Powerhouse PocketPC that won't Break the Bank

Author's Rating:

Pros: Power user's dream machine at a GOOD price

Cons: Fingerprint magnet. NO INCLUDED CASE?!?

The Bottom Line: 
This thing does it all and then some. Could use some more trendier design though.

Author's Review
About a month ago, i decided that I needed to replace my aging Sony NX70V. Having dabbled on both sides of the fence (the fence being pocketpc's and PalmOS) I decided that this time, I'd return to the pocketpc side.

I'm glad I did.

Anyways, I purchased this unit from London Drugs (A canadian drug store chain that also happens to have a great electronic's department) for 600 dollars taxes. I brought it home and let it charge.

The first thing you notice about this machine when you turn it on is the screen's brightness and clarity. The brightness comes because the machine is new, and like every other pda i've owned, will fade with time. The clarity however, comes from the VGA (640x480) screen. Its gorgeous, text is crisp, pictures are finely detailed... Its simply without compare.

Another thing I really enjoy about this machine is its networking abilties. With built in bluetooth I can connect to my celphone and surf the net when i'm out of range of a WiFi network. When i'm in range of Wifi, I can use that. To make it simple, you will never be disconnected with this device.

The machine itself is constructed of a dark blue plastic. The plastic is quite thick as it is devoid of any flexibility. It gives the machine a very durable feel. Not quite like that of metal, but as plastic pda's go, this one is near the top (the best being my old ipaq 3650). The buttons have a good tactile feel, and everything that needs to be covered is (ie. the battery disconnect) covered, everything that needs to be recessed is. The only catch is, this thing attracts fingerprints. Not a big deal but it would have been nice if they had put rubber grips on it.

The sound quality from the built in headphone jack is quite good, included in the control panel applets is a utility to adjust tonal levals and system sound thresholds.

One thing I never expected to do was play full resolution video! I ripped Final Fantasy: The spirit's within from my DVD collection and dropped it onto a 1GB (which by the way I got for 80 dollars from ecost.com). The performance is AMAZING! Download an application called BetaPlayer and install it. Get a big SD card and start watching full resolution videos RIGHT NOW! Some performance tweaks i would recommend are to set the video dither, zoom, smooth zoom to off. After that the playback rate is over 30fps (smooth as butta).

The application performance on the machine is also quite good. As long as you have a good task manager to close (because for some ODD reason.. MS has not enabled a close button on any applications! its been 6 years or so.. and they still haven't done it..) your apps you're set. I recommend pelmar inc's WisBar (www.pelmarinc.com). It is not currently VGA optimized, but he's working on it. For now, you'll have to settle for QVGA resolution menu's but its a small price to pay for the convenience (did I mention its free?).

One of my favorite bundled applications is config free. It is a network (bluetooth and Wifi) configuration utility that allows you to store network profiles for different locales (home and office for instance). It can be set to autoswitch or simply manual 2 touch switching. There's also a pretty slick device finder that can locate access points, other wifi cards, and blue tooth devices in range.

Application compatibility - Because this device runs Windows Mobile 2003 Second edition, it has built in support for VGA and landscape. I have to hand it to MS, most of my apps run without problems:

Bejewelled
Age of empires
Pocket Informant
ChemRef
Conversions in hand
Ace Bartender
netfront

To take REAL advantage of the VGA screen, one must download SE_VGA. This utility reconfigures (a reversible process..) the display to display in TRUE VGA, ie. you better break out your glasses cause the fonts are SMALL!

Try using any of the following apps, its just like using a laptop!
Pocket Excel
Terminal Services client -- FINALLY its usefull on a screen like this!!!

Internet Explorer
Net Front
Pocket Streets

I can't believe I didn't buy this thing sooner! (oh right, it was out a full week before I purchased it).

Battery life -
I can usually watch about 2hrs of high res video.
5-6hrs of mp3 playback with screen toggled off
Easily lasts all day in normal usage, with network functions.

It even has an easily replaceable battery pack! you can get huge batteries from 3rd parties (5400mAh? anyone??).




To conclude.. well whats to say really. I really like this machine. The one glaring omission.. an included case. Come on Toshiba!