my impressions of the HP iPaq rx1955

[heov]

History: I've always been a fan of PDAs... more of an enthusiast than one who actually needed one. I'd never use the PIM or anything like that. Had a host of PPCs from hp 548 to the first ipaq to the asus mypal a600. then i realized im wasting my time and money and took a break for a year or 2. then i needed one for class... something to check my email and manage my tasks, and to browse during class lol.

So I went for the Palm TX. First palm os device, and it was nice. It could play video well, I coud OC it to be extremely fast, but I hated how unpolished OS5 is. Like the graffiti area would just pop up sometimes and go back. and it had to show for basic things like connecting to wifi, etc. And I didn't really like the qality of the device... creaked too much. and half the software wasn't compatible, and the mp3 quality was just horrible (really loud static hiss).

Anyway, i turned to the rx1950 strictly cause of it's size. I mean I realized w/ all the coupons I could have gotten the new axim for the same price, but I'm the guy who puts a screen protector on and slips it in my pocket, and I don't think the Axim could handle that.

So let me tell you about my experiences w/ this device. Prior to this, I had a PPC2k2 device, so this is my firt WM5 (skipped wm2k3 and se).

The ipaq is tiny and built well, just how i like it.
The screen is nice, but not as nice as other transflectives out there. It's viewing angle is probaby the worst I've sen. THe colors warp or even invert at even slight angles. I know the upper end ipaq's aren't this bad, and neither was my TX.

QVGA suck. After glancing at VGA ppc's and using a HVGA palm, the screen on the ipaq looks like crud. I can almost see the "gridlines" of the pixels. And websurfing isn't great, compared to waht i'm used to, but this isn't a big deal.

Cleartype looks like crud too.

my biggest issue with this is it's SOOOOO SLOOOOOW. I don't know if this is a WM5 thing, bu this thing lags in ALL areas. When you turn off Cleartype, you do see quite a noticable improvement in the snappiness. And turnning off menu animation helps too.

I mean this thing lags hen you hit START. When you hit Close, you have to wait a few seconds, wh you hit programs, wait a sec. Heck, it doesn't even softreset instantly on some occaisons... takes like 2s sometimes.

Typing in my password? after typing it in, wait 1 or 2s. Trust me- this isn't a third party app causing this. I've done all this on a fresh hard reset.

Hopefully Anton Tomov will supprt this processor in his next revision... or MS will fix this, cause I've used PPC2k2 devices w/ 200mhz intels that seemed snappier.

lol oh yeah, you might want to grab a book if you plan on switching themes (ok, i exaggerate)

Second issue with is the complete lack of RAM. After a Hard Reset, with Active Sync closed, you get 13MB of free ram. This is 32MB device, and only like 20something is available (too lazy to check, butI think it's 23mb). After I installed SPB Pocket Plus and Joural Bar, I only get 11MB free, IF I DISABLE POCKET PLUSES TODAY SCREEN PLUGIN! If i do enable it, w/ just memory indicatrs I only get 9MB free.

If I load up WMP, it takes up 3mb, making only like 7 free. Then go check your email, and load up PIE, and the music will probalby stop playing or yur email will likely close.

And lets not forget about the fact that free memory just seems to keep getting smaller and smaller as time goes on... sometimes the max is 6mb w/ all apps closed after a few hours of use, whereas a soft reset would give me 10.

Storage memory is good enough for me. I think you get like 27 out of the 64mb in the end, which is enough for apps. and I have a gig sd for data.

So that's it for me, I'll probably update this with more issues as I find them.

Oh yeah, the wifi implemenation sucks on PPC, or at least on the ipaq. What's the deal w/ the stupid tower looking icon on the top? Why isn't this a signal meter, like it should be? When I click on it, it should go to iPaq Wirelss, not some other crud it goes to now. oh well.

BTW if you want to know what's good abou this device? It's size. That's it, compared to other ppcs.

oh yeah, today I took it to class for the first time. Device wouldn't turn on. Wouldn't soft reset. After tying to soft reset it 5 times, it finaly does sponaneously, and check this - all my emails, and even my email account, had vanished. I had to setup a new account. ANd get this, the battery was at 74%. What's the deal? I assume it randomly turned on or something.

heov

[Nurhisham Hussein]

I don't know if this is a WM5 thing, bu this thing lags in ALL areas.

Unfortunately, it most certainly is a WM5.0 thing :roll: With WM5.0, MS shifted to a different memory model. RAM is now used purely for program execution, while the OS, all apps and system files sit in ROM. This means you aren't supposed to lose your data if for some reason your battery runs out. The problem with this bright idea is that ROM is sloooooooooooow compared to RAM, or even compared to the variety of ROM you have on your SD card.

[ADBrown]

Anyway, i turned to the rx1950 strictly cause of it's size. I mean I realized w/ all the coupons I could have gotten the new axim for the same price, but I'm the guy who puts a screen protector on and slips it in my pocket, and I don't think the Axim could handle that.

I do that all the time with my Axims. They're also quite fast, and have VGA. :twisted:

Maybe Dell did their own thing with WM5 before they used it on the X51v, but I seem to be one of only about a dozen people who find it to be a huge improvement in speed and usability over previous versions.

[heov]

indeed the axim may be good for you, but it won't fit in my jean pockets comfortably.


anyway back to the slowness.

well palm's use NVFS Ram, which is non-volitile. Is this different than basic NAND Rom? I love how the new memory system is structured... it should be this way.

But why use slow NAND Rom when we have NVFS Ram... on my tx, we had 128MB of NVFS Ram. 12MB of it was blocked off for Program Execution. And liek another 12MB was blocked off for the ROM. it wasn't really ROM, it was just write protected NVFS ram, so it's basically the same. ANd then there was 4mb for the DB Cache (palm stuff).

and that left like 100MB of storage.

Anyway, back to my ipaq. Today, for a total of 3 times. if my unit is off for say about an hour, and I try to turn it back on, I can't! Nothing will work until I do a soft reset. It's absurd! I can turn it off, wait 5 min, and turn it back on w/o issue. But if I wait for an extended period of time, I can't!

Does anyone else have this issue?

Secondly, have there been any reportings on crappy digitizers on ipaqs recently? Mine seems to be innaccurate. I align the screen, and notice sometimes i miss the scroll bar, so I do the "Self Test" that's bulit into the ipaq, and I fail it. So i allign again, fail again. I alighn again, being real careful, and I pass. What's the deal?

What's the deal w/ this thing not turning on? I only have Pocket Plus and Journal Bar intalled. I thought it was because my Email was set to check every 15min, and maybe that's why I had lost 25% of my battery in the morning, but I disbled that and the issue still persists. I havne't noticed my battery going exceptionally fast... but I always seem to lose 1 or 2% in about an hour, which gives it crappy stand by time.

Is this the WM5 and storage card bug I read about on the Axims?

[heov]

the issue i'm having is a common problem.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=967404

how could hp even release a product with this kind of issue? it's not just a bug... it requires a soft reset EVERY TIME you leave teh device off for a certain amount of time w/ the storage card in.

UPDATE:

scratch that.

http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=100190&page=1&pp=20

how could MS release such a huge bug in their OS? and then how could HP and Dell not catch this?

I mean if a person where to go buy this iPaq right now from BB w/ an SD card, they wouldn't be able to turn it on. And they're gonna go get something else.

Meh. Guess i'll have to go back to the Palm TX.

[airconvent]

its good to share any problems but bad to allow it to coagulate into a narrow view of the problem because of a vocal few. looks to me this is a bad batch problem that affects some units , so the solution is to send it back to HP for repair.

