3. HP IPAQ rx1950 Pocket PC: A No Frills PDA

Reviewer: Bruce Gain

The HP IPAQ rx1950 Personal Digital Assistant is aimed squarely at business users, and is by no stretch of the imagination a fun, geek-oriented device. It supports Outlook, Word, Excel, and Internet Explorer applications in a 4.47" x 2.78" x 0.5" package that weighs just 4.4 oz, but includes neither a camera nor Bluetooth support. Both of these are available as options, however, and fit into an SDIO slot on the rx1950.

The HP IPAQ rx1950 concentrates more on business and less on entertainment.

The rx1950 includes a relatively slow 300 MHz Samsung SC32442 CPU and 96 MB (64 MB ROM and 32 MB SDRAM) of storage. The rx1950 can be extended using SD memory cards, which top out at a a decent 4 GB nowadays. A stereo headphone jack is included on the device, as is Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, so the HP PDA can be used to listen to music as well as for more mundane business uses.

The HP IPAQ rx1950 supports 802.11b wireless networking for external communications, data synchronization, and so forth. Though it's no powerhouse, the rx1950 can handle Mobile Office applications well, and can even handle video through Media Player. At around $300, the PDA delivers excellent value for the money.

If you want to go upscale, we strongly urge you to consider a Windows Mobile-based PDA phone. A number of products are available. We especially like Palm's Treo 700W available from Verizon. To find it do a Lowest Price Search using the box in the upper right corner of this page