Jonathan1

I’m practically hovering over the buy button for a 4705. I have two final questions. First and most important e-books. The primary reason I’m upgrading is because the PDA rocks for ebooks. Obviously the 4700 doesn’t have a rocker button and the touchpad, as little as I’ve played with it, isn’t exactly attuned to paging up and down. That leaves the record button in easy reach. I’ve noticed that you can remap the button to pagedown but since neither MS reader nor, my favorite, eReader is installed at the CompUSA 4700 demo model I can’t be 100% certain that paging down is going to be “easy”. Does anyone have any experience with ebooks on the 4700 what is your solution? Or will the remapped button work perfectly fine?

Second is gaming on the 4700. I’ve read the reviews. I know that using the touchpad is a PITA but since I’m more of a RPGer then a purebred action gamer I’m wondering can I get away with the touchpad for RPG’s and how is the performance with the 4700 and VGA. I’ve seen the benchmarks in regards to video and its understandable that most VGA devices will take some hit because its driving a VGA screen but is the device at least usable when it comes to games?
Sorry if some of the questions seem a tad daft. I’m highly nervous spending a tad under $600 on a new Pocket PC. (My current device is a Jornada 568.) I just want to make sure I have all my bases covered. Thanks in advance for any info you can provide.

-Jonathan N.

gylman

Maybe this is not a direct answer to your question, but with regard to gaming, there does not seem to be a lot there to necessitate buying a 4700. True VGA gaming simply does not exist worth mentioning, so there is no major upside to the 4700 in that department other than a big bright screen, and lots of downside as you point out.

In addition, as far as I know (which may not be far, but anyway here it is) there is nothing useful on the horizon in the VGA gaming department that would take advantage of the increased resoluction (like a good RPG or shooter game).

R. Doug Vaughan

Originally Posted by jonathan1

...Does anyone have any experience with ebooks on the 4700 what is your solution? ... -Jonathan N.

Jonathan,
I am also a big eReader fan from my Palm OS days and love it on the hx4700. I remapped the page up/down to hx4700 buttons a few different ways and it works fine. I find using the record button a pain as it is not as easy to press with my big fingers.

I always run eReader in "real" VGA mode viewed with a landscape orientation. I added fonts to the hx4700 and now view the books in Arial size 8. Even with my old eyes those settings give me plenty of text per screen and easy visibility. You should do an "ereader" search on this forum to pick up other ebook commentary.

Jonathan1

Originally Posted by gylman

Maybe this is not a direct answer to your question, but with regard to gaming, there does not seem to be a lot there to necessitate buying a 4700. True VGA gaming simply does not exist worth mentioning, so there is no major upside to the 4700 in that department other than a big bright screen, and lots of downside as you point out. In addition, as far as I know (which may not be far, but anyway here it is) there is nothing useful on the horizon in the VGA gaming department that would take advantage of the increased resoluction (like a good RPG or shooter game).

Well I'm not overly concerned about utilizing the screen to its fullest potential. I just want to be sure that running a game like Age of Empires won't be brought to a crawl because of how much the iPaq is being "dragged" down with the VGA screen.

Jonathan1

Originally Posted by R. Doug Vaughan

Jonathan, You should do an "ereader" search on this forum to pick up other ebook commentary.

I did initially do a search for ebooks and found some discussions on people's favs but nothing 4700 specific. I didn't narrow my search down to a specific application though. DOH!!!

Thanks for clarifying things

cgavula

I use both eReader (Pro) and MS Reader on it and they work fine for me.

I have done some RPG gaming (arvale) on it and that goes pretty well too. I don't know specifically if AoE runs correctly on it, you'll probably want to check that out first. I know the Sony PocketEverquest games didn't run for me. In any case, I love the device.

--Chris

Rahl101

I use mine mostly for reading ebooks, and imo the touchpad works better for paging than the navigation button on my old 3970.

The record button does require quite a lot of pressure, so is not ideal for paging I think.

Jonathan1

Thanks guys. Took the leap of faith and hit the buy button a couple minutes ago. Now all I need to do is go and get myself a solid 1GB SD card. I love pricegrabber.com

thought_criminal

Pocket Everquest runs perfectly on the hx4705. Not sure about AoE though. And using the hi res patch in Tweaks2k make a few games run way better visually. I also just got a new RPG, Fade and so far it rocks. Way better than EverQuest. And don't forget MorphGear ( an emulator for pretty much every console) can run all the old RPG
games from snes, sega.

cgavula

Originally Posted by thought_criminal

Pocket Everquest runs perfectly on the hx4705. Not sure about AoE though. And using the hi res patch in Tweaks2k make a few games run way better visually. I also just got a new RPG, Fade and so far it rocks. Way better than EverQuest. And don't forget MorphGear ( an emulator for pretty much every console) can run all the old RPG games from snes, sega.

Which Pocket EQ episode did you get to work? Episode 1 wouldn't run correctly for me (the title screen buttons wouldn't draw).

Fade is actually a pretty old title, but it IS aqsome, but it's a different style of gameplay than Everquest.

But I agree - Morphgear is awsome!

--Chris