ahardie

Sorry if this has been brought up already. I did a search and didn't find anything.

I just bought an IPAQ 4700 from what seemed to be a reputable company. It turned out to be a Malaysian import. The iPAQ is working flawlessly so I'm not too worried but apparently the unit has less wireless channels than UK spec models. Can somebody tell me if this is going to make any difference to me in practice? It works OK on the network in my house but is it going to stop me connecting to hotspots or cause any other problems?

t53186

I don't know how you ar able to determine that the unit has less wireless channels, but you should be able to connect hotspots as the typically est up wireless routers with the "average" consumer in mind. Meaning they want as many customers as possible to have access. Both for convienence and to "get the customer in the door". Here in the US many Hotspot locations harge for the service and the ones that are free are usually located where you would buy another product or service. It's a typical american marketing practice. A very good utility for wirelesss conectivity is Cirond pocket winc, available here http://www.cirond.com/pocketwinc.php

Here is another to help you find hotspots http://intel.jiwire.com/index.htm

As or any other problems, only time will tell, but you can determine if it is a genuine HP model with a warranty by looking at the back side, the uppermost conrer screw hole on the left should have a small hp sticker covering the screw head. If it does, it was manufactured by hp and has not been opened by any other individual or organizaiton

ikehiker

North America uses 11 channels for 802.11b/g while most of the world uses 13 channels. I don't know for sure about hotspots but I suspect most that are set up for public use, especially by the commercial providers, will use the lower channels so they don't miss out on the American tourist/business traveller market. If I were setting up a private network in the UK, I would probably use 13 just to cut down on the people that could get onto my WiFi.

There are ways to flash the ROM with a UK version of the operating system and (although I don't know this for a fact), I suspect the hardware is the same on all the iPaqs, so with the different ROM you can probably use the higher channels. Unfortunately, I don't know the procedure for changing the ROM on iPaqs and it will depend on whether there is a UK ROM version available for download for your model.

__________________
-Ike-

ahardie

Thanks for your replies. Looks like it shouldn't cause me any problems then. The thing is, I found out when I had been using mine for a couple of days that some people are sending back there iPAQs unopened if they didn't receive a UK model. As the only real difference between the UK and Malaysian models seemed to be the wifi channels I was wondering why.

imported_Rishy

well...i bought my RX3715 from Malaysia...and been using it in London for a few months now..

havent had any probs...

t53186

RE: ROM update-Good Luck
HP does not supply any ROM updates or original yet.