Handheld Reviews

Looks a very basic case. Why not having a "hard side" insert option, necessary to be used with the ipaq PocketPC?

The Washington Manual has been a favorite of medical students and house officers since it was first published in 1943. It was designed as a portable reference, providing information of the diagnosis and treatment of common medical problems. Franklin Electronic Publishers have now condensed all 600+ pages of the original text into a 1.3 MB program for the Palm.

For those lovers of the Washington Manual, this is a fairly easy-to-use adaptation of the book for the Palm. I find the pocket palm to be the most useful in looking up short blurbs on topics; this was accomplished easily and quickly in the Index screen by using either the Look-Up function or the Search function. The Search function even contained a Spelling Corrector; my constant misspelling of "arrythmia" was caught and returned with the option of correcting to "arrhythmia", while also suggesting "erythema" or "arthritic". In addition, there are footnote references that are easily accessible within the text at the click of a button, and a handy cross-referencing button which automatically shifts you to other related sections within the book.

Nevertheless, I still have reservations about the presentation of information within the confines of the small Palm screen. The outline format of the Washington Manual can be extremely disorienting; it is hard to see the larger context of a problem when you are directed to section III.A.4.e after a Search Function. In the paper version of the book, it would be easy to scan or flip a few pages back to see what were the topics for Subheading 4 or Part A or Section III. However, this format falls flat combined with the small amount of text that can be visualized on a Palm screen.

It is also important to note that the Washington Manual is very different in content than many of the other Palm-based reference books available to medical students. First of all, the manual is geared for in-patient medicine and therefore does not have information on some basic outpatient diseases such as otitis media or depression. Also, the manual has a strong emphasis on diagnosis and treatment, providing detailed information on what labs to draw and which studies to perform. However this is focused upon almost to the exclusion of pathophysiology and differential diagnoses. Yet it is these latter topics that are often what medical students most cherish from handbooks. As such, I believe the Washington Manual is better suited for residents and house officers. Nevertheless, this was always my objection to the Washington Manual; it is not confined to just this Palm version.

So, as a cash-strapped health professional student, should you spend the money on this Palm version of Washington Manual? (dollar amount) bucks is a lot of money. Especially when you can buy the printed spiral-bound version of the manual for half the price on Amazon.com. My advice? Unless you are a Washington Manual fanatic, save your money for rent.

While the funtional design of this case is great, the color desciption is all wrong. It should be 'silver' microfiber, with grey/silver leather accents. The only black part of the case is the attaching clip for the device. I'm returning the case becauce of the color.

Ever since buying my Visor Edge, I'd been looking for a replacement stylus that was easier to hold and smoother to write with than the original one. This looked like the ticket, and when it first arrived it seemed to fit the bill. Sure it was a little plasticky and didn't actually latch onto the Visor, but it fit in the hand pretty well. But I almost immediately had trouble with it popping off the Visor when I jammed it in my pocket, and this problem just got worse until I had to carry the stylus seperately in my pocket. Eventually I had to return to the original stylus. The attach mechanism is just plain cheap - more suitable to a disposable item than an adjunct to a $400 computer. I'd be willing to pay more for someone to make this thing right, but for mow the original stylus is the best thing going.

I have a 3955 and this sylus pack is not for the 3900 series. The tops will not fit down in the IPAQ. They are the wrong shape. It's like fitting a square peg in a round hole.

I'm very disappointed with the product because although it says that the Kit is for "Palm m100/m105/m125" neither the stylus nor the screen protectors fits the m125 size. It's not fair that from an offering of 4 products I finally used just two of them!

It's a tough job to add a useful keypad to a device that wasn't built with that in mind. This one is very lightweight, so the balance of the combined palm (m515 in my case) and thumb board is wrong, which further aggravates typing, and of course it's a hassle to use if you have the palm in a case of some sort.

The supplied software didn't work with the m515 at all--it never noticed the device. I had to download an update from the manufacturer's website, which itself is very hard to find (the actual manufacturer is sakar).

But it does work. Unfortunately you have to use the blue FN key to enter numbers, and the space key is unnecessarily small. For some idiotic reason there's no semicolon key (shifted, FNed, or otherwise). Perhaps a better idea would be a cabled or wireless keyboard, rather than this. I doubt I'll end up using it very often.

This laptop bag is nicely padded to protect you computer and has space fpr small things like, discs etc. The bad thing is it doesn't have a strap, handle, ot anything so you are not able to carry it anywhere which is a major turndown.....buy something with a strap or handle otherwise you will never be able to bring your computer anywhere.

The playback of the music on this unit sounds good. It has many problems that outweigh this positive. The worst problem is that it caused my Handspring to lock up quite often causing a soft reset and sometimes a hard reset. It also ate batteries very quickly. I even got a AC adaptor when I was loading the files and a AC adaptor for the car. It still used batteries too quickly.
Also, It takes way too long to load mp3 files on onto it. Innogear was offering a speedloader to load the mmc file faster. Minijam uses a propietary format on the mmc card so you can't just buy any mmc card reader.
You cannot store any kind of file except for mp3 on the mmc cards either.
This is a product that has potential if Innogear will address all of the above problems.

Although this cable lists compatibility with Tungsten W and T, and it will charge a Tungsten C model, it will not sync with C models. This information is buried on the support pages instead of the compatiblity page of the manufacturer's web site. I would have given this 4 stars if they had disclosed this.

If it had worked with my palm, I would say that it is very compact and light weight. It is similar in size to a white board marker when reeled in. The cable isn't long at 30 inches, but usually that is enough. Highly recommended as a compact alternative to a cradle.

The plug where the usb connector is attached to the cable looks like it might not last forever cause the cable is so thin and you usually accidentally push on the connection when plugging in the cable. But if you want compact for travel or as a backup to IR this is the choice.