FYI, I was leaning toward the Dell X50v and then Loox 720, but decided on the Asus. And the HP with the touch screen sucks big time. I tried it and hated it.
1. WiFi Connection
Works great nearly everywhere I have used it. Home, work, hotspots, and friends places. The Asus application is easy to use and made connecting and monitoring the connection easy as well.
2. Bluetooth
I have a Bluetooth keyboard and it works great. I also have Bluetooth GPS and it works with that. It works with my and many of my friends Bluetooth phones.
It works with my new Bluetake Bluetooth headphones too!
And yes it works at the same time as the WiFi. No probs. It doesn't have Bluetooth 1.2 (as far as I can tell) which is supposed to reduce interference, not fix incompatibility. I think they have always worked together, just not well.
3. Screen
Perfect. Now if only MS would support true VGA.
4. Battery Life
Yes this I guess is the "big issue" with most who own or who are thinking or thought about owning an A730w. Yes I get around 2.5 hours or so depending on what I' doing and whether or not the screen is dimmed. The extra battery for me is a bonus. My old PDA had the same rating on the battery and I did just fine. Yes there is not an external way to charge the battery. ( I am working on building my own external charger which could result in the battery exploding in the process. I'll let you all know if it works.
) The charging of the battery isn't really that big of a deal if you recall how most PDAs a few years ago didn't even have a removable battery to begin with! I do take it with me almost everywhere, so here is the battery power check list. Home:Charger, Work: Charger, Vehicle:Charger, Walking: Extra battery. Okay whats the problem. I could buy a bigger battery. I could buy a portable solar panel. I'm thinking of getting the new Socket Mobile Power. The small battery also helps with the small size which I love. Battery tech is still a long way off overall, so I know this will always be an issue until the battery heads figure it out.
5. Locking up, bugs
Most of the problems are related to the OS and the limitations of the built in apps from MS. Sometimes I get trouble when changing from portrait to landscape modes. I have adjusted to avoid most of them. Or just do a soft reset.
6. Programs
Everything works very well. I do really like the built in backup prog from Asus (SmartKeeper). The camera prog works as described. Don't really use the launcher. It did come with a bunch of free apps on the CD. I haven't tried them all, but I will soon.
7. Price
About right for the offerings.
8. Media playback, MP3
Video and audio playback was flawless. I do understand that the other PDAs with separate graphics processors do have better video playback, but the Asus worked just fine.
I used several different progs for both video and audio playback. As long as they support vga they worked great.
Most of this goes back to the device itself, hardware and OS. And how your audio/video files are put together, ie resolutions, bitrate, file size, etc. Asus did seem to "tweak" it a bit for better audio performance. The controls are above and beyond any that I have used before.
9. others
-Camera
With enough light the camera works as well if not better than any other 1.3mp.
I was surprised by how well it did work. Yes indoors you need a lot of light . Okay so what, if I want a perfect picture I bust out my 6mp camera and take a real photo that would work.
Again the coolness factor goes up. It isn't essential but it is fun and easy to use.
-USB Host
The USB host functionality was one of the main reasons for me buying the A730w. This should be a requirement in all future high end PDAs. If you do not have this then you are providing a sub par device.
This is awesome on so many levels. I have not tested it with every device obviously. It worked on some keyboards and mice and not others. Surprisingly it was the more generic USB devices that it worked on.
Flash drives of all sizes (that I had) worked. I have 1gb drives and I want to try a hard drive to see if that will work. I am hoping that it will work with a 40gb portable drive I'm putting together!
The more complex the item, then more a need for drivers I think. None of my digital cameras where detected. My fancy Logitech mouse and MS keyboard were not detected or didn't work. Maybe this will get better with drivers.
-Memory
The 128mb or RAM is essential. If it had 128mb of ROM that would have been better. Again anything with less than 128 of RAM is sub par. I do believe in the future, and I think MS will require this with WM2k5, is the need for nonvolatile RAM. Also 256 or 512mb of RAM/ROM would be even better!!!
Dual slots rock of course. If they had say 512mb to 1gb then the need for dual slots would be gone in my book.I have a couple 1gb sd cards and I bought a 4gb cf card as my main storage. This
is so sweet!
-IR
Another discussion was about the IR. Is it Consumer IR? Is it fast IR? I don't know and I don't care. I trialed two remote control programs. I did this from various distances and degrees. I did this on different devices, standalone and multi-function.
Guess what. It works. I have had no probs with the IR. period. I had more trouble setting up the programs then the hardware. (Isn't it always like that?) So it has IR that works. Function 36 that My PDA does is now checked off.
-VOIP
I have not tried this but I am looking forward to see how the device works. I'll use a headset jack and a Bluetooth headset (Jabra?). I'll use Skype and maybe one other service. With the excellent audio controls this would be yet another added bonus.
I got mine from ProPortable. I would like to thank Justin O'Dea(and others there) for his service, advise, and commentary.
So I guess that is it. It is a great device and I would recommend it to anyone. Have a nice day.