I have the 2750 which I have used with 1 1GB CF, 1 GB SD and 2 GB SD and have absolutely no problem with it. no lock ups, no power on/power off problems, zilch. Initially, I thought I had a charging problem and then I found out I read the manual wrongly...silly me.

I have also owned a Jornada 54x series, 56 series and they were all rock solid (save for the initial dust problem which was eventually solved).
so do give the platform a chance to prove itself..you could be one of a small percentage with problems...my guess is after the replacement, it will work very well..

as for wm5, there are always some ver 1.0 problems....but that's normal , even for Palm, I think..

cheers

[caubeck]

I was considering the ipaq 1955 but in the last few days I've become more interested in the 2490 or higher, mainly due to reviews of both.

I'm no power user, but I do depend on TextMaker and an SD card. Can anyone restore my faith in the 1955 before I make my final choice?

[Nurhisham Hussein]

I'd seriously doubt you could run textmaker comfortably on the rx1950's limited memory.

[heov]

its good to share any problems but bad to allow it to coagulate into a narrow view of the problem because of a vocal few. looks to me this is a bad batch problem that affects some units , so the solution is to send it back to HP for repair.


no. it's a common problem, it affects all rx1950s. HP knows of the issue, and they will not bother to replace the unit because they will tell you to wait for the ROM update that fixes teh issue, a rom update that is due "anytime" (most likeley well into 2006).

click the links i provided. there's a huge thread on HP support forums regarding the SD card issue. Some (VERY FEW) have reported not having the problem, but this is most likely a rare circumstance with special software running.

For example, the issue does not occur if there is no AS connection ever made (and this is the reason why HP said they didnt' see it lol... which could also explain why AS sucks so much, cause they don't bother syncing them).

[heov]

I was considering the ipaq 1955 but in the last few days I've become more interested in the 2490 or higher, mainly due to reviews of both.

I'm no power user, but I do depend on TextMaker and an SD card. Can anyone restore my faith in the 1955 before I make my final choice?

I ditched the ipaq rx1955 for the hx295 and I have 0 complaints.

I'm gonna go ahead and emphasize the rx1955's lack of memory again. After a hard reset, and closing all apps, ayou ahve like 13MB of RAM free. Once you install a today plug in or to, a task manager, you'll probably get 11MB free.

That 11MB is horrible. hardly any large pictures will load in PIE, and I couldn't even keep Messagin, WMP, and PIE open at the same time. One would always close.

Not to mention that device was sloooooooooow.

Anyway now that I have an hx2495, this thing, although still laggy in some areas, is noticably faster, especially in video and PIE rendering. And because it has mroe ram, more pictures (but not all) are showing up on websites.

Not to metions it renders So much faster!

It has AMPLE RAM! Enough to leave a lot of apps open, and have a lot of today plugins w/o worrying too much about slow down.

Also, it doesn'thave the dreaded SD card bug that haunts the 1950series.

But it is bigger. But since it comes w/ a screen cover, I can forego a case, so i nteh end, it takes up the same amount of space in my coat pocket.

Hope that helps!

I highly recommend spending the extra hundred bucks. You get a cradle, you get bluetooth, you get more ram, you get more processing power, you get dual slots, and you get more internal storage.

[haesslich]

If you need a basic machine - the 1950 will do the trick. But remember that there's almost NO RAM on this device. heov's already noted the downsides to little RAM (web pages don't tend to load, or load slowly, applications are hard to run if you're doing more than one at a time), and I have to emphasize that as well. The SD card bug hasn't really bit me in the ass yet, and he's stated it's a WM5 issue - so the 2495 won't necessarily be free of that.

The 2495's biggest advantages are the extra RAM (64MB of SDRAM, minus the 20ish MB that WM5 takes up is a lot more RAM than the 1950 will give you), the CF slot (which allows microdrives and greater expansion capability as you can use CF-based GPS units, or other accessories, while keeping SD for a storage card), and a somewhat faster processor.

