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P800 vs PDA/Mobile Questions - worthwhile move?? |
elbarto
Joined: Jun 22, 2003
Posts: 32
PM |
I am a Pocket PC user looking to consolidate phone and PDA. Being far from the first to do this I'd like to draw on people's experience and see if its worth the move and some I guess some short term pain?
Does the P800 have the range of freeware and shareware available like Pocket PCs and Palms?
Can you simply copy MP3 and movies to Memory sticks and use an MP3 player or are you limited to booking music in and out using ATRAC like Sony Vaio/players?
Are there any alternatives to AvantGo
for offline news reading?
Can I run any IM tools compatible with MSN Messenger and can I check my Hotmail account and/or run it offline a la PPC Inbox/pocket hotmail?
Does the handwriting recognition work and/or is there a reasonable onscreen keyboard? Does it use a form of predictive text input?
What if anything is missing from the PPC world that should stop me switching or what does the P800 do better/offer when compared to PDAs?
How much have your phone bills risen due to high costs for GPRS?!
Thanks in advance for any advice/feedback!!
Chris aka Elbarto | |
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yusufl
Joined: Dec 13, 2002
Posts: 138
From: South Africa
PM |
Text input is the best, I can't really explain it to you, but once you've tried it you will agree 100%
Mp3's and movies are just copied and they just play first time everytime. the deal clincher will be when you check out earthcam.mobile and watch paris or new york live over GPRS. It does everything you pocket pc can do but in a sleeker package also its got quite a bit of apps as well obviously not as many as palm and win ce as it is still a relatively new product but you will not be able to carry another phone once you've used a p800 at least that's my view and I am sure 1000's of other Esato users view as well.
Just go get it and you'll see for yourself |
Chaser81
Joined: Jun 24, 2002
Posts: 334
From: Co. Armagh, NI
PM |
Okay, going to tackle these in order!
1) Simply put, no. The P800 doesnt have the sheer volume of shareware and freeware that the pocket PC has, but then you would expect that as Symbian 7.0 is a new version of the operating system, and people havent ported over all the Symbian 6.0 programs yet. If you want to have a look at how much there IS available for it, your best bet is to go to www.my-symbian.com and check out the downloads section for the P800.
2) Yes, you can simply copy across your mp3s to the phone memory or memory stick and play them. You dont have to convert them to anything else (unless you want to- most of us dont use the phone's built in mp3 player, we prefer to use Ogg Vorbis player because the .ogg files take up less memory than mp3, so obviously we have to convert them in this case).
3) There is no Avantgo for Symbian 7.0 yet, but you have a built in html web browser, so you could simply save a news web page for viewing later, or you could use Mobipockets news service (it saves news into the mobipocket reader program on your P800 for you to read at a later date).
4) There are a dozen IM programs available for the platform, some of which you have to pay for, and most of them are compatible with MSN, Yahoo, Lycos messenger, etc.
5) Hotmail itself has no pop3 access unless you are willing to pay for it, which excludes the possibility of using the phone's built in email client to get your email, but you could always jump onto the phones web browser and check it through that!
6) The handwriting recognition works very well, since it uses CRC's Jot program (same as most Pocket PCs use). The phone does also have an on-screen keyboard as well, which is fairly simple and self-explanatory but there is no predictive text of any kind on the P800 I am afraid (believe me, we have all moaned about it).
7) I personally dont believe there is much missing from the P800 that you would find on the Pocket PC. Before I got mine, I used to have an Ipaq, and I haven't really felt the loss of anything since changing. I love my P800 to bits, it does me proud!
 My GPRS isnt that expensive on Orange, and my phone bills were high anyway, so not really noticed the difference.
Hope that helps mate.
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ainamrev
Joined: May 23, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: Servanya - Russia
PM, WWW
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Whats the web address for earthcam.mobile for wafching live images of paris, New york, etc etc ....
[addsig] |
meducate
Joined: May 19, 2003
Posts: 13
From: New York
PM |
I still keep my ipaq as well as my p800 for two main reasons: 1) I do all of my PowerPoint presentations off the Ipaq; there is no method for doing this yet with the p800. 2) I use 802.11 connectivity to wireless lans in my work environments with the Ipaq.
If it werent for these two things, I would only need/use the p800...
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elbarto
Joined: Jun 22, 2003
Posts: 32
PM |
Thanks folks, seems I'm gonna have to sell my PDA to go for a P800 so I'm struggling with the decision to change, especially as I have a WIFI PDA so I'd miss the wireless.....
Thanks for the info and advice though I'm slowly coming round to the idea!!
So many gadgets......so little money......... |
Little Jon
Joined: Jun 11, 2003
Posts: 195
PM |
You can get your hotmail without going to the web browser using the following method.
Open an account with a POP3/IMAP e-mail account that can fetch your web-based e-mail (I assume there's a choice, but I use spamcop.net). Access this on your phone instead of your hotmail account. You just give it your login name and password and it fetches your mail every so often. You can set it to delete or leave the mail on the other server. | |
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Access the forum with a mobile phone via esato.mobi
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Posted: 2003-06-27 11:32
