Thursday 15 September 2005

HP hw6515

What do you do if you're going somewhere and you're going to need your phone, a camera, e-mail and Internet access, a few good books, your favorite music, and perhaps a map and GPS to get there in the first place? You could pack an extra suitcase or at least a Batman-style utility belt; but the correct answer is of course: Get the very latest Executive Toy. Which right now happens to be Hewlett-Packard's iPAQ hw6515.

The little bundle of joy is called a "communicator", and rightly so. Right out of the box it is a perfectly nice mobile phone (cell phone), just insert SIM card. I just transferred the one from my slightly broken Nokia, and it continued to work with the same number and the same sound quality. The severely style-aware consumer may feel a little self- conscious holding a computer to his ear, keyboard and all. But remember, it was that or the Bat-belt; take your pick. If you need to call a number, you may either pick it from your contact list, tap it on the large numeric keyboard that appears on the screen, or use the tiny QWERTY keyboard. For incoming calls, of course, you just click the green phone button.

It may seem like sheer madness to write on a keyboard that would be small even for a baby. But while the "thumbboard" may not be ideal for quickly entering numbers, it can be used to enter text in a pinch. The name comes from the most common way of operating it, with both thumbs. For this to work optimally, you should have short fingernails. If you don’t know touch-typing, you may be better off using the tip of your index finger.

While the thumbboard is not the fastest way in the world to type, I have typed the entry so far on it, so you should be able to answer your e- mail in a pinch. (And to spare you some frustration I had: Two presses on the blue key turns NumLock on, but CAPS Lock requires you to press first blue then shift, and then blueshift again to turn it off.) And of course you still have the touch-screen input like on earlier models. In fact, there is one more handwriting recognition, which claims to understand cursive handwriting as well. It is certainly impressive, but rather useless with the limited screen space available on this machine. Also, be sure to add a protective plastic film over the screen before you use it for handwriting. I ignored this on my first pocket PC, and it got visibly scratched after a few days. (Still eminently legible, but distracting.)

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Okay, back on speech recognition. (I want this entry at least somewhere near the actual purchase date!)

Communication is a two-way thing, after all. Having established that it is possible to enter text, how about reading? The screen is crisp and clear, as we have come to expect from the iPAQ series. But it is shorter than usual, to give room for the external keyboard below. Measuring 3 x 3 inches, it is noticeably shorter than the 3 x 4 inches we have grown used to. This translates directly into presenting less text on the screen when reading news, books or documents. The reading experience becomes more fragmented as you see less text at the same time and have to change pages more frequently. The problem is even worse if you try to enter text using the on-screen keyboard or handwriting recognition: In that case, there's only room for a couple lines of text above the writing area. Okay, a few lines of text, but it certainly looks short. (Of course, the whole idea about the thumbboard is that you don't need to enter text on the screen. But to the best of my knowledge, there is no alternative model with all the same functions but with a longer screen instead of the thumbboard. Perhaps there should have been.)

If you can live with the smaller screen size, however, there is a lot of information you can find on it. If you have a mobile phone subscription that allows this service, you can download your e-mail directly to your iPAQ and even surf the Internet. (This is likely to be quite a bit more expensive than doing so at home, so you may want to limit your surfing unless it is paid by someone else who you activity want to exploit... for instance if you are a CEO.) Please notice that this is the real Internet, not WAP. You are surfing your usual sites using Internet explorer; it is not special content developed for mobile phone users like you find on some competitors.

A less expensive solution is to synchronize your Pocket PC with an ordinary PC with Internet access. Software for doing this is available free of charge from Microsoft for your desktop or laptop PC, and comes preinstalled on your iPAQ. You can synchronize using a cradle that comes with the communicator, or wirelessly using Bluetooth which is built in. Or you can buy a special cable that lets you synchronize with any PC with a free USB port; you can even select to use it to recharge the batteries at the same time. I have such a cable for the iPAQ 5500 series, and it works excellently with this new model too.

In addition to e-mail and web pages you can also synchronize appointments, contact lists, Word and Excel files. The software also allows you to view your Pocket PC as an extra hard disk, so you can drag and drop files of any kind between the two. Of course, not all files can be viewed on the iPAQ: Competing text processors, for instance, may not show up in pocket Word. It can however read Acrobat PDF files. Unlike the 5500 it does not attempt to read e-books right out of the box, but the e-book reader is also available for free from Microsoft. There are also alternative e-book readers, most notably Mobipocket which also runs on the iPAQ. However, books prepared for one of them can't be read on the other.

Nor are you limited to text. The hw6515 has a built-in camera with 1.3 megapixels, and you can both import and export pictures in JPEG, GIF and PNG format, probably more. (Tools for editing the pictures are very rudimentary, though.) You can also record small, grainy videos, but more importantly you can play movies in the WMV format. There exists third-party software that lets you convert other video format into Windows Media Video, and also a downloadable viewer that lets you watch MPEG movies.

It should not surprise anyone that if you can watch video, you can also listen to music. The pocket edition of Windows Media Player can play MP3 files as well as Windows' own proprietary format. The sound quality is of course tinny in the built-in loudspeaker. The next and unpleasant surprise is that a standard headphone jack does not fit in the only obvious hole. The Communicator comes with its own small headset, but that is obviously meant for telephone conversations rather than ye olde concert experience. I hope some kind of converter exists to remedy this and let us listen to music in all its glory. I would be surprised if the sound card is not the same as in the 5500 series, which is excellent. I suppose some of the available Bluetooth headsets may be able to reproduce music satisfyingly and not gouge my ears out the way earplugs do.

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As far as storage capacity for all the music, books and movies... that's up to you. Right out of the box there is 128 MB memory, as advertised; but 64 MB of this is ROM (read-only). Luckily you can add a SD memory card, these are available with various capacities depending on your wallet (or credit card, more likely). I have one 256 MB card that I've used in my previous PDA, but you can get them up to 2 GB at least if you are willing to part with the money. Shop around. (My best bet in value for money is Sandisk, as with most such things.) There is also a mini- SD if you want even more memory, or if you decide to sacrifice the main SD slot for a wi-fi card.

Wireless network is one of the few things that don't come in this machine. It is more an on-the-road machine than a around-in-the-office machine, I guess. Sandisk also makes a high quality SD wi-fi card if you really need this (or if you are addicted to putting as many functions as possible into your gadgets).

One more thing that does come with the box, however, is GPS. Global Positioning System. With it, you can find out where you are in the world within less than five meters. One set of maps comes free with the system, and you can buy more depending on where you travel. The system is unabashedly optimized for car use, though, not for trekking in the wilderness. Smart move. People who trek in the wilderness don't buy executive toys. They are more likely to get a pulse watch with GPS instead. Executives stay in shape by playing squash, as we all know, and it would be a pity if they didn't find the latest watering hole for their kind. So the hw65615 will direct you turn by turn as you drive, speaking out loud if necessary. Or that's what it says. I haven't tried and in all likelihood never will. I do indeed have an amazing gift for getting lost in any human habitation larger than a hamlet, but I don't drive a car. And I sure won't buy one just to test my GPS.

Bet you wondered whether I would do that. I certainly seem crazy enough about it, huh?