Don Tolson
01-23-2003, 04:00 PM
Having had the IBiz Pocket Radio for a month or so now, I thought it would be a good idea to provide some ‘first hand’ experience on how the product works, how it sounds, etc.* The IBiz Pocket Radio is a CF-type 1 card and accompanying software which adds a fully functioning FM radio to your Pocket PC bucket of tricks. Read on for my full review!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/don-jan03-ibizradio-1a.jpg" /> <br /><br /><!><br /><i>Having had the IBiz Pocket Radio for a month or so now, I thought it would be a good idea to provide some ‘first hand’ experience on how the product works, how it sounds, etc.* The IBiz Pocket Radio is a CF-type 1 card and accompanying software which adds a fully functioning FM radio to your Pocket PC bucket of tricks.* Its small size keeps the overall product still very ‘pocket-able’ and, if you get some better headphones, it has quite reasonable sound quality.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Where To Buy</b></span><br />You can order the PocketRadio <a href="http://www.ibizcorp.com/pocketradio.html">directly from IBiz</a> for $49.99<br /><br /><span><b>Getting in on the first release…</b></span><br />First of all, I should announce up front that I am a big fan of this product.* Ever since I first found out I could create and play MP3s on my Jornada 568, I’ve been hoping/waiting for a radio attachment to come out.* I was getting tired of listening to the same songs, even though I had almost 3 hours of stuff on my 128mb CF card.* I saw the announcement on Brighthand, and immediately sent off notes asking about availability, pricing, etc.* Later that day, I got emails from the Sales and Product Development people at IBiz with more detailed information.* They also pointed me to a place on their Web site where I could pre-order one of the units, which I did. About 6 weeks later, the unit arrived.<br /><br /><span><b>What Comes in the Box</b></span><br />The box contains:<li>Pocket Radio CF card<br /><li>Installation Floppy<br /><li>Set of ‘bud’ type stereo earphones<br /><li>4-page installation/usage summary<br />The installation/usage summary is just that, a summary of the technical specifications, a three line description of how to run the installation ‘SETUP.EXE’ file and a picture of the screen interface, describing each of the controls.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/don-jan03-ibizradio-1b.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 1: The PocketRadio package from IBiz</i><br /><br /><span><b>Installation</b></span><br />Installing the Pocket Radio is fairly straightforward.* I would strongly suggest (as they do) that you install the software from the floppy first, before inserting the radio/CF card into your unit.* I did, however, try it the other way to determine that nothing disastrous happens.* It’s just that the floppy software installs the drivers necessary for your PDA to recognize the card and without those drivers, you get some weird messages like: ‘unrecognized card’ etc.<br /><br />If you run the install from the SETUP.exe on the floppy, it will expect that you have Microsoft’s Activesync running and will use this to do the usual software install.* I did notice that the floppy contains a .CAB file, but I didn’t try just copying the file over to the PDA, then running the .CAB file.* That might work too, but the manual didn’t talk about that, and I’m just as happy using Activesync’s installation routines.<br /><br />Install took about 1 minute and didn’t require any intervention on my part, except to confirm that I wanted to install in the default locations.* Again, I didn’t try installing to my CF card, and the manual doesn’t talk about whether this is possible or not.* One nice feature of this install was that I didn’t have to do a soft-reset after installation was complete.* Everything was immediately ready to go.* The PocketRadio icon is available from the Programs menu.<br /><br /><b><span>Interface</span></b><br />Here's what it looks like on your PPC:<br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/don-jan03-ibisradio-1c.gif" /><br /><i>Figure 2: The PocketRadio Screen</i><br /><br />(Unfortunately, the colours in this screen shot are quite a bit brighter than they are in reality).<br /><br />The user interface is simple and fairly intuitive (there’s no manual or help text per-se provided, other than the one-page description of the buttons and their functions in the installation/usage guide).<li>PWR button is located at the top left, to shut down the application<br /><li>There is a slider on the frequency indicator to go directly to a portion of the band, and the frequency display updates as you move along<br /><li>The Scan button changes from Manual to Auto, depending upon which mode of scanning is selected, and scanning up or down the FM band is selected via the buttons beside the Scan button<br /><li>The Volume control on the left side is a slider, (I noticed that the jogger up/down control on the side of my HP Jornada 568 worked to increase and decrease the volume)<br /><li>The Mute button shuts off the sound if someone comes up to your desk<br /><li>There are six presets available for each of three ‘bands’ which you can preset by tuning to the desired frequency, then tapping and holding the preset button for more than one second<br /><li>The Z button turns off the screen to conserve battery power, (unfortunately, with the colours selected, it always looks like this button has been depressed)<br /><li>The only Options are ‘About’ and ‘Exit’, and they do pretty well what you’d expect<br />There is no option to manually input a given frequency, or go directly to a known frequency, except by using the scan or a pre-set.<br /><br />The Auto scan moves up or down the FM band (depending upon the direction selected) to find the next station. It seems only to stop on the strongest signals, since it missed a number of quite serviceable signals, which I found later using the Manual Scan. The Manual scan goes up in .1 MHz increments – not exactly North American standard (stations are located @ .2 MHz increments on ‘odd’ numbers, but European stations do not have this restriction, so this is a good compromise).