A few newbie e310 questions

[ZaphodB]

Hey all,

I recently purchased a used e310, and it's great, particularly when taken into consideration the fact that what it replaced was a Newton MessagePad (for those of you unfamiliar with the Newton, suffice it to say that it is a ancient, bricklike monolith of a PDA).

Anyway, since I got the e310 at such a low price, I now have a few extra bucks to spend on upgrading it (about $150 Canadian). The first thing that came to mind was buying an SD card to upgrade the storage memory on the PDA. Before I buy anything, however, I have a few questions. I apologize for the newbie-ness of these questions; please keep in mind that my last PDA was built in 1995. :wink:

First off, does the e310 view the SD card as a hard drive, i.e. can it run programs directly off the card, and at a decent speed? Second, can the e310 recognize 256MB cards? And finally, is the speed of the SD card (and of the e310 itself) sufficient to play decent-quality DivX-encoded movies directly off the card? If 'maybe', what quality of video would be necessary to make this possible? Obviously, sizing any video over 320x240 would be stupid, but would I have to limit the FPS and sound quality of the video?

Thanks for any help.

[spursdude]

The answer to all three of your questions is yes. Doesn't that make you feel great? :D

[digitalh2o]

You could also pick up a Bluetooth card (~$113 at ecost.com) -- will allow you to wirelessly sync to your (bluetooth enabled) cell phone, computer, et al. Also allows you to access the net through bluetooth enabled and connected devices. However it is unfortunate that you cannot use the memory card and the bluetooth adapter at the same time.

[azhiker]

I have had the E310 for about 10 months now and use a 128 meg SD card and keep all of my word, excel, pictures, mp3s and powerpoint slides on it. I use the pocketop wireless keyboard which works great.

Make sure you upgrade the ROM system if it has not already been done.

I have a smaller SD card that I put some small movie clips, music and even a game or two.

I have a separate cord to take with me to power it from car or hotel when away (so I don't have to lug the bigger charging base.)

I will probably get the 355 or 755 late this year and all that I use with my E310 will be compatible.

[Brad Adrian]

As far as the video question is concerned, you can get some great pointers about bitrates and framerates for Pocket PC viewing here:

http://www.mpegtv.com/wince/pockettv/encoding.html

[ripdausr]

I have had my e-310 since last august. When i was researching SD cards i ran across several forums where users had bad experiences with Sandisk SD cards. I am not trashing Sandisk, just passing along what i read elsewhere. Can anyone else confirm this?

I ended up with a 128meg SimpleTech but would suggest a 256 or greater. I have filled mine up already with files (especially mp3 files)

[guilmon]

I have two sandisk sd cards, a 64meg and a 128meg. They both work just fine, although my 64 seems to have split open, but it would be my fault. I don't use it anymore anyway since I bought my 128. The only problem, which I think is just a generic thing with every card, is that if I forget to close a program, like p-word, and turn off the device, the files on the card will not be visible until I close the program and restart it, after I turn the device on again. But I use a navi menu program called Icbar that closes programs, so I really have not a problem with sandisk cards anymore. They, or at least my 128, was also very cheap for the time. 49.99 us dollars, at sams club, when everywhere else was at least 80.

[Mithrankittycat]

I play fullscreen divx on my e310 off a 256MB sandisk SD card. DVD movies run at 12-15 FPS (I decimate by 2 or 3) when I encode the movie already rotated. I've had three bad sandiisk cards, but the one I got exchanged from Sandisk itself is still working well.
Pocketnester is also great on the e310, giving about 28 FPS.
All of my programs are installed to SD card, including the flash 6 player!

[redifrogger]

I thought that was some problems with running some programs from the expansion card. I can't remember the particulars, but I thought I read some posts about this. :?

[spursdude]

I thought that was some problems with running some programs from the expansion card. I can't remember the particulars, but I thought I read some posts about this. :?
Some programs do have issues, particularly those that run on startup or are constantly running in the background like task switchers or Today screen items. The majority of programs, however, run perfectly from a storage card.

[xoiph]

I have had my e-310 since last august. When i was researching SD cards i ran across several forums where users had bad experiences with Sandisk SD cards. I am not trashing Sandisk, just passing along what i read elsewhere. Can anyone else confirm this?

For the brief period I owned an e310 I had a hell of a hard time getting it to accept my SanDisk 128Mb card. The entire PDA would freeze up and give me error messages when I tried to access the card. It would also display that it had about 120Mb free but only about 20Mb of that space was usable. It turned out I had a bad card--but it had worked fine in my iPAQ until I used it in my Toshiba. :evil: