REVIEW : Axim X3i

**Chris Leckness** · 04-17-04, 11:25 PM

PDA Gold's Pavel Koza reviews the Axim X3i

Read the Review

More than a year ago, Dell entered the Pocket PC market with its Dell Axim X5 which became widely popular in a few months' time. Dell made an impact on the Pocket PC segment mainly by the price. Dell continues with this philosophy - a quality device for a low price - in the three models of the Axim X3 series. In this review, we will closely examine the most powerful one.

HighTymes · 04-21-04, 01:38 AM

Thankz. I am confused as to why he didn't compare the new updated x3i to everyone else. If it was it would have been on the top of the pack, strange.

plmagis · 04-21-04, 06:53 AM

Interesting review, thanks!

But I was confused by the screen captures of the Dell WLAN Utility.

I purchased my Axim 3i with BT and WiFi end of March and the interface for the Dell WLAN Utility looks very different:

- I don't see the pull-down menu on the Today screen
- I don't get the five screens (e.g. the ping functionality)

I can live without it, but I wonder if it can be downloaded somewhere...

Thnx,

P.

Odie2004 · 04-24-04, 07:49 AM

plmagis, the X3i BT has a different WLAN utility.

- Odie

plmagis · 04-24-04, 04:47 PM

Hi Odie,

Thanks for your message, although I found it a tad cryptic.
I have the x3i with WiFi and BT too so I guess you mean that ours is different than the tested one.

Actually I had some major troubles this morning with WiFi because it had switched network ("Internet" instead of "Work")

No way of connecting to the Internet and no way to switch it back to "Work". Eventually I had to do a hard reset

to make it work back again.

So yes, I'm looking for a different interface for the WiFi...

P.

Odie2004 · 04-25-04, 07:53 AM

plmagis, sorry if my reply was a bit blunt.

The one that is in the review is the X3i (non BT).

After seeing that the author of the review had much lower benchmark scores than I did, I contacted him and found out that the review was written in January (before some of the update patches and the ROM update that Dell put up and then pulled a few weeks ago). I provided two sets of benchmark results that I made on my X3i BT on the day I recieved it, and he added it to the review.

Back to the WLAN utility, I agree that it would have been nice to keep the same interface for all the X3i models. I had a difficult time figuring out why I couldn't follow instructions on discovering the X3i's Wi-Fi MAC address from various posts on the forums.

One thing that annoys me about the X3i BT is that the Wireless on-off button turns both BT and Wi-Fi on, and there's no option to map it so that it turns only one or the other on. I did e-mail Dell with the suggestion, but I guess they didn't bother implementing it for the small (crappy?) update that they released a few weeks ago. (they apparently fixed "some wording" in the BT help file.... a bit lame isn't it?)

- Odie

j.verhoosel · 05-03-04, 05:30 PM

Recently i bought a Dell AximX3i. No one can tell me if it has blue tooth and no one can tell me how to work on the internet with this thing which i am suppose to be able to. I don't know much about it (yet) , but even the 'helpdesk' of Dell could not help me. The help desk here in Holland is very lousy. Who can help me on the way. Also is it possible to use the PDA as a GPS device ?

Odie2004 · 05-05-04, 02:22 PM

Hmm...well it should be easy enough to figure out if it has bluetooth or not:

Method 1:
Press the wireless on/off button (the button which is on the right-hand side of the unit). If you see two lights come on in the antenna then you have an X3i with bluetooth (as well as wi-fi)

Method 2:
Go to Start -> Settings -> Connections ... click the bluetooth manager icon (if it's there) and then click the button to switch on the bluetooth, if a light in the antenna comes on, then you have an X3i with bluetooth.

I hope that helps a little.

- Odie

plmagis · 05-05-04, 05:04 PM

Hi,

It took me a while too before I managed to surf on the Internet with my Axim 3i BT/WiFi.

What helped me the most was the excellent FAQ available at:

http://wifi.aximsite.com/wifi-faq.html

If I remember correctly, the interface displayed in it is not exactly the same as the one I had, but I managed to connect it to the Internet anyway. :)

You just need to be very careful with the different profiles "Internet" and "Work" that seem to exist by default on the Axim. The names are highly confusing because I actually connect via the Internet from home... using the Work-profile :crooked: (I never managed to make the Internet-one work.)

Moreover I haven't found a way to properly configure the parameters of either profile, but I once had the problem where my Axim always choose by default "Internet" (I actually had to hard-reset it to make it work again.)

Combined with the fact that you can not remove the settings of WiFi-APs you don't want to connect to or can tell it to which AP to connect by default, I came to the conclusion that the WiFi-interface is properly one of the crappiest I've ever seen. (Anybody please feel free to convince me of the opposite!)

Oh and BTW j.verhoosel if you send me a e-mail I can react in Dutch if you prefer. (Don't want to offend people on this forum by using cryptic languages :D )

P.