Of all the PocketPC's in the land, the fairest - hands down - has been the Compaq Ipaq. With visual splendor and audio multimedia wow-by-the-mile, in addition to solid PDA ability, the H3600 units went on to outsell every other PocketPC by a landslide. However, with the recent release of the new PocketPC 2002 operating system, the competition has been jumping with news of eyecandy handhelds.
Not to be outdone by anyone, Compaq has built on the original and dished out the H3800 series just in time for the holidays. Sporting 64 megabytes of RAM, 32MB of Flash ROM, a built-in SD memory slot and compatibility with existing expansion sleeves that let you do everything from run presentations to watch TV on the PDA, the new series is impressive.
Toss in the stereo headphone jack and built-in microphone for voice notes, and it becomes a 0.62-inch-thick office in a shirt pocket.
All this is great, but it doesn't bring the drool value for the hardened tech fan. What does? A jaw dropping 2.26-inch-by-3.02-inch TFT screen cranking out 65,536 thousand colours through a 32-bit 206-MHz Intel StrongARM processor.
Better start dropping hefty compliments with those holiday hints this year, www.amazon.com shows the H3835 is listed at $599.99 (U.S.). For more specs and additional models, see www.compaq.com/ipaq.