rone
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This a copy of a review I posted in the more generic AVforum about the IPAQ i just got, some of it is GS relevant!
I've just replaced (or rather running alongside) my sony P910 and Mitac Mio GPS PDA digiwalker with the IPAQ 6516.
PCpro ran a review of it in the latest issue which was enough to send me out to get one, I'd had a good run with the sony Pxxxx series phones and the Mitac 168 GPS digiwalker (the first pocket pc to have onboard gps), I've used both many times.
The P910 I used for work with outlook to schedule my meetings, check emails, do the odd bit of browsing. The Mitac Mio I've used as tomtom navigation device as well as Memory Map OS GPS plotting for walking, biking and touring.
The big downside was carrying two bits of expensive hardware, cases and power leads, although I did devise various systems to cope, on my motorbike for instance I hard-wired everything in to the tank bag for music, calls and GPS.
So now the IPAQ 65xx series contains the best of both worlds, it's no bigger than the previous PDA but has a square screen to allow for a qwerty keyboard which sits below. Quite a bit larger than the P910 though and certainly more greedy than both on battery power.
You get a bundled version of tomtom5 with the PDA, but effectively you will need to buy a map as you only get one free city. You get a discount voucher which allows you to have europe on disc for about £99 so it's not a bad offer. The Ipaq is very responsive (certainly compared to the MIO), although it can be sluggish taking calls while using the GPS, but not impossible to use.
It also has a flip-down screen cover to protect the touch sensitive screen. The unit itself has several methods of control, small qwerty keypad which is pretty good and certainly a lot more useable than the P910s tiny keyboard. You also have letter recognition from the pointer. After a couple of days and a bit of custom key mapping I can do most tasks, reading & composing mail and texts without using the touch screen.
Things I miss from the P910 - an inbuilt gprs usage monitor (did I mention it has Gprs/Edge for net work?) and the jog dial. Battery life was good on the P910, coming in at 2-4 days with regular use, this unit, looks to be about 1 day; but with a bit of profile messing you can do without the backlight on the screen for outdoor use though. There doesn't seem to be away to turn the GPS off though which could save a bit of juice, it does charge very rapidly though and you can buy a bigger form cell.
Tomtom 5 works well on the unit, and even though the screen is a little smaller than a regular IPAQ, its very functional.
So now I can load up my tank bag with the 6515, play music, use the GPS, answer phone calls all through my motorbike comms unit! Recently on a tour up to the outer Hebrides I was constantly swapping between the two (Mitac+P910) for charging.
Other features: It has a 1.3 Mpixel camera (which is not brilliant,) with flash. An SD Card and Mini SD input, integrated bluetooth, illuminated keyboard, internal GPS antenna. It runs on windows mobile 2003. Internal back-up rom for backing up files and OS etc; this is very useful, allowing you to try different software and configurations whilst being able to roll back to your stable back up.
The main absentee is Wifi; but you will be able to get a SD mini card with this on shortly, still leaving you full size SD for music, data etc.
I got it sim free, and only vodafone are supporting it on a contract at the moment, and it's (was) more expensive with contract.
A brilliant piece of kit, a word of warning though, it's big for a phone, but obviously tiny for the technology inside.
UPdate 20/08.
I've now used the system on autocom, really stress testing it, using tomtom 5, media player and the phone it works well.
It is best to have media player highlighted rather than tom-tom if you want to hear the music and navigational instructions, the other way around cuts off the music every now and again.
You can improve battery life by not using the back-light outdoors as the screen works well with reflective sun-light, I did this by creating two profiles, one for indoor one for out.
There is a small amount of interference running through the autocom/ipaq interface somewhere, though I had this on my old unit as well.
I've just replaced (or rather running alongside) my sony P910 and Mitac Mio GPS PDA digiwalker with the IPAQ 6516.
PCpro ran a review of it in the latest issue which was enough to send me out to get one, I'd had a good run with the sony Pxxxx series phones and the Mitac 168 GPS digiwalker (the first pocket pc to have onboard gps), I've used both many times.
The P910 I used for work with outlook to schedule my meetings, check emails, do the odd bit of browsing. The Mitac Mio I've used as tomtom navigation device as well as Memory Map OS GPS plotting for walking, biking and touring.
The big downside was carrying two bits of expensive hardware, cases and power leads, although I did devise various systems to cope, on my motorbike for instance I hard-wired everything in to the tank bag for music, calls and GPS.
So now the IPAQ 65xx series contains the best of both worlds, it's no bigger than the previous PDA but has a square screen to allow for a qwerty keyboard which sits below. Quite a bit larger than the P910 though and certainly more greedy than both on battery power.
You get a bundled version of tomtom5 with the PDA, but effectively you will need to buy a map as you only get one free city. You get a discount voucher which allows you to have europe on disc for about £99 so it's not a bad offer. The Ipaq is very responsive (certainly compared to the MIO), although it can be sluggish taking calls while using the GPS, but not impossible to use.
It also has a flip-down screen cover to protect the touch sensitive screen. The unit itself has several methods of control, small qwerty keypad which is pretty good and certainly a lot more useable than the P910s tiny keyboard. You also have letter recognition from the pointer. After a couple of days and a bit of custom key mapping I can do most tasks, reading & composing mail and texts without using the touch screen.
Things I miss from the P910 - an inbuilt gprs usage monitor (did I mention it has Gprs/Edge for net work?) and the jog dial. Battery life was good on the P910, coming in at 2-4 days with regular use, this unit, looks to be about 1 day; but with a bit of profile messing you can do without the backlight on the screen for outdoor use though. There doesn't seem to be away to turn the GPS off though which could save a bit of juice, it does charge very rapidly though and you can buy a bigger form cell.
Tomtom 5 works well on the unit, and even though the screen is a little smaller than a regular IPAQ, its very functional.
So now I can load up my tank bag with the 6515, play music, use the GPS, answer phone calls all through my motorbike comms unit! Recently on a tour up to the outer Hebrides I was constantly swapping between the two (Mitac+P910) for charging.
Other features: It has a 1.3 Mpixel camera (which is not brilliant,) with flash. An SD Card and Mini SD input, integrated bluetooth, illuminated keyboard, internal GPS antenna. It runs on windows mobile 2003. Internal back-up rom for backing up files and OS etc; this is very useful, allowing you to try different software and configurations whilst being able to roll back to your stable back up.
The main absentee is Wifi; but you will be able to get a SD mini card with this on shortly, still leaving you full size SD for music, data etc.
I got it sim free, and only vodafone are supporting it on a contract at the moment, and it's (was) more expensive with contract.
A brilliant piece of kit, a word of warning though, it's big for a phone, but obviously tiny for the technology inside.
UPdate 20/08.
I've now used the system on autocom, really stress testing it, using tomtom 5, media player and the phone it works well.
It is best to have media player highlighted rather than tom-tom if you want to hear the music and navigational instructions, the other way around cuts off the music every now and again.
You can improve battery life by not using the back-light outdoors as the screen works well with reflective sun-light, I did this by creating two profiles, one for indoor one for out.
There is a small amount of interference running through the autocom/ipaq interface somewhere, though I had this on my old unit as well.
