I remember showing my brand new Palm VII handheld to a CEO friend of mine two years ago. I was proud that the handheld kept track of all my important information and featured wireless email. The CEO sniffed at the green-and-black screen, and dismissed it as a primitive gadget.

The comment stuck with me over the months that I used the Palm VII, sent emails and played the Sub hunt game. I downloaded add-on applications and got other files that a friend beamed to me until the paltry 2 MB of memory filled up, over and over again. I kept deleting old applets to make room for new ones, which was an exercise in frustration.

Meanwhile, to keep the thing running, I had to become a quick-change artist with the little batteries. I kept supplies of tiny AAA batteries in my desk downtown, briefcase and home office. If the battery died in the Palm VII, I'd lose all my data.

For two years I kept waiting for Palm to announce a color Palm VII, but the day never came. They best they came up with was the m505 with 8 MB for $449. This was thin soup to me. Palm dropped the ball and lost me as a customer.

Renouncing Palm for Pocket PC

I renounced my Palm citizenship and went over to the other side - the Microsoft Pocket PC world. I bought the top-of-the-line Compaq iPaq 3670 with a color screen and a cavernous 64 Mb of memory for $649 in August 2001. I felt like a Chevy owner switching to Honda, a football fan changing channels to extreme skateboarding, or PC owner buying a Macintosh. I was leaving the majority, who own Palm OS devices (Sony and Handspring included) and going to the smaller, but growing, minority.

It turns out I'm leading a trend. The Pocket PC software has grown from a 10% market share last year to 16%, according to NPD Intelect Inc., a market tracker. Handhelds based on Palm's software have decreased from 90% market share to 80%.

One reason is that the iPaq color screen is wonderful. It reminds me of the days when people began changing from black-and-white TVs to color sets. The iPaq gives you 4,096 colors (not that I am counting) which is plenty good for me. A little light sensor adjusts the picture so you can see well in an office or outdoors. You can also adjust the brightness to five different levels.

The iPaq is fast. It has a 206mhz processor that instantly switches from one function to another and immediately loads my New York Times, and Wall Street Journal downloaded via AvantGo. With the Palm, the screen would go blank while loading one of the these applications and made me wait to return to life and show my selection.

The iPaq's 64Mb of memory gives me plenty of space to download applets, and transfer graphics and Word documents to the device. And the iPaq has a rechargeable lithium battery so I don't have to swap out dinky batteries. It is supposed to last 12 hours per charge.

The silvery iPaq is chunkier than the Palm VII. For the iPaq to fit properly in the cradle you have to slide it into a black plastic sleeve called a "style pack." This does nothing more than make it larger (5.2" tall, 3.4" wide, .7" wide, weighing 5.8 ounces), and protect the back and a bottom port (but not the delicate front screen). I keep it in my briefcase, not my shirt pocket.

The downsides

So I got the cool, hard-to-find, ultimate handheld. But the iPaq also came with a lot of hassles I wasn't prepared for, plus bells and whistles that I can't imagine I'll use.

Be prepared for a lot of installing, installing, installing with the iPaq. Just like buying a new computer, you'll spend days getting the iPaq up and running. For starters, Compaq has hidden the manual. You'll look in the box but it won't be there. All you get is a couple of CDs and a little folder showing how to assemble the parts. I made a list of things to call Tech Support at Compaq about, starting with "where is the manual?"

It turns out the manual is buried in the "iPaq Tour" CD. You have to start the CD, skip the movie, click on "Extras," click on "Reference Guide," click to install the Reference Guide, switch to Microsoft Explorer, hunt for the file H3000-eng.pdf buried in the c:/Program Files/Compaq iPaq H3000/Docs/ directory, open the file and then print out the 120-page document. Why, oh why, couldn't Compaq have simply included a manual in the box?

There are also holes in the manual. Both the manual and the iPaq refer to a "Contrast" control that does not exist. I called a Compaq tech support guy who spent 10 minutes checking with his colleagues that there is no such control. This is annoying and stupid.

And the manual would have been no help with the next problem: getting the PC to recognize the iPaq attached by a USB port. I installed the second CD -- the Microsoft ActiveSync software, which ludicrously says it will "set up a partnership" with my handheld and my computer. I guess I'm the human bystander in this partnership. But the iPaq and the computer would not recognize each other.

I plugged the connector cable in and out, slipped the iPaq in and out of the cradle, restarted the computer - all to no avail. I phoned Compaq Tech Support, held and held on the line, and was directed into the guts of the My Computer Device Manager to fix the problem. It turns about that you have to wait until the exact, precise moment to plug the cradle in the USB port during the installation, or you too will get this problem. This is a very fussy partnership.

The iPaq does not fit well into its cradle or click into place, and there is no button to press to synchronize it. The main way you can tell that they're properly connected is that the iPaq makes a happy twitter the moment it connects and the computer answers with a twitter; it makes a sad twitter when you pull it out of the cradle.

I bought a second cradle for my downtown office for $39, only to discover it had no power supply. I couldn't believe it. I had to buy a second cable for the cradle. I went to the store and they didn't have them. I went online and couldn't find any. Finally I dug out the accessories folder that came with the iPaq, found the special web site where I had to mail-order the power cable for another $19. Again, this is annoying and stupid.

There are not as many downloads available in the Pocket PC world. I really wanted the Vindigo restaurant guide, which wouldn't fit in my Palm's memory, but there is no Pocket PC version. Microsoft has provided a variety of downloads at www.pocketpc.com.

The Upsides

That said, the iPaq does what it's supposed to. It keeps my appointments, stores my contact information, records my to-do lists, and gives me reminders. The calendar is clear and can be set to an "agenda" view that displays only appointment and not empty hours of the day. It can be set to delete past appointments older than two weeks to eliminate clutter.

The stylus clicks into its storage space securely and pops up when I press a button to get it. This will prevent my losing the stylus. The iPaq can also transfer email from Outlook on my desktop computer. I can beam data to other iPaq owners (not Palm owners however) with the infrared port.

It's expandable. One can buy an expansion pack that slides over the device (replacing the style pack) and allows a user to use cards to increase file storage space, or access the Internet wirelessly using a cell phone. The wireless add-on cost about $200 and looked complicated; I passed on it because I rarely used the wireless feature on the Palm VII after the novelty wore off.

The virtual or "soft" keyboard is very nice. It auto-completes words for you and remembers more words the more you use it. I liked this feature so much that I stopped using the "graffiti" or character recognition method.

The iPaq is designed to be as familiar as Windows on your desktop. For example, a tap on the Windows flag in the top left corner reveals a menu just like the "Start" button in Windows. I can search the entire contents of the iPaq by tapping the flag and then the "Find" icon. It has some nifty navigation features; the speaker is also a navigation button, allowing you to move the cursor up, down, left or right one space at a time. The iPaq also has a nice tap-and-hold function, which causes a pop-up menu to appear, offering choices like cut, paste and other functions. For example, if I tap and hold on an address, I get an option to send an e-mail to the person the next time I sync.

On the plus side, programs include Pocket Word and Pocket Excel, so I can transfer documents and spreadsheets onto the iPaq. I can not only read them, but edit them as well. I can view and edit Word and Excel attachments to emails as well. (With the Palm I had to purchase Documents To Go to be able just to read Word documents. The Palm would not display attachments. Editor's Note: The new version of Documents To Go supports editing of Microsoft Word and Excel files on Palm devices.) The iPaq has a beautiful Picture Viewer, and displays graphics very nicely. This is built into the iPaq Internet Explorer, which makes text easily viewable and displayed downloaded Web sites.

The iPaq has a lot of stuff I'll never use, like the Microsoft Reader, which allows you to read text and pictures. I cannot imagine reading a book on a 2 by 3-inch screen. Then there's the Media Player, which plays MP3 sound files. My son in junior high school might like this but it's pointless for me. There is a little button that lets me record short memos, like a Dictaphone. But the sound quality is poor on the one-inch speaker and I tried it only once. I doubt that I'll every use Microsoft Money either. I tried to use Pocket Streets, a map display program on the iPaq, but couldn't find any maps; I discovered in a call to Compaq tech support that I had to purchase $45 in additional Microsoft software, so I gave up. Finally, the iPaq comes with Solitare installed in Games. Woo hoo.

The price on iPaqs is coming down, and on Pocketpc.com they were on sale for $549 in September 2001 -- $100 less than I paid for it one month earlier. There are a lot of features on the iPaq, and I'm sure I could find them if I made the device my hobby. The iPaq filled that gap left by Palm. Despite its shortcomings, it's the best handheld choice today.

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