With its new Aero CE device, Compaq has obviously decided that if you can’t beat 3Com, join It. The new Aero 1520 Is slightly longer and thinner than a Palm 111, but otherwise it has almost identical dimensions and it also looks better. It packs a 70MHz NEC-sourced MIPS 4000 chip and 32M of combined RAM and ROM in its elegant silver casing, fronted by a 240 by 320-pixel touchscreen.
Like the Palm, its screen is monochrome to help with both clarity and battery life, but it has better definition for image viewing. As well as outdoing Palms for resolution, the Aero 1520 comes out ahead with its bundled software. Compaq has included a very useful (and essential) QLaunch task manager, a voice recorder, AudiblePlayer, QuickView, ImageView, CoolCalc and a financial planning application in the box.
Despite the extra CPU grunt, many operations are still noticeably slower than their Palm OS equivalents. The unit comes with the much-improved Active Sync 3.0, instead of the slow and clunky Desktop Services for CE, and has Windows CE 2.11 loaded in Its 16M ROM.
The layout of the controls and screen is standard PDA design, with four instant option buttons (memo, calendar, to-do and contacts) and a power/backlight button on the front. The last button allows backlighting to be either reversed (like the Palm V) or standard, according to your preference.
There are also three side-mounted controls for scrolling, enter and escape. A one-touch recorder button is included, which can output either through the built-in speaker or through the included earphone socket, and you can even play MP3s, but only in mono. The usual CompactFlash expansion/peripheral socket and IrDA window complete the I/O line-up. The kit comes with application and manual CDs, a charger and a synchronising cradle. The power lead can either plug directly into the Aero, or into the back of the cradle to charge the lithium Ion battery automatically. If something goes awry, there is a built-in CE diagnostic tool that can assess the unit and report back to the desktop.
The Aero is very neat. Using a mono screen boosts the usable battery life to about two to three days of average use, which is a vast improvement on most colour CE units. Overall, it is definitely one of the finest Windows CE palmtop units available on the market. Its slim build, smooth desktop auto-integration, expansion potential, familiar Windows-style screens and built-in sound capability all win the Aero valuable brownie points.
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