12, Jan, 2025
3 Views
Comments Off on Hewlett-Packard Jornada 545
0 0

Hewlett-Packard Jornada 545

Written by

The Jornada 545 was the first mobile manager in Australia to use Microsoft’s new Pocket PC platform, and it certainly stands out from the crowd. Its smooth, dark alloy casing, sharp, colour screen and well-designed controls are a welcome change from its rectangular, hard-edged predecessors. Inside the case there’s a 133MHz Hitachi chip and 16M of RAM. The usual IrDA window and Type I Compact-Flash slot complete the interaction/expansion capabilities, with a docking and power connector on the bottom edge of the unit.
The Jornada recharges and syncs only through the cradle (a very chunky affair), which means extra weight to cart around when travelling. The controls are the usual four application/menu/on buttons, plus a power/on button under the screen. A scroll/enter button and a voice recorder switch complete the input options.
Data is entered through the touch screen, using either Transcriber word recognition, or a virtual keyboard. The first option is surprisingly good, but requires a wait at the end of each sentence, and the second is pretty slow. Software is extremely generous, with media player, money manager, custom calculator, image viewer, AvantGo, and a special Palm beaming applet, as well as the standard Microsoft Excel. Word, Outlook and Internet Explorer applications that come with Pocket PC.
Synchronisation is catered for by ActiveSync 3.1, which works through a USB link, with an optional serial cable. However, the screen, clever applets and more complex interface all take their toll on the Hitachi chip’s performance. If you open more than a couple of programs, even simple operations like dimming the screen slow to a crawl. Hewlett-Packard has included a special Task Manager to close unused applications, but it takes several clicks to get to it, unlike Compaq’s much more accessible QStart task manager.
The unit is also heavier than average, possibly due to the nonreplaceable lithium ion battery. It is one of the best non-Palm devices, but it will make your jacket sag noticeably. On a brighter note, it has an excellent programming utility to enable custom key mappings for your favourite games, and a very comprehensive power usage option suite to maximise the eight hours or so of battery life. For a Pocket PC device, it’s cheap too.

Article Categories:
PDA

Comments are closed.