1945 v. rx1950 memory

[caubeck]

I am thinking of buying the rx1950 and have read most of the reviews currently available.

I now have an ipaq 1945 and a 1935 and use them both quite happily but I would also like to have wifi so maybe it's finally time to upgrade. My only doubt is whether the distribution of memory space is inferior on the 1950 compared to the 1945, or better, or the same. I use an SD card for virtually all my software and storage and have no trouble at all at the moment, but I'm not sure if the rx1950 may actually be worse (my confusion over the new OS is to blame).

Any advice in this regard would be appreciated.

[mdlsimpson]

I, too have (had) the 1945 and just got the 1950... I love the device! the screen is much better than my 1945 was and wifi is terrific! I wish it had bluetooth, but I prefer wifi if I had a choice between the two... and it seems HP did its research for wifi vs bluetooth....
Memory has not been a problem for me yet... it is arranged differently from the 1945 and I haven't done much to explore that avenue... I haven't loaded hardly any of my old software yet for fear of incompatibility and crashes... but so far I love it! I'll post more after I play with the memory configuration.... I've only had the PDA for 2 days... plus! battery life seems MUCH better than my 1945 (and I had no complaints about its life)
:D

[caubeck]

Hi mdlsimpson,

Thanks for the reply. I'm very interested in the rx1950 now, I just need to check out a few facts about other devices (Loox 520, etc). Fortunately I'm not a "power user" (whatever that implies), though just being able to work on my articles and other documents wherever I wish to go without carrying a laptop around certainly makes me feel powerful. I still use an ipaq 1935 for most of my daily tasks.

Let me know how you get on with the rx1950.

Chris

[Menneisyys]

I'm not sure if the rx1950 may actually be worse (my confusion over the new OS is to blame).


The question boils down to the following: do you plan to use programs that use a lot of dynamic memory or not.

Some programs consume 8-10 Mbytes of RAM when loaded. An example is Minimo - version 0.07 consumes 10 Mbytes of RAM. (Other Web browsers are far better in this respect: NetFront 3.2 consumes 4M, PIE some 1M and Thunderhawk even less). However, if you load Web pages in multiple tabs/windows and/or load large(r) Web pages, the disadvantage of, say, PIE, disappears really fast: one tab can consume up to 2-5 Mbytes of RAM, depending on the Web page rendered. See http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/index.php?action=expand,42026 on this.

Furthermore, there're other memory-hungry apps; for example, some games. Also, if you plan to use for example image converter utilities (see for example http://www.winmobiletech.com/PICVIEWERS/ on this), the meagre 12 Mbytes of (by default) available RAM of the rx1950 can very easily become a bottleneck.

This all means that, if you use a pre-WM5 Pocket PC and you are ready to clean up / relocate everything off the main RAM by hand to keep it as clean as possible, you can run far more memory-hungry applications than on a WM5 device that has only 12 Mbytes of available RAM.

Note that if you don't relocate anything from RAM (not even the PIE cache - see http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,42768 on this), then, a WM2003/WM2003SE device can easily lose its advantage in the area of free RAM very-very fast.

If you do relocate/cleanup everything, though, then, you can have about four times more available RAM in the 1930/1940 than in the rx1950. That IS some difference!

Bottom line: for a PPC freak that loves fine-tinung his/her Pocket PC, a WM2003(SE) device can give more power, memory-wise, than most of today's WM5 devices (and especially the highly constrained rx1950). For casual users, however, who keep a lot of shared DLL's, .unload files, HTML help files, the PIE cache and/or apps/games that can't be installed into the storage card (see for example the multiplayer PPC game roundup I've posted today http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/menneisyys/102005MPPPCGames.asp for some examples) in RAM, these files may actually result in less dynamic memory counts than even with the most restricted WM5 PDA's.

BTW, if I had to choose from the two devices (there weren't others), I'd go for the rx1950. (I weren't particulrly happy, though. 12Mbytes of available RAM is very-very little for a power user like me. The lack of BT is another problem.)

[caubeck]

Hi Menneisyys,

Thanks, first, for your detailed reply.

I use TextMaker, Word and PDFs. I play the odd movie, I listen to an MP3 occasionally, too, and I would like to use wifi for email. I don't usually play any games, well maybe the odd billiards simulator! But my main concerns are writing, reading (I know about the ereader problem), and storage (SD card).

Does this sound to you as if rx1950 would suit my purpose?

[matt72986]

Hi everyone I'm new to the forum. I know this thread's a bit old but I was surfing the 1940/1945 threads since thats what I have, and I figured I'd just add my two cents. Just as a possible suggestion instead of buying a whole new PDA, you could get a SanDisk WiFi + 256MB card. That's what I use, and it works pretty good. SanDisk doesn't offer them commercially anymore but you can usually find a couple unopened new ones floating around eBay.

[haesslich]

The RAM issue was the breaking point when it came to my 1950 experience - it's a great LITTLE machine, and the screen is heads and shoulders above the 1945... but it had barely half the dynamic RAM of its 'predecessor' machine, which means that I had serious problems opening up even one window of a memory hungry application (Adobe Reader 2 for PPC in my case), as it started choking and locking up with one PDF file of 2MB in size loaded.

For browsing, it's decent - so long as the page isn't heavy on the graphics. For watching videos, you'll be fine - it's fast enough to handle a lot of videos, but don't expect it to play your 5000Kbit-encoded files for your PC at DVD resolutions very well. For using as an e-Reader, if it's not a PDF file, you'll probably be fine.

However, if you've already a 1945... well, if you want the slightly faster processor and WM5, it's not a bad jump, but I'd probably hold back if I had a 4150. It's a decent BASIC machine, as I've repeated again and again... but you become aware of the limitations very quickly. I'm not what I'd consider a power user, or heavy gamer, and I found it too restrictive to have just 8MB of RAM that I could count upon having at any particular point in time.