How did you enter the Pocket PC world?

[Patrick Y.]

Hi everyone,
I'm very curious about how you guys became addicted to Pocket PC. I got my first Pocket PC, n10, a year ago. Just recently, I upgraded to x50v. 8) It has been a TERRIFIC device so far.

Anyway, here is my short little experience about how I enter the Pocket PC world:

It was summer of 2004 when I went on a vacation to Taiwan. I did pretty well at school, but I'm TERRRRIIBLE at organizing AND memorizing stuff. So, my dad decided to buy me a palm, not a Pocket PC, to help me with school work and notes. The reason that I want a palm at first is that people said it is cheaper and more stable than Pocket PC. At that time, I knew NOTHING at all about handhelds. I didn't even know what's a Palm or Pocket PC until I saw them. :oops: :oops: Well, I fall in love with the elegant looking Pocket PC at the store. Also, n10 is on sale for around only $200 dollars. So, I bought n10 instead of a palm. It turns out that I had choose the right PDA. :wink: I used it for about a year without any problems before I switched to x50v. Now, my brother has n10.

So, would you guys share your experiences with me too? I really want to hear about the PDAs you owned and how you entered the Pocket PC world. :D

[Don't Panic!]

I started back in 2000. I was looking for a PDA that could hold a 1MB excel file and contacts. PALM was looking good at the time but then the Announcement of Pocket PC came out. 16MB of storage plus it could use a memory card and even play music! Thoughts of PALM fled my head.

I saw the Jornada in CompUSA and the thing looked like a communicator from Star Trek. That did it. I was hooked.

[G M Fude]

The senior IT dude of the company I work for knew I was a long term PDA user (nearly 7 years) and wanted someone to check out those as well, for corporate use (mainly physical robustness, stability etc). Since our corporate standard is Dell, for laptops, PCs, servers, and now handhelds, it had to be an Axim. Since I wan't coughing up the money then it was only going to be an X50v!

I've blown lots of my own cash on it since. If Dell had made Palm OS devices then it could just as easily have been one of those but instead it was my first PPC. Previous electronic brains have been a Palm III and a Tungsten T; never had a moment's problem with them and there are Palm features I wish WM would eventually get around to implementing.

[applejosh]

I had a couple of clients who decided to get iPAQ's and had no idea how to use them. So they were always asking me. I got an H3955 back when they were current just so I knew what the heck they were talking about. I still preferred Palm up until the T5. It's had too many problems. I just wish DateBk and Shadowplan would get ported over.

[jhennig]

In 2001, I got my father's old Palm Pilot 5000 i think it was. When I was able to keep track of it all the way untill that christmas and used it pretty frequently often envying his Palm m100m he got me an m100 for christmas on sale for only $90. I used that up until I inherited my older brother's Clie SJ-10 about a year later. Collecting duct, I soon decided that PDAs weren't really for me. Then, sticking to my semi-rrecent tradition of buying something that used up all of my christmas money, I began to look into getting a new PDA which could play music.After finding out that the one Sony Clie that I really liked was being discontinued, I started to look into Pocket PCs around $200. Hearing that the new Asus A620 was a slick device, I decided to bust out with a real kicker at $300. In late 2003, I again began to grow tired of PDAs due to my lack of true need for them. However, in holidays 2004, I saw the new Asus A730w. If there is love at first sight, this would be an example of it. I thought it was so great that I preordered it and held off a co-purchase of a new gaming rig with my younger brother just to get it. With is, I have had numerous troubles and sent it in to be fixed three times. However, each time I get it back, I forget about my hate for the slow process and watch a DVD on it. The screen is gorgious, the music I listen to is great, the DVDs I watch are worthwhile, and my slick today themes are the icing on the cake. I LOVE MY ASUS A730w which I just so happen to be using my new TO BT Keyboard with right now.

***Considering buying a DVD to Pocket PC program? DON'T instead, google FairUse DVD Wizard, it lets you customize your dvds down to tthye smallest things and the output file size can be specified down to the megabyte; no rounding off for memory cards, you set the filesize yourself. The free version lets you have a max output filesize of 700mb (plenty for any pocket PC) while you can buy the program for 10£ i think and have no output file limit.

[Kowalski]

i am a developer. after working on the win32 platform for about 5 years, i asked myself where the software technology is heading. And the answer was obvious, mobile technologies. I bought myself a pda for testing purposes and i realized usefull these devices are.