<br /><br />The look and feel is not bad – fairly clean and intuitive - but it does seem a bit ‘fuzzy’. Maybe there was a bit too much ‘shading’ on the buttons, etc.? I’m not sure. It just doesn’t look as clean and precise as I’d like. Some of the labels on the buttons (Manual/Auto Scan, PWR button, Vol control) are hard to read – either because of colour choices, or the text is just too small. The red ‘frequency’ scale on the grey background is impossible to read at any distance. For me, the Scan buttons are larger than they really need to be. I suspect they may have been sized to allow for activation using fingers, but I almost never touch the screen with my skin. The use of the ‘segmented’ numerical display for the frequency display is probably trying to evoke the feeling of a car radio but again, from my perspective, it looks a bit fuzzy and unpolished. There are many colours used on the interface (powder blue, turquoise, pink, orange, salmon, grey, green). I think this would look more polished if they focused on a single colour theme.<br /><br />It’s neat that the application remembers which station you were on when you last closed it, even if you power off the Pocket PC.<br /><br /><b><span>Sensitivity</span></b><br />Sensitivity refers to the radio’s ability to deal with a wide range of signals – from weak to very strong. Overall, I would say the sensitivity of the unit is quite good. They appear to be using the headphone's cord as part of the antenna, which I guess, was a good way to reduce the overall size of the unit.<br /><br />I live in Victoria, BC. It’s not a large metropolis, but it’s close to Vancouver and Seattle (each about 40 miles away). When I first tried the unit at work, I was only able to receive the strongest local signals – nothing from Vancouver or Seattle. I realized it was probably due to the fact I was on the first floor of a building that used to be a raised-floor computer room (lots of wires, cabling, etc. around). When I took the unit home, I was able to clearly receive all the major stations from both Vancouver and Seattle – even some of the smaller stations running out of the universities and colleges.<br /><br />The automatic scanning function only seems to stop on the strongest signals – it completely missed some slightly weaker, but still serviceable signals. In Manual Scan mode, the radio simply goes up in .1Mhz increments and lets you hear all signals.<br /><br /><b><span>Quieting</span></b><br />On an FM radio, this is the ability to eliminate all noise, fuzz, etc. from the music signal, so that you get a clear background. This has a lot to do with the strength of the signal being received. At a certain signal strength, you should hear nothing in the background at all. Pocket Radio did well in this regard, providing full quieting when given a good strong signal to use, like an average FM radio.<br /><br /><b><span>Audio Quality</span></b><br />There’s plenty of volume in this unit. As mentioned above, there is a volume control provided on the interface via a slider and you can use the jogger control on the side of the Pocket PC to increase or decrease the volume in steps. This is a nice touch, as it means that I can control the volume of the radio without opening up the organizer.<br /><br />The quality of the sound is not quite as good as a 48/64 kbs MP3, but still very reasonable for an FM radio. A lot will depend on what type of headphones you use. It was good to see that I could plug in almost any type of headphones and have it work adequately. I’m not really sure why they couldn’t route the sound to the ear jack on the Pocket PC (maybe they were building for some units with no ear jack?). The unit could have been made physically smaller if this had been done, since I suspect a good portion of the right side is taken up with providing space for the audio jack. I would have preferred that an option be provided to allow the user to route the sound through the audio facilities in the Pocket PC, rather than just the earphone jack on the PocketRadio.<br /><br /><b><span>Crosstalk</span></b><br />This is a radio’s ability to separate and distinguish between strong signals that are close together. It’s also related to the tuner’s selectivity. Specifically, a radio with a larger amount of Crosstalk allows ‘spillage’ of signal off the primary frequency onto nearby frequencies. On the PocketRadio, there was noticeable cross-talk from stronger stations up to .3Mhz on either side of the primary frequency. It was a bit of a problem at my home, where the Vancouver and Seattle stations tend to get bunched up at the high end of the FM band. This could be problem in high density areas where there are a number of strong signal stations close together.<br /><br /><b><span>Gotchas</span></b><br />Sorry, there are no keyboard equivalents for any of the functions. However, you can adjust the volume using the side up/down jogger control, as I've mentioned. Be careful though, if (like me), you have mapped the jogger controls to handle volume in the Windows Media Player. If you run Windows Media Player, the jogger controls will no longer work in PocketRadio until after the next soft reset.<br /><br />The unit is quite light and as compact as it can be I would guess, given the need for the mini-stereo jack for the headphones. However, it's not quite like a memory-type compact flash card. It needs some more careful handling -- otherwise, it can get broken. I've noticed that I have to be careful to make sure it sits properly in the CF-slot. If it isn't properly connected, my Pocket PC freezes up and refuses to respond to taps, etc., until the card is taken out of the slot.<br /><br />Things I'd like to see in the next release:<li>Integration with the audio provided in the Pocket PC<br /><li>cleaner user interface -- less colours, sharper graphics<br /><li>better crosstalk performance<br /><li>more sensitivity on the Auto scan function<br /><li>ability to directly input a frequency to go to<br /><b><span>Conclusion</span></b><br />As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m a big fan of this product. I’ve been waiting for something like this ever since I discovered MP3s and the Windows Media Player on my Pocket PC. In fact, I’m listening to it right now while writing this article. Overall, I’m pleased with its performance. It’s a little pricey when it arrives in Canada, after currency exchange, duties, and brokerage fees, but I’m happy to have the ability to listen to my favorite radio programs without another addition to my already crowded work desk.