Today I have mostly been...

Waiting to get home so I can play with my new XDA II.

Woo-hoo!

I told myself I'd never buy a gadget that was quite so unnecessary, but
there you go.

I told myself I'd need it for phone calls, the camera for any motoring
mishaps, games when on standby and mp3s when on the move.

I'm pretty sure there's loads more but I've not even looked in the box
yet.

Anyone else got one? What can be added on, GPS and all that, or is that
already in there?

Any other goodies?

Cheers.

 

It doesn't have GPS built in.

My GF had one through work - they're quite nifty for browsing the web in
obscure places.

Battery life is a bit shit though - and if you leave it too long it loses
all its memory :|

 

It's O2. It's pants. HTH

 

I use mine for monitoring my field team when they're out doing calls[1]. Get
a nice big SD card for the top slot, and save all your stuff there, for easy
retreival in the event of the inevitable "Windows CE unrecoverable
lockup/Hard reset required".

522 accessories here:

http://www.expansys.com/accessory.asp?code=106055

Turn the sodding Bluetooth off unless you need it. It hammers the battery.

I've got the retractable USB "Sync 'n Charge" cable for mine. Keeps the
battery nice and topped up, but a second battery would be a sensible move if
you're out and about for a while.

[1] They send results in by SMS, so I can see where they are in real time.
Cool.

 

I got an ipaq to keep the phone seperate. I'm not sure how long the
battery would last if I used it as a phone as well - I suspect it
wouldn't be that mobile anymore. I'd love to know what you get out of
it as a real person, not a sales-hype figure.

I've found www.aximsite.com and www.ipaqhq.com quite good for advice,
program and kit reviews, though they're more PDA orientated.

 

Good advice. I'm getting familiar with it and it's really rather good.
I've never owned anything like this before and I think (read:hope) I'll
enjoy getting to know it

Wow! It really is another world isn't it? From a completely ignorant
POV, the possibilities seem almost endless.

It was turned off by default, but I had a look to see if there was
anything in my street to connect to. There wasn't, so I promptly turned
it off again ;-)

Only got the charger/sync cradle that came with it but the batteries are
an idea as I'm a two wheeled only household

I got the idea of buying one after some of our riders at work have got
them. They don't need to spend ages on the radio or phone. All their
jobs come down the XDA and they do all the stuff they'd normally do
vocally by electronics instead. Saves loads of time, effort and cash,
and with the added bonus of not having to read someone's dodgy
handwriting - they tell you their name and you type it in.

 

I will, actually. There's nothing on it at the moment that wouldn't
matter if the battery went completely flat and I lost everything, so I
can run it until it completely dies.

 

Welcome to the world of MS Pocket PC ...

 

Whinging Courier secured a place in history by writing:

Assuming it can connect to the net whilst cradled: Check out
www.avantgo.com. Subscribe to a bunch of channels which you can synch
whilst munching your cornflakes in the morning (I have a wireless Pocket PC
so can do this without needing the cradle). Channels available include the
entire Guardian for today (which is very nice if you are a Guardian fan)
and the BBC news site. You can now read the newspaper during boring
meetings and everyone thinks you are studiously taking notes. Free and
fantastic.

 

I have an iMate, which is the same thing, rebranded.

You want one of these:
http://www.sandisk.com/retail/256mb-wifi-sd.asp

And there's some really good software around. I'll post some links
when I find them.

 

If you're in London it seems you don't really need to go into Costa
coffee or wherever. There's so many places doing wireless, you could
almost be anywhere.

Thanks, Ben. I'd appreciate that.

 

OK. A very rough and ready assessment:

Fully charged this morning. I switched it on at around 7.30 and have had
it on all day. I've made 17 phone calls lasting a total of 28 minutes
and 13 seconds.

For some reason I cannot connect to the internet using GPRS cellular or
WAP. I did try several times though and a fair guess would say about
five minutes in total.

I've kept the backlight on and played solitaire for about an hour and a
half in total today as well as messing about seeing what button did what
ands suchlike.

As I look at the battery meter now, it says:
Main Battery Li-ion 67% remaining
Backup Battery Li-ion 100% remaining.

It didn't get any what I'd call hardcore use today but at a guess it
should easily last at least a day if you ran everything under heavy
load. Oh yeah, I took a few pictures with it as well.

HTH

 

Yeah, there's all over. Sometimes when you least expect it.

I thought I had some bookmarked, but it appears I haven't, and
googling isn't finding me what I want.

 

It's the PDA part that kills the battery. And the bluetooth.

 

That was sort of my point. If I had both things working off one
battery it wouldn't last for any useful length of time.

 

That'd be right. I suppose you've forgotten what it was called as well.

<rolls eyes>

 

Call O2 customer services. A batch of our XDA's needed to have GPRS enabled
when we first got them.

 

Thanks for that. You got a number? I tried the fast dial 202 jobbie and
got redirected to a premium number at 60p per minute and got put on
hold.

I hung up after about six seconds.

 

heh. There's a really ace Today page extension thing. But there's
loads of them. I want to point you to the one I've seen. But I can't
find it...

 

The two best things I've got are Calendar+ and TaskPlus. Both make
the calendar and task list on the today screen how MS should have made
them in the first place.

Anyone know a way of storing sort of moving your "My Document" onto a
memory card, so that you get more space but it gets synced as normal?