Honestly, I'm thinking about taking the 1950 back in to upgrade to a 2490 - at least i'd get 64MB of RAM instead of the 32... even if it's not as sleek in design. It's pretty, and it's a decent BASIC machine.. but now I'm finding I'm already starting to outgrow it.

EDIT: Not even a couple of weeks, and I seriously outgrew it. The Adobe Acrobat Reader having to shut down everything running to open a simple PDF file that wasn't even a meg in size (and even then, it choked somewhat) was the final straw which broke the camel's back. I'm with heov now - the h1950's like the airheaded beach blonde of the iPAQ world; it looks pretty, but if you ask it to do more than one thing at a time then you're asking for trouble. Heck, ask it to do one thing which takes up a lot of memory (PDF handling), and you've got problems.

Incidentally, the $50 instant rebate didn't hurt either. ;)

[caubeck]

Thanks for the informative post. Now I know which model to buy.

It's a pity as my ipaqs 1935 and 45 both work very efficiently with whatever I throw at them, and they have a similarly slim, attractive design as the 1955.

[pocketpcadmirer]

Thanks for the review. My sister was drooling over *this* 1950. THanks for sharing the problems..looks like I'll have to buy her some cheap SE PDA :( :cry:

Sunny

[haesslich]

Thanks for the review. My sister was drooling over *this* 1950. THanks for sharing the problems..looks like I'll have to buy her some cheap SE PDA :( :cry:

Sunny

If you already bought it, give her the 1950 and get a few dollars off her, then go off and buy another machine. ;) Honestly, it's nice and speedy - so long as you take the RAM issue into account. The fact that Adobe Acrobat Reader 2 takes 8MB of the 11MB that you'll have available most of the time, not counting the size of any documents you open, is what killed my love for it. It'll run videos just fine - the processor's pretty powerful for its clock speed - BUT the lack of RAM hobbles it when reading webpages with a medium-to-heavy amount of graphics... or when you run two programs which take up a good chunk of memory at once (having PIE with a page loaded, then running WMP to view the video you just downloaded) as WM5 will end up shutting down EVERYTHING else to run the video... which means that you'll have to manually navigate back to the site in question, unless you had previously bookmarked it.

For me, having the PDA almost lock up when I opened up a 2MB PDF file, and then nearly crash when I visited a webpage which had some graphics on it (it took 10 minutes for it to unlock, and that was after it'd rejected most of the page's images) shifted me onto another machine. If they'd doubled the RAM, they'd have been fine - and the 1945 had 64MB of RAM, which is why it performed so well. The 1950's halving of that due to the 'space' that WM5 freed up (it really doesn't free up the space, but it moves the storage into flash ROM) was a mistake, and one which costs the machine major points.

As I said above, 64MB should be considered the barest minimum for WM5 - anything lower, and you'll be out of space so fast that it's not funny.

[airconvent]

mm...perhaps the problem is also because people had false expectations about what the 1950 is and its HP's fault to have not corrected this misconception in their marketing. I see that people bought this relatively cheap pda and expect it to work like a Dell 50V or an Ipaq 27xx.

the 1950 is not the excellent 4150 although they have the same form factor.
it is actually a ipaq 1940 and rx1710 combined with some improvements after complaints about the first 2. Its primarily targetted at people with simple needs, contacts, appointments, a document or 2 etc.

of course, its unforgiveable for them not to make an effort to rectify a serious problem once reported as was suggested here....

cheers

[haesslich]

mm...perhaps the problem is also because people had false expectations about what the 1950 is and its HP's fault to have not corrected this misconception in their marketing. I see that people bought this relatively cheap pda and expect it to work like a Dell 50V or an Ipaq 27xx.

the 1950 is not the excellent 4150 although they have the same form factor.
it is actually a ipaq 1940 and rx1710 combined with some improvements after complaints about the first 2. Its primarily targetted at people with simple needs, contacts, appointments, a document or 2 etc.

of course, its unforgiveable for them not to make an effort to rectify a serious problem once reported as was suggested here....

cheers

It's not quite an iPaq 1940 either - the 1940 at least had 64MB of RAM, which this machine doesn't have - and given the memory requirements of things like Adobe Reader 2 (e-book reading), having just 10-11MB of RAM free was a poor design choice on HP's part. I thought of myself having simple needs, and I can't even open up ONE PDF file on this thing without it choking halfway to hell and gone.

