Jason Streetz
What many people fail to realize about PocketPCs (or "Windows Mobile" devices as they are being alternatively called now) is that they are ... Pocket PCs. Computers. Really. Don't let the goofy system GUI with its over-simplified design fool you. There is a real operating system running on real hardware in there; it can do many of the same things a desktop PC can do.
By the way, Palm devices "suck". Yes, that is my professional and well-founded opinion. And yes, I've used both.
If you are viewing at 1024X768 resolution on a 17" monitor, this is approximately a real-size image
This thing rocks. I've delt with quite a few PocketPCs, and this one is hands-down the best I've ever seen.
Of course, you may wish to form your own opinion.
Memory Card(s)
I'll be honest.
The one chink in the otherwise impervious armor of the Axim X30 is its lack of a CompactFlash port.
I had become accustomed to using high-capacity CF cards in previous PocketPCs due to their more affordable size/cost ratio,
when compared with SD or MMC cards. Not to mention, it has been my experience that CF cards outperform (speed-wise) SD cards
of the same capacity. But here the X30 only supports SD cards. Hmm. What to do?
First of all, I learned real fast there's no point in buying anything other than "high speed" SD cards. It seemed to me that the higher the capacity of the card, the slower it tends to read and write. Therefore, as size increases, the "x" factor (x30,x50,x150 and so on) must keep escalating with the size, else you have a very poorly performing SD card. And a poorly performing card means a poorly performing PocketPC.
So, I shelled out the extra $$$ and took the premium "high speed" SD card route when I could. Along the way, I had a 512MB, 1GB and most recently 4GB "high speed" SD card as the ongoing resident of my Axim's SD card slot.
Keyboard(s)
Yeah, the on-screen keyboard works most of the time. In fact, nearly all of the time, to me.
And yet, for when I'm ready to unfurl the PocketPC into its "virtually a laptop" configuration -- that is, ready for some serious typing and editing, or perhaps when my wife has forbidden me to bring a laptop --- out come the add-on keyboards for my PocketPC.
First, the "thumbboard", for compact keyboard needs...
And then, the foldable qwerty, for more a full-featured keyboard...
Yeah, the Axim X30, a Windows Mobile 2003 SE device, is coming up on being 3 years old by now.
That makes it a dinosaur by today's standard of yearly leaps in technology,
and I've always been one to keep current when it comes to PocketPCs.
But not a single handheld has come out since that can replace this baby.
Why?
For starters, it is among the strongest and most compact of the Windows Mobile 2003 SE devices.
Next,starting with the later Windows Mobile devices (such as found in the subsequent Dell Axim X5x models), the new "Windows Mobile 5" OS itself is buggy; despite increases in hardware specifications, the performance characteristics of the devices went downward. (Why? For one, Google "Compaction Thread", an OS quirk inherent to the new "feature" of "Persistent Storage" in Windows Mobile 5)
The Dell Axim X5. This thing was a trooper. Never failed me once. Also had the heft of a lead block.
Casio was at the head of the pack with their initial Casio E110, but gradually lost the edge by the time of their final E200 model. Although other manufacturers caught up (and eventually surpassed) Casio in the end, few were as stable, faithful and rugged (an E1XX model was affectionately referred to as "the brick"). One important element of a Cassiopeia at the time was that it had a removable(read:user-replaceable) set of batteries, unlike most Compaq(Aero/iPaq) and HP(Jornada) models of the time. I had an E115, E125 and E200, and truth be told, I'd have kept buying the Cassiopeias if Casio hadn't stopped making them.
The Compaq Aero 2180. This thing started it all for me. I don't think I ever saw one of these on any store shelf, nor in any online catalog apart from Compaq's own. So there I ordered it, apparently just weeks before the whole Aero line disappeared in favor of the then-new "iPaq" line. While it shipped with the Windows CE 2.11 OS, I somehow managed to find an upgrade chip that bumped it to the "newer" Win CE 3.0, which it just barely managed to run.