[JDTagish]

I got my first device a little over a year ago, when my boss decided to take the summer off, and would call me at all hours of the day and night to ask me about a specific client, and want to get a phone number. I bought first a TE Palm, and decided fairly quickly to upgrade from that to the Zire 72, then the T-3. (Gotta love Staples 14 day try out!) I would up having a really simple registration problem and called their customer support to get assistance with the registration. It took several highly frustrating hours with no resolution, and so I decided that if they could not manage a simple thing like registering a product, that if I ever needed device support I was screwed! Also, since what I really needed at that time was to sync with Outlook, I was spending a bunch of $ to try to get compatible files.

After the Palm debacle, I decided to switch to PPC, and picked up an iPaq 4355, which I fell in love with from the first moment I switched it on.

I've left that job now, so I don't have zillions of contacts any longer, which is nice, and I find that I use it primarily for financial data...I could never keep track of my checkbook before, now I can enter all my transactions on the spot and am rarely out of balance!

The other use is for entertainment. I read a lot, and have converted practicially my entire library into ebooks and now have hundreds of books at my fingertips no matter where I am. I also have audiobooks and movies, which are nice for longer trips.

I upgraded my iPaq to a e800, and if I leave my house without it, I feel naked and somehow incomplete!

[ppcinfo]

Bought the original PalmPilot 1000 that started the palm-devices craze. I upgraded to a Palm III and then Palm V, and at that point jumped to the Pocket PC platform (buying a iPAQ 3600). It was at that point I began writing applications for the PPC device (since I already new basic Windows programming, it wasn't too difficult to create apps for the PPC) for my own use, since there weren't very many applications out there. Being a developer now, I needed to upgrade my device (lucky me) whenever a new OS became available. I currently have a Dell Axim x50v, which should be good for the WM 5.0 upgrade due out soon.

ppcinfo

[nosmohtac]

I started my PPC addiction back in 2000 I'm a conductor (soon to be engineer) on the railroad, as such, we are required to carry a copy of our rule book with us while on duty. This wasn't much of a problem years ago (before I worked there), when the rule book would fit in your back pocket, but now it's the size of a small briefcase. My company started offering the option of downloading the rulebooks in .prc format palms. I thought this was great and went out to look for a palm pilot. I researched everything and found the HP jornada 548, and fell in love immediately. I was so impressed with the unit that I quickly forgot about the fact that It wouldn't read the .prc files. This wasn't a problem for long though, because I found ubook and liked it far better than rich reader or any other reader.

I have never really needed a PPC, but I have enjoyed every one that I've had. Don't get me wrong, there have been disappointments along the way, but I realize that is usually the case with everything in life.

[Duddy]

I started when the iPAQ 36xx series was released. I bought the iPAQ and then moved to a Casio EM-500.

Then I had 13 different Pocket PC devices after that.

My favorite Windows devices were the Casio BE-300 and the iPAQ 2215.


Right now I'm using a Dell Axim X50 High w/ 1GB SD and 1GB CF. I LOVE this device and see no reason to upgrade.

[kaitanium]

it was back in junior year of high school when i decided to splurg my saved up $275 on a palm IIIx. man was a cool cat back thenbut it was hard work with my $6.75 min wage.

then my friend at church had traded in his handspring color model (too old forgot the name and number) for a casio em500 blue. then i had to have one cuz it did so much more and the screen was so awesomely awesome. so i sold my palm on ebay and bought a red em500 that same year.

then all the new compaqs started rolling out and i got speed and expansion envy. the compaq ipaq series (then 3600s) did even more than my em500 did so i dumped my em500 on ebay and got a 3835. BUT i was scammed $475 of my money so i had to wait for ebay to clear ligitation and stuff like that before i could really get my hands on a 3835. but eitehr case i got one in senior year and was happy...or so i thought

after a while with the 3835 and really getting into the ppc world (1000+ posts on the old pocket pc passion forums). compaq was bought out by hp and everyone got all excited about the awesome new devices to hit the market. when the 2210 hit the market i grabbed it up when it was first released for $265 and my 3835 was sold to a guy on ebay in turkey.

the 2210 served its purpose for a year or more then my mom said i had to get rid of it if i really wanted a laptop. so i got rid of it on ebay (again) and got myself an ibm x40.

9 months after getting the laptop dell served up a new promo with no interest till 2007 so i decided it was time to get a new ppc. just so happened that dell had an incredible deal on their x50v for $262 so i swooped in on it and have been cruising since. ithink this will be my last ppc since the things i seem to want to do on a ppc, i can accomplish faster on my laptop.

wow that was long. all that with my own saved up money!