If they'd kept the 1940's hardware, including the RAM, then this may have been a passable machine - the 64MB of RAM would go far in alleviating most of the major problems this thing has (practically no RAM), and let it load more than pages designed for cellphones. :D I had a hard enough time browsing GMail, much less sites with more graphics than that... and again, as noted, I'd consider e-books a basic usage, but this thing nearly died opening up 1-2MB files, on top of the 8MB Adobe already took.

[airconvent]

It's not quite an iPaq 1940 either - the 1940 at least had 64MB of RAM, which this machine doesn't have - and given the memory requirements of things like Adobe Reader 2 (e-book reading), having just 10-11MB of RAM free was a poor design choice on HP's part. I thought of myself having simple needs, and I can't even open up ONE PDF file on this thing without it choking halfway to h-ll and gone.

If they'd kept the 1940's hardware, including the RAM, then this may have been a passable machine - the 64MB of RAM would go far in alleviating most of the major problems this thing has (practically no RAM), and let it load more than pages designed for cellphones. :D I had a hard enough time browsing GMail, much less sites with more graphics than that... and again, as noted, I'd consider e-books a basic usage, but this thing nearly died opening up 1-2MB files, on top of the 8MB Adobe already took.

hi haesslich
As I said, the 1950 is a basic pda for people with simple needs. I would not have called adobe pdf reader an "essential" application since the primary way to read books would have been using microsoft reader. for ebooks, I seldom come across people who use a pdf reader. most either use MS reader or Palm reader.

also, with that little ram, its pretty obvious the only way to store data is on the SD card. I would say the key functions expected would be contacts, appointments, tasks, word, excel, avantgo, backup, mp3 and simple games. all this is very possible in combination with an SD card.

if you want more ram, more power, more non-essential apps but CHEAP, then the best bet would have been the Ipaq 21xx, 2210, old 4150 or even the 3xxx series.

cheers

[haesslich]

hi haesslich
As I said, the 1950 is a basic pda for people with simple needs. I would not have called adobe pdf reader an "essential" application since the primary way to read books would have been using microsoft reader. for ebooks, I seldom come across people who use a pdf reader. most either use MS reader or Palm reader.

also, with that little ram, its pretty obvious the only way to store data is on the SD card. I would say the key functions expected would be contacts, appointments, tasks, word, excel, avantgo, backup, mp3 and simple games. all this is very possible in combination with an SD card.

if you want more ram, more power, more non-essential apps but CHEAP, then the best bet would have been the Ipaq 21xx, 2210, old 4150 or even the 3xxx series.

cheers

The problem is NOT the storage (aka flash ROM) space - that can be expanded, as you noted. My main issue is it doesn't have enough RAM - executable space to run programs - and doesn't allow you to move DLLs from RAM onto the storage card, or to set up a 'swap' file like you have on a real PC (desktop or laptop) to store data which isn't immediately required. In other words, the 11-12MB of executable RAM is all the space there is to run programs. What Adobe does is take up 8 of the 11MB which you may have available... not counting the PDF file itself which is loaded into RAM (the remaining 3MB) in order to display... and the filesys.exe and GWES.exe programs keep taking up more memory the longer the PocketPC is running without a soft reboot, and the more programs which are run. In the end, this means that you run out of actual executable space pretty quickly... which was my problem.

