Whatever happened to VGA from the Pocket PC?

[anatomyman]

A couple of years ago, it seemed that there were several adapters that were sold to send output to a projector or a computer monitor: Compact Flash, SDIO, even the Handspring proprietary interface. At least two different manufacturers made cards with cables that could connect via VGA: Margi Presenter-to-Go, Colorigraphics (I think). You could ActiveSync or sync your PowerPoint presentation, then use the PDA with an LCD projector instead of a laptop.

I bring this up because it's been over a year since the last time I did this, and I decided that I wanted to be able to do this with my current iPaq which has an SD slot. Unfortunately, I only have CompactFlash and Handspring VGA adapters. I went online to order the SDIO version..........and seems like it's been discontinued. It's no longer available from vendors that I use.....nothing recent shows up when I do a search of the Internet.....and nothing offered by HP/Compaq, either.

SO: what big evolutionary change did I miss? Did people switch to plugging in a USB thumb drive into the projector, and embedded software allows them to run Powerpoints directly on that projector????

I recently resurrected an old rechargeable Handspring Visor Pro. I installed the old Margi PowerPoint conversion software onto my office machine, sync'd onto the Handspring unit, and began using it for a couple of presentations. Still, I'd like to use just one handheld, instead of lugging around two.

Let me know what people are doing now. Is there another way to do this - maybe using some kind of iPaq-to-USB adapter (for the most recent projectors, that is)?

Thanks!

Jim

[ipaqczar]

There was another option that you didn't mention - the FlyJacket for the 3xxx and 5xxx series of iPaqs.

To answer your question - I would assume it's a number of things - people are putting presentations on CDs or on the internet and then using equipment at the site for display.

Laptops have become a lot more powerful and some have shrunk in size and so they aren't the luggable beasts that might make someone really craze a PDA solution.

I have the FlyJacket and I've played with it a little bit - it could work in a pinch but it is really too limited in a lot of respects.

[ADBrown]

The Dell Axim X51v does this via a cable, but I doubt that that's exactly what you're looking for. Otherwise, yeah, it's mainly that there's not as much demand for an SDIO presentation accessory as there once was.

[Darius Wey]

Both the Dell Axim X50v and X51v will support VGA-out with the Dell Presentation Pack or Pc-Mobile's VGA-out cable.

But since that's device specific, you can look at another option - namely, the iGo Pitch Duo. (http://www.mobl.com/handheld/presentation/pitch-duo.htm) Mauricio from Geekzone has a review posted here. (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=3730)