Thursday 29 January 2004
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Pic of the day: Hewlett-Packard iPAQ 5550 handheld computer. Literally handheld here. iPAQ 5550Yes, Cassie's successor has finally arrived. The new pocket PC has four times as much RAM, 128 vs 32, and an amazing clear screen. It can even adjust the light automatically to adapt to the brightness in the room. It has built-in Bluetooth and WLAN, and comes with MS Pocket PC 2003 OS. The basic machine is very light and sleek, with a casing in a metallic gray color (but almost certainly hard plastic, judging from the weight and feel). And .. This may be just me, but there is something masculine about it. Unlike Cassie, obviously! ^_^ You can expand the machine by putting it in a sleeve or jacket that contains additional circuitry. I made the mistake of buying a simple protective jacket and regretted it within an hour. It adds bulk and weight but is not really necessary in an urban environment. I will probably need another jacket anyway for a memory card or microdrive (Or perhaps not. There is a small slot on the top for SD cards, which I am not familiar with.) I am slightly underwhelmed by the controls, probably because Cassie spoiled me rotten. The Cassiopeia E-125 had on/off switch and a start menu button on the left-hand thumb, and just below them a small wheel that let me turn pages and move up or down in a text. The iPAQ has only a volume control on the left hand, at the very top. I sometimes set it off by accident when I try to lift the PC out of the recharger. For navigation there is a center button in front, smaller than on the Cassiopeia. You can press down any of the four edges for navigation or the center to select, kinda like a joystick. Except it is a bit small for my fingers and I sometimes get the wrong effect. The touch-screen is also somewhat less sensitive than the Casio. I feel like there's a small space between the outer surface and the touch- sensitive layer; perhaps there is. I need to press harder than I am used to, and it is easy to skip a letter without noticing. I suspect this will also increase wear on the screen; perhaps I should get one of those transparent films to cover the screen. Strangely they did not pack one of those, but an extra stylus and a leather carrying case. ***What the iPAQ lacks in sensible controls, it makes up for in geeky extras. The crowning achievement must be the fingerprint reader. Yes, if you are worried that thieves may find those near-finished contracts (or the "bi-fur-curious" images), you can protect the PC with your fingerprint. When the computer is started after a user-defined time (standard is 90 minutes), you have to give it the finger to get past the opening screen. The fingerprint reader is a small slit under the front control button. You press the button and swipe your finger downward from there, following a shallow groove in the casing. As the finger passes the small thermal sensor, a picture of your fingerprint is generated. Tiny, simple and reliable. And much more fun than filling in a password, which is another option. Incidentally, you can "enroll" more than one finger. Nice if you accidentally lose a finger, I guess; a more obvious use would be to enroll a spouse or secretary. Unlike sharing your password, a fingerprint is not easily passed on to a third person, even by mistake. However, Pocket PC Windows does not support multiple separate user settings. I have already mentioned WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) and Bluetooth. Both of these are extremely trendy, but not extremely useful unless you happen to work in a place that has planned for it. The WLAN is 802.11b, which I believe is the common standard in airports, some cafeterias and a few exceedingly geeky neighborhoods. I have never seen it in use and know very little about it. I understand that it has some security problems, at least right out of the box. I'll research it if it ever becomes relevant. Bluetooth is a wireless communication with a radius of approximately 10 meters / yards. I don't see any transceiving functions, so it would only be good for a small workgroup. I have fitted my desktop PC with Bluetooth as well (TDK Systems "Go Blue"), and the two computers recognized each other. But I was unable to synchronize using Bluetooth, even though I have the latest ActiveSync and it synchronizes fine through USB. I followed the help text but to no avail. I was almost ready to give up when I found a helpful Bluetooth ActiveSync walk-through at LogoDesignWorks. Hopefully my linking to them will help the article crawl a little bit further up on Google's list of such things! It was kinda confusing, since some of the menus did not look quite the same, but it worked. Yay! Now I can synchronize from anywhere in the house. At work the distances are somewhat larger, but I'm not supposed to write about work anyway... Anyway, it is pretty insane that I can lie in my bedroom with my Pocket PC and check the news or other web sites I have added to my Avantgo channel, such as Nova Notes, Dance of the Hours or my LiveJournal friends page. Not that I actually need to do that – I usually use my bed for sleeping rather than reading – but it is extremely geeky. ^_^
Anyway, this is the newest of the new technology. Nothing can go wrong |
Still cold. Still not much snow. |
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