Reviews for HP (Hewlett-Packard) iPAQ hx4700 Pocket PC

The good, the bad and the ugly

Strengths: Great wireless range Gives most of the important functions for a traveller requiring internet access. The backup and retores a treat.

Weakness: Will corrupt itself and gradually die for no reason thus requiring a hard reset. Reports networks as connected when they are not.

I used the little beast for a four month trek through Europe. I brought the optional high capacity battery to go with it and a protective case. Um? the unit would not fit in the aftermarket case with the larger battery. The larger battery gave a practical usage life while the standard battery was ok providing you were not connected via the wireless network.

Now, I would rave about it except it had a bad habbit of greadually dying. You would lose features every so often, like the ability to send e-mail attachments.

The optional keyboard gave quite a few problems by forgetting keys and then finding them once you tapped the screen.

HP support is near totally useless so you are own your own if you strike this problem. They will give you good instructions on how to do a hardware reset and forget to mention this means goodbye to all the data. Also you need a docketing cradle to reinstall the keyboard drivers. Um? starts adding to the weight in the backpack. Lucky the system restore works well. The trick is to backup with a working system and at the first sign of problems do a restore.

In the end not bad but like most modern HP products it misses out on the trust factor. A great concept flawed by unrealiablity.

The twin SD and CF card readers are a unique feature that proved very handy transfering pictures between SD and CF card cameras.

Now the final question, would I buy it again? Um? I would look a lot harder than I did and if something had similar features I would be steered towards the other brand. I am not happy that HP other IPAQ accessories for the older model do not work due to the squared off base even though the actual connection is the same.

A potentially great product disadvantages by HP approach to customer service and designed obselence between the older IPAQs.

Cheers

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HP (Hewlett-Packard) iPAQ hx4700 Pocket PC

Strengths: Excellent hardware except the almost useless touchpad.

Weakness: The operating system leaves much to desire. Sometimes the hx4700 works like a dragon which does not know what is happening to its tail.

Like in old times with Windows 3, you have to figure out how the system files work. The help about the system files is absent. If some of them get corrupt and you haven't backed them up, you can't restore the operating system without losing all third-party programs you've installed. If you turn off the device with large programs running, the device hangs up.
The operating system itself is not provided on the accompanying CD. In short, expect some malfunctioning soon after you buy the machine and then wait for Microsoft to develop the next version of Pocket PC.

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Good PDA,

Strengths: Zippy 624MHz processor; 4-inch VGA screen; runs Windows Mobile 2003 SE; integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth;

Weakness: Bulky; touchpad is unintuitive and isn't always responsive; subpar video performance.

The iPAQ hx4700 has proven to be an excellent replacement for my broken X50v. It is much stable and and the 4" screen has excellent contrast and brightness. It also has a 480x640 pixel VGA screen instead of the standard 240x320 pixel QVGA screen. Windows Pocket PC 2003 has proven to be completely compatible with all of my 3rd party applications. I use the Ipaq as a notebook replacement when I'm either on the road or away from my desk. I find it an excellent support tool for GTD with Outlook, SBSH Pocketbreeze and Pocket Mindmap.

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ReviewGist for Hewlett Packard iPAQ HX4700 Pocket PC

Interface is Average according to 3 PDA experts. -- "an easy-to-use wireless application that makes hooking up to WiFi networks and Bluetooth devices a breeze."-pcmag.com -- "4" colour display with its 16-bit colour depth and VGA (640 x 480 pixels) resolution surely takes its toll."-infosyncworld.com -- "With excellent viewability both indoors and outdoors, any QVGA user will find it a major...

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