I personally consider PDFs to be a fairly basic 'e-book' format, albeit one which is portable between more computers than the LIT format the Microsoft Reader uses (and which has had problems with WM5), and the 1950 couldn't handle it. If it had the same amount of executable RAM (64MB) that the 1945 had, I wouldn't have had an issue. Remember that WM5 treats RAM as heap space in order to run programs, while storage (flash ROM) is used for holding data which is not immediately required - such as the data and executable files. The heap space is what does all the work of 'keep program A running while loading file B', and that's where the 1950's limits really show themselves.

It's not a BAD machine, like I keep repeating... but it really is a little crippled, since I had problems reading PDF files, or browsing large pages.

[heov]

yeah, it's not the storage... it's the actual ram. WM5 has seperated storage and RAM.

this device basically has 12-13MB on a fresh hard reset. With a few today plugins/task managers, you will probalby only get 11MB on a soft reset.

i can tell you that i can not have Message, WMP, and PIE open at the same time. If i'm playing some music, and open up PIE (and my mail is usually always open), the first thing to close is WMP (not messaging).

Secondly, it's safe to assume since this device has wifi, ppl will probalby want to surf the net on it. And good luck going to pages that have a lot of pics/not mobile optimized. It will suffer.

But indeed, if all they want to do is basic pim, calander, occaisonal email, then the device is sufficient, but I still wouldlnt' reccommend it for the price.

They could get a Palm TX for basic stuff- since they dont' need multitasking, palm will be great. and it has bluetooth, and a twice the resolution. and I can tell you that it is MUCH snappier. WM5, to me, lags in all areas. from pushing the start menu, to gooing to the programs list, or the settings list, or today settings, there's always a delay.

[haesslich]

For me, the delay's about a fifth to a third of a second - not bad, but it's not the 'instant' popup you get with a Palm, and I'm content with that. It's just when the system's so overloaded that it's out of RAM and has to spend cycles closing programs that you've got problems.

The Palm T|X is a great little machine for the price, though. I was considering that, before deciding I needed a BIT more power.. and so spent more money on more RAM. :)

[heov]

For me, the delay's about a fifth to a third of a second - not bad, but it's not the 'instant' popup you get with a Palm, and I'm content with that. It's just when the system's so overloaded that it's out of RAM and has to spend cycles closing programs that you've got problems.

The Palm T|X is a great little machine for the price, though. I was considering that, before deciding I needed a BIT more power.. and so spent more money on more RAM. :)

I originally had a palm tx, before I went to the ipaq rx1955, which i finally exchanged for an hx495.

The palm was nice, great screen, and battery life was incredible! and it was so fast, especially system navigation. Video's on the 312MHz xscale played about 1.5x faster (fps) than they did on the rx1955, and I could OC that xscale to the same 520MHz spec in my new ipaq.

and the memory system of the palm (and all new palms) is so much better than that of PPCs. PPCs have dynamic ram and ROM for storage, kinda like computers.

but the palm utlizes NVFS Ram, which is about as fast as normal dynamic ram, except it's non-volitile, so it also saves data when the unit is turned off. And instead of having a ROM, they just put everything in the NVFS Ram. It's a 128MB chip. 16MB is "read only" system files (ala rom), 4MB is allocated for "dynamic ram" (which is low, considering older palms had like 16mb set to dyanamic ram/heap), and 4MB to the DB Cache (like dynamic ram, but for "special" programs i think). and then it left 102MB left for storage/apps, etc.

But the issue i had since they only allowed 4mb of dynamic ram/heap, webpages would often result in a "too large to load" error msg. And i didn't like how i couldn't switch between the browser and email effectively (i could get to each program fast, but my email msg wouldnt stay open, i'd just get back to the inbox).

Oh, and the biggest issue was a very loud hiss coming from the earphone jack. This is apperant on all ppcs, but it's very slight, but it was VERY apperant on the TX.

[Menneisyys]

I've posted a blog entry on the device to my PPCMag Expert Blog at http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=the_hp_ipaq_rx195x_is_it_any_good&more=1 , linking in this thread.