User friendly

I have had my 114 for about a fortnight and so far have had no problems with it. It is easy to use and syncs well with Vista / Outlook with no conflicts. The only gripe I have (and it is a small one beileve me) is that so far I have found no way to colour code the appointments in the diary. A useful piece of kit!

iPAQ 214 review

The iPAQ 214 has its quirks. The buttons I find too low in the device. If they were a little prouder it would be easier to change pages while reading e-books in bed at night. It is also not so comfortable in the hand as my older iPAQ h1930 running windows CE 4.20. I have only had the iPAQ214 for a few days but one thing that does irritate is the seemingly missing ability to scroll to the next page in a large documents. It scrolls to the next highlighted word, but that is not the same thing.
I tried a 4gig SD card to view the 3.3 gig Wikipedia I purchased but it would not work. But on the compact flash card it works a treat, so I am very pleased, as my old h1930 could not see anything over 2 gigs.
The larger screen is a nice bonus, and makes it suitable for night reading. The battery life is impressive, after reading for an hour and a half I still had 85% power left, way better than my old PDA.
Windows mobile 6 take a little getting used to, but I am sure it will be fine. Internet connecting could not have been easier. It is a nice bit of kit, not so convenient to handle as the 3.5 inch, but worth it.
I thought long and hard before buying this, and I am glad I did. Amazon were incredibly quick to deliver post free. It arrived the very next day after ordering. Apart from the low profile buttons which make it a little difficult to hold and manoeuvre the device without it slipping, I am well pleased. It does not feel as sturdy as my iPAQ h1930, and the back case is not so rigid. Also the stylus is a pain, the end piece that slots so neatly into the case when done, sticks into your finger when you write. Summing up. 7 out of 10.

Update your firmware!

There have been a lot of comments in various forums about the network switching being poor. The early versions of the firmware were simply buggy. If you update to the latest firmware the network issues go away. Switching is no longer a problem and I now never have to reboot the phone. Battery life isn't brilliant - but there is an extended battery available. I love synching with work email and personal email which the 612 makes a breeze to do.

Don't buy it for VOIP - or as a reliable phone

I've had these since summer '07. HP seem to ignore all the problems.

I've got -

- unusable volume for VOIP
- appalling battery life
- random 100% discharges
- Problems seeing/connecting to WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK networks
- irritating start-up jingle

Overall, a huge waste of money - and more importantly time. This is Beta hardware at best.

Useful - how did I manage without it?

The essentials from your main PC in a handheld package. More and more applications available for it that increase it's effectiveness. On a recent trip to New York I found a wireless network from my hotel room that I could connect to that let me browse the web and send / receive e-mail.

The best investment I made in years

I’m writing this on my hx4700 itself. I’ve never liked laptops and a pocket pc seemed my best choice for mobile computing.

I spent a long time researching and it paid off. The next best seemed to be the lifedrive and I’m so pleased I settled on this instead, having seen others having problems with them.

The screen is fantastic. The inbuilt software surprised my friends who have other mobile pc’s. It does everything I want, straight out of the box, and thanks to its expandability, if it doesn’t do everything you want on day one, you can add to it. It even comes with free software download credits which you can use to get additional programs from a wide range.

I can’t recommend it highly enough.

AWESOME device!

Mobile phone, Wi-fi PDA and a GPS all in one. Just fantastic. The form factor is good - a little wider than I was used to but after a week I didn't notice. Voice quality is excellent.

Being able to hit the road, knowing I have access to email and can update documents and spreadsheets without having to cart along a laptop - perfect.

Battery life is great, although Wi-fi does tend to sap it somewhat.

Perhaps it's best to give you a"day in the life" of how well this little genius does everything:

A while ago I had to go to a meeting in London, at an office I'd never been to before. First I called a taxi to the train station. While in the taxi, I checked on train departure times (guess I should have done that before I left, but anyway). Unfortunately I couldn't actually buy my ticket online as the website wanted more (AJAX?) functionality than the built-in browser could handle. Once on the train I called the office to find out which was the nearest tube station. Then I worked a little on a spreadsheet while listening to some MP3s, then read an e-book for the last half hour. Once I'd reached the destination underground station, I fired up TomTom in"walking" mode, and it guided me to the office without any fuss at all.

What more could you ask for?

Of course it's not *quite* perfect. You'll need to buy TomTom maps for the whole of the UK, unless you never plan on leaving one city (one free city download is allowed). And the silly little flip-over plastic cover will break within a week. Invest in a good quality belt-pouch, there are plenty of them available - try here on Amazon.