“My” New Pocket PC
They apparently like me at work, because my boss gave me a Compaq iPaq h3950 to use on the job. I’m supposed to dock it at my workstation every morning to sync with our Exchange server, so I can get my mails and appointments for the day. Of course my golden rule of electronics is toy first, tool second, and though it’s a couple years old, it seems to still have enough oomph to run lots of great toys.
This is my first real experience with a Pocket PC, so I’m unfamiliar with the OS, what is bundled, and what sort of (free) software is out there. The past 24 hours have been spent discovering each of these things. First, here’s what I got:
- Intel PXA250 XScale @ 400mhz
- 64mb RAM
- 320×240 TFT display (16bit color)
- Pocket PC 2002
- IR communications
I also got the USB/Serial dock (or cradle, whatever), a hard sleeve for it, as well as a hard aluminum case. I was a little bummed to find out it lacks both WiFi AND Bluetooth (though I’m not sure I would use Bluetooth if it had it…). Still, I ended up squeezing a lot of functionality out of it, aside from the functionality I’m supposed to be getting out of it at work. After a lot of digging through terrible PPC software, I have installed the following:
- PocketNester (NES emulator)
- MAMECE3 (MAME emu)
- TCPMP (DivX, Xvid, etc media player)
I also installed a slick networking tool called Newton IP Calculator, which has a MAC conversion tool and a Ping utility, aside from the subnet calculator. For general purposes, I threw a neat little plugin that lets me easily swap between open programs (as well as kill them), and a screen capture utility. I even downloaded a theme generator from Microsoft’s site to give it a little personality. I have basically no use for the built-in voice recorder, and the remote control program Nevo is awesome, except it works with every electronic device on the planet except my own goddamn TV.
I tried PocketQuake, and though it ran, it was barely playable, and I had to uninstall it. The media player is awesome, but I’m a little limited by my pathetic 64mb SD card (which I bought for an MP3 player a long time ago). Fortunately, encoding video for my PPC takes very little time; I did a full 30 minute TV episode in about 3 minutes. I also had an MP3 player (forget the name, but it looks and operates exactly like Winamp), but again, my memory card just doesn’t cut it for MP3 storage.
I’m having a blast with the system, and actually plan on eventually picking up one of my own. I have my eye on the Asus A730, which has an incredible full VGA screen, a 520mhz CPU, WiFi, Bluetooth, SD, CompactFlash, and a 1.3MP camera built into a form factor roughly the size of my current iPaq, for about $500. The WiFi alone justifies the price, since I want to try Ministumbler.
Anyway, new to the handheld scene, and wanted to go off a little on how cool they are. Oh yeah, Happy Thanksgiving or whatever.
