Some newbie questions

[RealCf]

Hello to everyone!

I am 17 years old and I am planning to buy the 400 Mhz version of Dell Axim X5.
Since I am a student I will be taking it to school. I am planning to:
1- Download documents to my main PC and transfer them to my Pocket PC
2- Buy a good chess playing program like pocket fritz
3- Buy a memory extension larger than a CD (for watching films and listening to mp3s, 1 Gb would do it) when it is cheap enough (about 100 dollars, I cannot possibly afford prices much more expensive than that!)

My questions to all "ppc experts" out there:

1- The screens of those pocket pcs are so small. Don't you have any problems like having to scroll a lot, when reading e-books or .doc documents?
2- When will the 1GB CF cards be cheap enough by my definition?
3- How is the sound and video quality of pocket pcs when listening to Mp3s or watching videos?
4- Is there a peer to peer server like Kazaa for exchange of pocket pc programs?

Thanks!

[rhmorrison]

First of all - WELCOME to the wonderful world of Pocket PC's!

Here some comments:

1. It depends on what font size you use and how fast you read, but YES, in general you will be doing more scrolling/paging then if you were reading with a large screen monitor. I have read numerous ebooks (using Microsoft Reader) and I enjoyed the experience.

2. Hard to say, right now you can find them for around $ 200. I suspect it will be a couple years before they hit your magic $ 100 level.

3. It depends on your hardware of course (and the encoding when talking about videos). General the MP3's have EXELLENT quality and the sound quality on videos is usually not as good to reduce bandwidth.

4. There are numerous web sites that have FREE PocketPC programs. Search the site for a list as this has been a theme of discussion many times.

As far as Chess programs go Pocket Fitz 2 is supposed to be very good but I purchased the cheaper ChessGenius v1.4 which offers FREE updates (forever). I play two levels below national and can't beat the thing! Take a look at BOTH and compare prices. I have been very happy with ChessGenius.

You may be able to find a USED 1GB CF card for your desired price on EBay, just make sure you don't get ripped off...

GOOD LUCK!

[pjtrader]

Let me add my 2cents worth:

I purchase most of my e-books from Palmmedia (www.peanutpress.com) and find the additional downward scrolling to be minor...that's what the pretty rocker switch on the left side of the Axim is great for!

You might have to invest in a couple of smaller cards first...and plan your storage space. For example, a large 512m CF card can handle a movie and a bunch of music, and then you could use a smaller SD card for your documents. At least until those 1gig cards come down a little more in price. Oh, don't forget to ask for one of those for your birthday or Christmas. You never know what Santa will bring you!

Consider investing in a keyboard if you plan on taking notes with your PPC. As much as I like the darned thing, I can't write fast enough to keep decent notes on it.

Be a little careful with transferring Word documents that have heavy formatting...Pocket Word is getting better but it does best with standard text documents without lots of tables and stuff like that. There is an interesting product PPC Thoughts has introduced me to...Repligo...that does a much better job of converting documents with lots of formatting.

Good luck! I love my Dell Axim and I think you'll enjoy yours too.

Cheers,
Pam

[pocketpcdude1024]

rhmorrison has answered most of your questions, but I would like to add that CF is a standard that is going 'out' so you may find less CF accessories and more Sd accessories in the future. As a student myself, I can say that you'll probably want to keep your Pocket PC a long time, so go for a standard that is guaranteed to stick around a few years: SD. Most, if not all, Pocket PCs have a SD slot built right into them, so you'll never have to worry about CF sleeves or anything like that. ;)

Oh, and if you have more questions, go to http://www.pdagrad.com/ and post them in the forums there - we have an all-student staff dedicated to PDAs. 8)

[prismejon]

If your short on money I would also recommend to begin with a 512 mb card. You might get lucky at ebay and get one very cheap, have a look here (http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&query=compact+flash+512&cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&ht=1&from=R10&currdisp=2&itemtimedisp=1&st=2&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&BasicSearch=).

I don't see they problem that pocketpcdude1024 refered to. If you buy the Axim it's not like the CF-slot will disappear from your unit when new ones are released..

[rhmorrison]

...but I would like to add that CF is a standard that is going 'out' so you may find less CF accessories and more Sd accessories in the future
:soapbox: Here I must disagree :!:

First of all, now is the IDEAL time to buy a CF device because CF accessories will for the foreseable future be cheaper and more available. It is simply a good form factor and there will be lot's of people that go to new models that don't have CF slots that will end up selling their accessories cheap. You will also most certainly find a cheap 1 (or 2,3,4... GB) CompactFlash card much easier than an SD card of the same size. The same goes for digital cameras. I have a Canon PowerShot S40 with a 1 GB CF card that I can then view with my hp Jornada 568 if I want to. For my PDA I still use a 256 MB card because I live in Germany and have to pay around $ 250 for a 1 GB card. But you can be sure the next trip I make to the States I will locate and purchase a couple of 1 GB flash cards for my (and my wifes) PDA's (BOTH hp Jornada 56x).

[prismejon]

I totally agree with rhmorrison! And buying a dual slotted device gives you the best of both worlds - you can buy the cheaper CF accesories AND the newer SDIO accesories. Just be sure that you have a SDIO slot and not only a SD slot.

[dh]

It's amusing, I keep reading that Compact Flash is dead but it seems to me that it remains the best option for both storage memory and peripherals.

On my Axim I use both a CF and SD memory card as well as a CF wireless card. You will find that the CF card is much more reliable for storeage than the SD, especially if you write large files to the card while it is in the Axim. (It's OK if you use a card reader).

Remember as well that with the Axim, the SD slot is not SDIO so can be used for storeage only.

You are making a good choice getting an Axim Realcf. It's a super PDA.

[Unreal32]

Personally, I've found the CF format to be more reliable, although I like the form factor of SD. I wish my iPaq had both already built in, instead of having to use a stupid jacket!

[davidspalding]

Don't think the 1 GB CF card is in your price range, but they keep getting cheaper and cheaper.

Check my post here (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12075) for some nice prices at Amazon. You can also do a general search on Amazon (link provided in my post) in case I've missed a better deal on Sandisk (which is usually cheaper and less reliable).

[RealCf]

Thanks everyone! I will probably buy the PDA in the summer and the extra 1GB in February. We will see if my money will be enough then, I can do with little memory until the second half of our school year.

By the way, do you know of any good English-German dictionaries for pocket pcs?