Sleek Silver Superb Stunner (HP iPaq Pocket PC H5550)

Member Name: thehud

Product:	HP iPaq Pocket PC H5550
Date:	22/03/04 (428 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stylish, very functional

Disadvantages: None really

A stunning little bit of kit, this beauty, and one that I've resisted for far too long. But now those days are long gone and I'm fully sold on the advantages of this neat little performer.

These days, no self respecting business mogul can afford not to have the accoutrements of modern technology with him, so that in essence he's always on tap and equipped to kill ... you know the stuff, mobile phone, laptop PC, mobile fax, credit card, cuddly toy ... well, there is one thing which is even more ubiquitous than all those things, and that's a personal digital assistant (PDA) or pocket PC. I've been into that sort of thing for quite some time now, but always up until now I've gone with the Jornada 720 little black box because I was almost completely dependent on having a PDA with a keyboard. You see, although many PDA's come with handwriting recognition facilities built in, I'd always considered them a bit clumsy and fiddly and fought shy of changing horses. In many ways it was the same when I finally accepted that I needed to use a mouse to get the best out of a PC. I still remember well, those bulky old IBM's with the black and green screens, and the clunky monochrome Amstrads ... ah, the good old days!

Anyway, as recently described by my old mate dave27, the Jornadas may have a decent enough keyboard and many other advantages, but they do come with a very distinct and unpleasant design fault, and that's the weakness in the hinge linking the screen to the box itself. Regular use of the Jornada really weakens this hinge and in the end, as inevitably as death and taxes, the bugger snaps off. And then you might as well just chuck it in the bin, because there's no fixing it, it's completely kaput and you will need to get another one.

Rece
ntly, when this happened to me (AGAIN) I finally decided to change the habit of a lifetime and try one of the lovely little iPaq PDA's from Hewlett Packard, as being supposedly the next best thing. The one which I've seen described in particularly glowing terms was the H5550 model and PC Pro gave it a good write up when it came out in August 2003, saying "If there was a king of PDAs, this would be it. Where other Pocket PCs compromise in the name of hitting the right price, HP includes everything in the iPAQ H5550's neat chassis. Not content with 802.11b WLAN, this PDA features Bluetooth and fingerprint recognition. But most important of all - and the key difference between it and the iPAQ H5450 - the H5550 is the first PDA we've seen to include Pocket PC 2003."

BLAH BLAH BLAH ... yes, I know, it's all techie garbage, I agree with you, but you do have to worry about these things.

Anyway, in the last week or so, I took delivery of a H5550 at work and got ready to fire it up, all expectantly, and was highly delighted with the results. It was easy to set up a connection with my desktop PC which allows you to synchronise your information between both PC's and another one as well. You use the same ActiveSync software which handles the Jornada synchronisation and are soon up and running.

The H5550 is a beautiful little gadget, measuring 5.23" (not including antenna nub) x 3.3" x .63" and weighing 7.29 oz (according to PDA Buyers Guide http://www.pdabuyersguide.com/ipaq5555.htm). That same site, also provides the following technical data:

&
#68;isplay: transflective TFT color LCD, 65,536 colors, Screen Size Diag: 3.8", Resolution: 240 x 320.
Battery: Lithium Ion Polymer rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1250mA. 2840 extended battery available for purchase.
Performance: Intel XScale PXA 255 400 MHz processor. 48MB Flash ROM with 17.40 megs available in FileStore for your use, 128 MB built-in RAM (126.63 available).
Size: 5.23" (not including antenna nub) x 3.3" x .63". Weight: 7.29 oz.
Audio: Built in speaker, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack. Voice Recorder and Windows Pocket Media Player 9 included for your MP3 pleasure.
Networking: Integrated WiFi 802.11b (also supporting LEAP) and Bluetooth
Software: Pocket PC 2003 Premium operating system (aka Windows Mobile 2003). Microsoft Pocket Office suite including Pocket Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and Outlook. Also, Terminal Services, MSN Instant Messenger for Pocket PC, MS Reader and Voice Recorder as well as handwriting recognition. 3rd party software: Avaya IP Softphone, IP blue VTGO!, Running Voice IP?, Cisco CallManager (voice over IP) MARGI Presenter-to-Go, iPresentation Mobile Converter LE, MobiMate's WorldMate, Colligo Personal Edition, NetMotion Mobility (secure connections to LANs), Westtek ClearVue Office Suite?, XcelleNet's Afaria, RealOne Player, Jeode Java runtime, F-Secure
FileCrypto for Pocket PC Personal Edition, Acrobat Reader, Resco Explorer 2003, Audible Player and several additional trial/demo programs including Cadenza mNotes for syncing to Lotus Notes. ActiveSync 3.7 and Outlook 2002 for PCs included.
Expansion: 1 SD (Secure Digital) slot, 4 bit data bus, supporting SDIO. Can use iPAQ expansion sleeves.

Now all that stuff has just been cut and pasted in to give you the info you need, forgive me, but it's easier than trying to run through it all. Anyway, it's only included for show because now I'm going to tell you about what the H5550 is actually like.

A quick check on the Amazon website at the time of writing reveals that you can get a H5550 for as little as 380 quid, although you can normally expect to pay around £400, which is a significant improvement over the Jornada, which is priced at about 700 quid. The PDA is nice and slim and sleek looking and slips nicely into your shirt pocket, although it will start to wreck the pocket if you keep it permanently in there. The body can be housed in a protective plastic sleeve which prevents you doing any serious damage while you're carring it around, although you have to unclip the front cover when you want to use it, and the cover tends to get in the way when you're trying to use the H5550. A minor gripe, I know, but certainly annoying. The stylus is located in a slot at the top of your machine and you just push it in to release it for use.

Battery life is good and I'm told you get about 3 hours of constant use and a reputed 48 hours when the machine is in standby mode. The battery is recharged by sliding the machine into its synchronisation docking cradle, and for general use docking at least once a day i
s enough without becoming too onerous. You can fiddle around with the backlight settings and the contrast to improve matters, but really for most users this isn't necessary.

It's very easy to be up and running very rapidly, and the calendar, e-mail and task facilities are all pretty good, coming from Microsoft's Pocket PC family, and you also get Word and Excel as standard, although Excel is a bit fiddly to use because of the way you key in numbers. Word and Notes, however, are exceptionally good versions with this gadget and when powered by the handwriting recognition facilities (which are significantly better than I remember them to be) make note taking a breeze and much better than trolling round with a pad and pen and losing all of your notes, which I'm in the habit of doing at every opportunity.

You get Wireless and Bluetooth facilities which are nice touches, along with loads of other goodies and really the iPaq H5550 is truly wonderful, a real boon in this day and age. It's attractive and highly functional and makes you far more productive with your time than you would have thought. I'm glad I've swapped over from the Jornada and just wish I had done so ages ago ... aah, well, I'm there now.

Summary: