A whirling buzz of questions and answers - axim400

[peterpro]

Hi,

My names peter, i've recieved my axim for xmas.. ordered the 19th.. arrived the 24th.. opened.. xmas day.

wow, do i have some questions, observations for you guys, the axim community.

SO here goes.

Upon recieving the dell, stuck in a 320 meg card.. no problems.
I installed every shareware program i could find free on the net. ( i scoured and scoured all day long)
after finding about 100 different programs and installing and uninstalling, i've made a few determinations.

What I liked
I read an entire ebook on this thing and it was great. brilliant screen, long battery life.. although i have to ask what the average battery life is supposed to be.. i think i only got 4.5 hours on it, and that was just reading an ebook nothing else.

I enjoyed the casio slot games.. cool and fun,
4 inline was connect four, bolts and nuts is a fun small time distraction, pocket vcs lets me play the atari 2600 roms.. hehe yars revenge is all i wanted to play really. but that worked well.
reveal your rank is stratego, snowed in is better than bolts and nuts.
acepoker is by the most fun. dope wars is classic for me.
fonix voice central was amazing.. it worked.. working voice command.. whew.. now that is star trek.
handy zip seams really easy to use.
pockettool seems good too.
screen capture
ppcmorse
suncompass
tricorder

Areas that need filling
I think the quality of the free casino games is pretty low(except for the ace one) Having a really userfriendly environment is top priority for me with apps and games.. too many of these are very poorly implemented.

If one thing could be upgraded with pocket pc software it would be a standard brilliant user interface, with redundancy, and configurablity. easily enough added to any program would be to assign buttons to tasks(overiding the buttons also is important many programs let you assign a button, but only have the focus stolen by some other program running)

A few things i disliked
1) mame sucks - it's very slow, barely playable, and i fear i have the dreaded d-pad issue as it's very hard to click right, not to mention the unsatisfactory clicking feel of the right pad node.
2) 3d games where unplayable usually.
3) whew it takes awhile to intall programs onto this thing.

I'm not sure which is better to install to the cf or local ram.

I think the axim and all pocket pcs need a custom graphics chip or something to offload the screen graphics to a hardware processor or something.. it's either that or the slow bus speed that has me kinda feeling like a 400mhz processor is slow.
And i know it's not.. hell.. amiga's running the 68000 chips had more pep and response. I think the biggest bottle neck for the axim is the relatively slow i/o.

aside from all the minor dislikes, the dell is great.
read ebooks
access emails
play simple games
data base lists and multitues of information at your fingertips
listen to mp3
watch mpgs (i downloaded stargates which seem to be made for the pocket pc) 20 megs apiece per 22 minute episode wow.

so many things you can do with these things.
wish the i/o was faster though.
installing programs takes forever. (anyone know if they will be an axim that works with usb2).. damn.. should of made them usb2 supported devices i think.. they are backwards compatible you know.
=)

questions about the dell.
after a few days i noticed the following
1)the dpad on the right is mushy, and works.. but doesn't all the time..
2)the green light on top blinks when no programs are running.. what does that mean?
3) i got only 5 hours of battery time reading an ebook. is that normal
4) there is a hum by the left thumb scroller.
i suspect it's the battery because when the power is plugged in.. it deopesn't make that noise.
if you wanted to.. just record without making a noise..
it will record the noise for you. it's a hum.. like that made by a crappy powersupply.

[peterpro]

looks like active sybc is one .1 version upgraded since dell put out thier cd

looked at my active sync.. 3.5

microsoft's active sync.. on their website.. 3.6

some minor updates.. the biggest though for me is the ability to set
the usb transfer speed!!!

this may increase the damned long install times.. =0
we shall see.

hope this helps..
check out my website
http://www.learntheinternet.com let me know what you think.
i'll be adding a pocket pc section i think..
any ideas?

The blinking green light when no programs are running is the Axim notifying (or remind you) that there is an appointment on your calendar for that moment.

[peterpro]

yup thanks finally read up on that green light.. =)
its settable too how long it blinks

[rqtball]

I used mine as an MP3 player over the weekend to put together my daughter's trampoline and it lasted about 4 hours as well. How bright was your backlight?

[peterpro]

well i did the mp3 test on the axim 400mhz

got 6.5 hours - but at about 5 hours it sends a bazillion messages that the battery is low..
i recommend setting the battery complain to about 5% or something. very low so that you get max usage before it starts requiring you to click
battery low messages away.
=)

screen was set to low.. and I had it on powersave on and off..

7 hours reading an ebook by the way.. switch on permanent powersave.. with half brightness mode. =)

anyone else want to comment on thier battery tests?

anyone know of a good battery tracker software?