I recently acquired an iPAQ Pocket PC 3835, mostly due to gadget envy. I'm
like that. Anyway, here are some thoughts.
The 3800 series has a -really- nice screen. Crisp, bright, 16-bit color,
TFT, side lit (like notebooks) with fully adjustable brightness. It looks
really pretty. The screen is probably its best feature. And it has
nothing to do with the OS :).
ActiveSync works more or less seamlessly between the Windows desktop and
the Pocket PC... when it works at all. The listener has a habit of wedging
Windows 98 SE and there is no official way not to have it start at boot
other than to uninstall ActiveSync (unoffically, there is a little hack
called "Kill Active Sync" which does it).
Pocket PC is entirly Windows-centric. No Macintosh, no anything else. But
there are tricks to work around that if some kind of network connection is
available. It can browse Samba... er... CIFS shares without issue, and
WinCE cab files can be installed directly.
I've long said that portable MP3 players suck, especially when they're
really pocket diaries masqerading as audio gear. This one proves it for
two reasons: no play/pause/stop buttons, and no volume control. Everything
is on-screen, which is fine if you want to walk around holding it in one
hand and a stylus in the other. Not for me; I'll stick with my MiniDiscs.
And now, into the UI. It looks like Microsoft went through hoops to
maintain the Windows desktop look and feel, which means the screen is
always very busy, and there is little or no consistency between third-party
applications. I tried three different database programs (for some reason,
Microsoft no longer ships a Pocket Access app but they include the
libraries so third parties can write their own), and they had nothing in
common with each other. One looks like XL, one looks like a paint program,
and the third barfed on a 700KB database.
Calligrapher is now part of the OS. Err... well, it -ships- in ROM. It
still isn't really part of the OS, and the implementation is rather clunky.
And the screen is physically too small to write on, IMO. Perhaps my
opinion will change if I give it the chance to adapt. Still, it lacks the
simplicity of Newton's HWR.
Last points: speed issues. Yes, the 3800 has a 206 MHz StrongArm 1100 CPU.
That CPU is loading apps and saving files on an MS-DOS FAT filesystem. Not
the SA1100's fault that WinCE is slow.
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