PocketNow and MobileTechReviews Each Weigh-In on the Dell Axim X51v

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I know. I know. We tend to be rather obsessive-compulsive about our posting topics. One day, we can't stop yapping about the HTC Universal and the next day it's all about the Dell Axim X51v. Well, we can't help it if the Dell Axim X51v reviews are flowing like water now! First, we start off with the <a href="http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=reviews&id=697&p=1">PocketNow X51v review</a> which is STACKED with pictures, comparison photos, and screenshots. Overall, they seem to love the device. Most of their gripes were focused on Dell's featureset (e.g. no phone capabilities, no hard drive, no Bluetooth networking profile) as opposed to any issues with the quality and/or execution of the device itself.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/ekkie_Dellx547.jpg" /><br /><br />Next up is the <a href="http://www.mobiletechreview.com/Dell-Axim-X51v.htm">MobileTechReview X51v review</a> which is much heavier with the commentary than it is with the pictures. You'll find some rather detailed benchmarks to complement the analysis. Overall, they also seem to be pleased with the device. However, as was the case with Mr. Dunn's review (posted earlier in the day), they just can't find any compelling reasons for current X50v owners to upgrade. So what do you guys think? Is this a case of Dell shortchanging themselves or is this all about Dell continuing a great thing?

[signothefish]

It's more about Dell continuing a great thing. Dell is not an innovative company. They are a marketing company that sells computers. If they can modify a product slightly to continue to generate revenue, that's just what they'll do. I just don't see Dell getting on the cutting edge of anything. It would be a risk, and Dell just doesn't take risks. They wait until a product has been in the market for a while and then they come in with their own offering. They are focused heavily on mass selling of their products, with deep discounts and heavy market penetration to squeeze the others out of business. It's a marketing strategy similar to Wal-Mart's. Look what they've already done to HP.

[cscullion]

I think Jason had it right in his opening statement: the X51 and X51v are just point releases... minor improvements to a great product. No phone? No hard drive? That's not what this release is about. Consolidation of the product line, technology refresh... little things are the intent.

Other than WM5, I'm amazed this is receiving so much press. The real story here, from what I can tell, is Dell's software department's lack of QA testing. How did WM5 get out the door with all these problems? Let's hope they fix it before too many newbies get their hands on it.

[R K]

Other than WM5, I'm amazed this is receiving so much press.
I think it's because of the prerelease hype that was started by Brighthand who suspected that the Dell Axim X51v would be Dell's new Pocket PC with an integrated hard drive.

[Ripper014]

I don't see what all the excitement is about, from what I am reading this is a incremental upgrade... from the existing x50V. The additional memory is nice but not a big selling point... nor is WM5 from the first set of reviews. What is surprising is the general consensus that the product is flawed... mainly with regards to the OS and yet they all give it a thumbs up... what is with that?

I also have never understood the why everyone seems to feel they need persistent memory and a built-in hard drive... having a modular design serves me well... and gives me more flexibility to manage my hardware.

As for Dell not being an innovative company I totally agree... those companies in my opinion were Sony and Toshiba... and unfortunately they are gone in the palmtop market. What Dell does well is create a good... (not a great) device at a competitive price...

What Dell has done here is to beat everyone to the market with a WM5 device... and it seems that they are sticking with the philosophy that the key is to get it to the market fast... and we can fix it later. Something we as consumers come to accept with almost everything... most noticeably with software... i.e. upgrades. And they are probably right... they are going to make money just because they were the first there, but can the competitors be far behind...?

I have said it before... I am not a big fan of the big rom small ram device... I like having ram... if I need a place to store my files permanently I will use a storage card. Storage cards do fail... but guess what... so does rom. In the end... it is all about creating a good backup strategy and using it faithfully.

Do I need WM5... not yet... I have not seen anything compelling enough to make me want to switch... and where is the native True VGA...? Now that there are multiple VGA devices on the market... all of which are high-end devices for their respective manufacturers you would feel MS would have done some implementation for it.

The more they seem to imply that we have moved evolved to bigger and better things... the more I feel we have the same old device in a new dress and makeup. I fear we may have even gone back half a step... I know we are definitely shuffling sideways... to nowhere in particular.

[ADBrown]

Other than WM5, I'm amazed this is receiving so much press. The real story here, from what I can tell, is Dell's software department's lack of QA testing. How did WM5 get out the door with all these problems? Let's hope they fix it before too many newbies get their hands on it.

It should be noted that these problems only appear in a portion of the pre-release press units that were improperly flashed before being sent out by Dell. The rest of the press units work fine, and the problem won't be present on the production level units.

Anyway, I don't see what the big deal is about it being a minor update. The X50v was already arguably the best WM device on the market--Dell didn't fix what wasn't broken.

[Jason Lee]

I have said it before... I am not a big fan of the big rom small ram device... I like having ram... if I need a place to store my files permanently I will use a storage card. Storage cards do fail... but guess what... so does rom. In the end... it is all about creating a good backup strategy and using it faithfully.


I love the memory upgrade. You cannot store files in ram anymore. With the way WM5.0 works this is the same as a wm2003 device with 320mb of ram! (and using the slider to allocate 64mb as program and the rest as storeage) 8O
more internal storage is always good. Now I don't have keep my sd card in the slot for my pocket pc to function. I can take it out an put my sd camera in! :D

[cscullion]

Other than WM5, I'm amazed this is receiving so much press. The real story here, from what I can tell, is Dell's software department's lack of QA testing. How did WM5 get out the door with all these problems? Let's hope they fix it before too many newbies get their hands on it.

It should be noted that these problems only appear in a portion of the pre-release press units that were improperly flashed before being sent out by Dell. The rest of the press units work fine, and the problem won't be present on the production level units.

...

From Jason's review, it seems that there's a big problem with the included CD. That concerns me just as much, if not more than the reported problems with the device itself.

[Chris Leckness]

What you have to remember is that Dell and other PPC Makers are trying to get the product out and give the reviewers some lead time to do our reviews. The units we get are most of the time, early engineering samples and sometimes the "ROM" that is on the "Released" model outdate our review units by 2-5 releases. That's not an excuse for poor quality, but can be a factor at times. Sometimes we do not get any of the "retail" stuff, including user manuals and CDs.

[robert_biggs]

I don't see what all the excitement is about, from what I am reading this is a incremental upgrade... from the existing x50V. The additional memory is nice but not a big selling point... nor is WM5...

I have said it before... I am not a big fan of the big rom small ram device... I like having ram... if I need a place to store my files permanently I will use a storage card. Storage cards do fail... but guess what... so does rom. In the end... it is all about creating a good backup strategy and using it faithfully.

I think the big news is the fact that this is the first widely available WM5 device. I'm with Jason Lee on this one. Persistent memory is a great thing once you get use to the idea. If I'm not going to be able to plug-in my device for an extended period of time (think campout), I can power down my device at night and not lose any battery life. Plus the idea of a large amount of RAM seems great until you realize that a device with 128 MB RAM will lose battey power almost twice as fast as a device with only 64 MB when the unit is left in "suspend" mode (screen off and CPU idle). Until battery technology drastically improves, it makes no sense to put more than 64 MB RAM in a device.

And now that RAM is only used for running programs and not storing them, 64 MB is more than enough for almost any situation. 256 MB ROM gives me enough room to install all my programs on the device itself and allows me to move memory cards in and out of the device without losing any functionality.

I think the X51v is a big improvement over the original X50v. Sure, WM5.0 will have a few bugs at first, but Dell has always been good at offering incrimental updates as soon as Microsoft makes them available. This will be my next device unless another competitor can offer something better at a similar price.

[pjerry220]

I am so tempted to hang up the Ipaq for the 256 MB of ROM.

[Jason Lee]

i would still like 128mb of ram or at least 96mb. so far on all these new wm5.0 devices out of the 64, 15 is gone for some hidden system functions. this gives you 49ish max available on boot. about 20mb of that is used just by booting the os, just like now. this only leaves you with about 30 some mb free after a reboot. i have 47mb free after reboot now and am down another 13mb after running most of my programs. with a new wm5.0 device this is gonna leave me with about 20mb left for those big programs/games i might run. while this should be enough it is a little close for comfort. :) before if i ran out of ram i could just move the slider. while 64mb is gonna be enough most of the time i have a feeling that i might be getting low memory errors on some of my more intense mobile days. only time will tell.

[Ripper014]

I can agree that we see things from different sides of the coin. Taking your analogy... I would just do a full backup and shutdown my device and remove the battery and pack it away. But then... I do not see taking my device camping with me... but then if I did... I would purchase a solar panel so that I could charge it for continued use.

The questions is this... how many of us would ever do a full power shutdown. How many of us would have our units shut off for an extended amount of time... I would bet not many. All I need is enough power to use my device until I arrive home at night... I have gotten into the habit of recharging every evening.

As for ram... I think 64mb... is questionable... by the time everything is loaded up... I think your closer to 20mb usable, tight for my uses. Also programs like Textmaker and Planmaker... are much faster in ram, and you would not be able to do that in the new WM5 configuration.

As for storage... we do have dual slots... so with good planning, functionality should not be an issue.

The bottom-line is I respect your views on this topic... I just think we see things from different viewpoints.

[Menneisyys]

Until battery technology drastically improves, it makes no sense to put more than 64 MB RAM in a device.


It all depends on your personal preferences. If you can charge the device on a daily basis, then, the bigger RAM (despite its more power consumption) is advantageous, particularly under WM5 because of the unfightable and unchangable RAM consumption of the operating system. Only 32M free RAM can be rather inefficient/insufficient if you, for example, keep several PIE/Netfront tabs open and/or want to edit your images.

[PerkyNerky]

From the MobileTech Review, "WM5 is a bit slower than Windows Mobile 2003 because applications and data reside in ROM which is slower than RAM. We noticed a half second additional delay dropping down the Start Menu and launching programs takes a second longer, despite the operating system's caching of files in RAM which is faster than ROM."

Look at this from the MobileTech Review benchmark, 8O
File system index:
Dell Axim X51v 142
Dell Axim X50v (WM 2003 SE) 1398
HP iPAQ hx4700 624MHz VGA (WM 2003 SE) 1477

This worries me about WM5. It seems like too much of a performance compromise. Personally I have never really had problems keeping my device well charged.

[yankeejeep]

IMO (forget about H), Dell is putting out an interim device that uses a proven hardware platform with a couple of improvements and the first run of the new OS. Most likely we are going to be waiting a few more months before we see a new line designed with WM5 in mind and actually able to exploit the new OS with updated hardware. I think we are expecting too much from what is essentially a hardware maintenance release.

It will be definitely worth paying attention to in-the-field feedback on battery life with WM5. Since it should not be requiring a battery reserve, folks should see a noticable increase in battery runtime simply from now being able to run the main battery essentially to zero. It will be more interesting to see what the first generation of devices designed for WM5 (not retrofitted for it) will include. Faster FlashROM? Better caching in RAM so less is eaten by the file system? Maybe inclusion of Toshiba's new battery technology? A 'service release' of WM5 so it actually delivers? Next spring should be an interesting release season.

[whyPocketPC]

The trouble with enthusiasts like us is we want the latest device to be what we want it to be and not accept that the market demand may call for something else. :wink:

The Dell Axim X51v (ordered day one) will replace my Dell Axim X50v as my enterprise/business or work appliance. WM 5 gives the stability of persistant storage and the ability to run more applications with dedicated RAM versus shared (application versus storage as before). The VGA display allows me to work outdoors without straining my aging eyes like I do on my iPAQ QVGA display. The two slots allow for greater expansion and the use of IO peripherals like modems and ethernet cards when there is no cell coverage and no Wi-Fi HotSpot to speak of nearby.

There are those of us that like coverged devices and those of us that don't like them (I sold my JAM a month ago). I like the flexibility to change mobiles or carriers without changing my Pocket PC. :mrgreen: I am not saying that there is no use - as there most certainly is a demand - for these devices both in the business world and without. I am saying that there is enough demand for BOTH devices as well as those funny RIM powered devices.

The Dell Axim X51/51v is also "Lead Free" for the Tree Hugger within all of us should your 2 year old accidently begin to gnaw on your device. I think that the Dell Axim X51/51v is a solid device building upon a success of the X50/50v. Battery-life could be a concern, but then you have mobile chargers and power adapters galore (like Socket's Mobile Power Pack for charging on the go and the iGO Juice as a power adapter).

At the end of the day, we all have to choose what we spend our money on and ensure it meets or exceeds our personal or business requirements. That said, I know that my money has been well spent. 8)

Cheers.

John