch happens automatically in the background. Update a contact in Outlook? As soon as you save, ActiveSynch detects it and pushes it to your iPaq with no intervention.
Rating:
Summary: I love my iPAQ!
Review: Both my wife and I have recently purchased Compaq iPAQ PocketPCs. We both love them. I greatly enjoy always having up-to-date pictures of my wife and child and it's groovy to be able to call up my favorite MP3's whenever I want. Not only that, but I'm able to carry around a copy of my resume in MS Word format wherever I go as well as some Excel spreadsheets which contain family budgets. These features as well as the ability to send and receive Word and Excel documents embedded in email make the Compaq a BIG, BIG winner over palm. My old Palm Vx is smaller, but seems otherwise very obsolete in comparison. If you are a techno-geek (and aren't we all?) you must, MUST own a Compaq iPAQ. They are neato-completo.
Rating:
Summary: The Compaq iPAQ is a true productivity tool
Review: Palm lookout... Daddy's home! As an IT executive, it's important to have tools that really perform when requested. This device has the brightest, clearest screen I have ever seen. The Pocket PC OS allows me to sync my email and then review the Word and Excel attachements. The Pocket Outlook suite has almost made my laptop obsolete. Connectivity with other devices via USB and IR is something I have needed for a long time. In short, this device is the deluxe Swiss Army knife of PDAs. What ever the cost you pay for it, you'll feel you stole it!
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