Advice on a HandHeld please

JohnK

I’m hoping someone here could give me some advice on a handheld. I’m thinking about buying the Dell Axim X3i but I’m wondering if its worth it as I’ll mainly just be using it to read ebooks. I’m only going for the wireless version as I have a wireless network at home(802.11b) and it would be handy to be able to access my library with out having to be at my computer.

I know feck all about handhelds but since dell have a fairly good name I though I couldn’t go far wrong with them. No doubt once I have it I’ll find some other use for it as well but am I just totally wasting my money on this one? Is there some other handheld out there that would be better or more suitable? I’d prefer to stay with ones that run windows but then again that depends on what’s out there.

I’d appreciate any suggestions or advice

Thanks,

JohnK.

secret_squirrel

I've had an X3i since Early dec and Im pretty pleased with it. Use it mostly for playing WMA's and reading ebooks - usually at the same time.

Battery life is about 4 hours on normal battery doing this... Think dell are doing free second battery offer atm... Has very annoying shutdown feature at 20% left in battery..although see below.

As for the thing itself - its grand works nicely with my wireless network anywhere in the house.

I have found I needed to download (and pay for) a lot of stuff that I thought would have come as standard. Some of it I just used as a trial for a coupla days to sort things.

Like nice App Launcher & battery status report. (Battery Pack 2004) - also gets rid of that 20% thing I mentioned above.

Like XCPUscalar to underclock the cpu so the battery lasts longer.

ScreenOff to completly shut down screen when using as an mp3 player.

Connectivity to a mobile is appalling out of the box..shocking compared to my old psion. Had to d/l a prog for that to get all my phone nos off my sim.

Have to install Outlook (which i hate) on my pc to manage the Address book properly.

Controlling your pc through terminal services is fun if you are a geek like me!

Oh and just dropped it and scratched the fúck outa it...didnt like the dell case that comes with it. Suffice to say I have a new case on order.

Any specific Q's that I havent covered let me know....

Good luck!

JohnK

thanks for the reply secret_squirrel
Do you have any idea what the batery life is like if just used for reading? 4 hours seems a little short.
Also i'm sure i saw something on the site about a longer life battery, any idea if that would be much of an improvement?

thanks

secret_squirrel

Not sure about just reading...I would guess 5-6 hours especially if you have the cpu underclocked.

According to reviews i have seen the extended battery is about double the life of the standard one. It does create a big lump on the back of the case tho, sinces its almost double the thickness of the standard one that sits flush.

JohnK

Thanks secret_squirrel, I'll have a think about it over the weekend but its sounding promising.