Quote:
Originally Posted by starrigger
Any suggestions? Someone told me that there were low-end Windows Mobile devices available for around $100, but I haven't been able to find any. I don't have hugely sophisticated needs; I want a decent screen for reading in the dark, and the ability to sync my Outlook contacts and calendar. It would be nice if it could run Mobipocket software and something that reads epub.
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What I use is a Palm OS PDA. Specifically, I have a Tapwave Zodiac 2. Tapwave was started by a couple of former Palm execs who wanted to create a device that was a handheld gaming platform and a Palm OS PDA.
Because it was designed for gaming, it has features you wouldn't expect, like a 320x480 screen driven by an ATI graphics chip with 2D acceleration and 8MB of screen RAM, Yamaha stereo sound with actual (tiny) stereo speakers on the device, and 128MB of RAM. It also has Bluetooth radio and two SD card slots, with a 2GB card in each.
The game developers never really got behind it, and the marketing made it hard to tell it was a great PDA, too, and Tapwave went under in 2005. No matter: I have three...
About half of the Zodiac's mission is to be an ebook viewer. I have about 3,500 volumes on in, in an assortment of formats. Most (about 3,200) are HTML files from the Baen Free Library, Project Gutenberg and elsewhere, converted for Plucker, a free, open source offline HTML reader for Palm devices. Plucker supports color, embedded images, hyperlinks, text attributes, and (under OS5) fonts. It also supports volumes created with gzip compatible compression, for an average 70% size reduction.
I also have several hundred Mobipocket volumes, read with v5.3 of the Mobi reader for Palm OS, plus things in eReader format read by eReader 3..0fp, PDF files read by the open source PalmPDF program,l and Word docs, RTF files, Palm DOC ans zTXT files and plain ASCII text files read by the open source PalmFiction viewer.
The only thing I can't read on the device now is ePub, but that's not a huge issue, as I have little in ePub I need to read, and can read what I do have on desktop, laptop, or notebook in FBReader.
Battery life is decent, with the main variable being screen brightness. I usually keep my screen set as low as is comfortably readable, and expect the battery to last a couple of days, but generally top it off overnight.
Because it's a Palm OS PDA, I can sync my Outlook Contacts to it as the basis of my Address Book, and the Calendar syncs to my DateBook and handles appointments and alarms.
I can also view/edit Excel spreadsheets and Word documents via Documents to Go, write with WordSmith and a folding keyboard, and sync that with Word, and go online (though I seldom do) via a wifi SD card and one of several browsers, or send/receive email.
It's my pocket reference library on a variety of topics. And oh, yes, it plays games.
There should be a fair number of deals on Palm devices on eBay or the like, and you're welcome to ping me with questions. I've been using Palm devices for years and have learned a bit about them.
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Dennis