When the Compaq iPAQ was introduced to the press in February of 2000 at a Microsoft Pocket PC reviewers' conference in Seattle, it was roundly trounced for its lack of even a CF card expansion slot. The criticism was so harsh and, in my opinion, undeserved that I stood up and defended Compaq's daring new PDA. Turns out that the critics had a point and I had one, too. The iPAQ went on to be a big success and could have been a bigger one yet had enough units been available to meet demand. However, the lack of any built-in expansion slot did end up being a weakness of the iPAQ, one magnified by the fact that expansion sleeves were almost impossible to come by. Even at Pen Computing we had to wait for months until our ever helpful contacts at Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's PR agency, came through. While I was waiting for the iPAQ sleeves to arrive I grew attached to the Casio EM-500 which at least has a MMC Card slot and an external modem (albeit a very bulky one).

-- Once the sleeves arrived I was initially disappointed about their bulk and size. The PC Card sleeve almost doubles the lPAQ's heft, but I quickly found that this was a compromise I could live with. I especially learned to like the PC Card sleeve because it contains its own additional Lithium Polymer power supply. When you use the PC Card sleeve you actually have two batteries and they seem to help each other out. Equally nice is that even with the sleeve on you can insert the iPAQ into its dock which then charges both batteries at the same time.

-- But on to what you can actually do with the sleeve. Since it accommodates a PC Card slot you can use any and all PC Cards supported by the iPAQ and you can also use all standard CF cards via a PC Card CF adapter. This essentially makes the CF Card sleeve unnecessary. The CF sleeve isn't-much lighter or smaller than the battery-equipped PC Card sleeve, so why bother.

-- So far I have been using the PC Card sleeve primarily for communication. For (almost) anywhere email I use a Sierra Wireless AirCard 300 (www.sierrawireless.com) combined with AT&T Wireless CDPD service (reviewed in our March 2001 issue). The combo works well though CDPD's maximum speed of 19.2 kbps can be a drag. It is possible to browse the web via CDPD but I wouldn't recommend it unless you primarily go to specially formatted low bandwidth websites.

-- One peripheral I have learned to love are 802.11b wireless LAN PC Cards. Wireless communications speed ceases to be an issue whenever I am in the proximity of a 802.11b wireless access point. 802.11b provides a maximum speed of 11mb per second (though actual throughput is more around half that speed and quickly drops off with distance) which is what you get from a standard 10BaseT wired office LAN. I have been using a LAN card from Symbol Technologies (www.symbol.com) in my iPAQ's PC Card sleeve and have become a total believer. We have Symbol Access Points in our editorial offices and Symbol and other access points are increasingly being used in hotels, at conferences, and even in airports. Using a 802.11 wire less LAN is an entirely different experience from using CDPD. Communication is some 500 times faster and though that is difficult to quantify in real life, the bottomline is that having a wireless LAN Card in your iPAQ is like being connected to a ÒrealÓ LAN. Email comes in at top speed, and Web browsing is as fast and painless as it gets on a tiny screen.

-- Setup is generally a breeze. Since most access points use DHCP servers, all you need to do is enter the LAN's name. Most of the time ÒAnyÓ will do. The one annoying thing is that setting the Card up for DHCP wipes out all of your other settings. If you use an assigned LAN address in your office, you will have to re-enter it later, together with the subnet mask, and the IP addresses for your gateway, name servers, and device address. Microsoft, please fix.

-- I used my iPAQ extensively at the recent Mobile Insights 2001 Conference in Phoenix (www.mobileinsights.com). l used the Transcriber handwriting recognition engine to take notes during the sessions, was--thanks to the wireless LAn card--able to scan email for important stuff, and could even rate the sessions and submit questions for panelists through Mobile Insight's special conference website. Very cool.

-- The drawback, of course, was that once I was outside the range of the access point, like in my hotel room, I was once again relegated to the much lower speed of the CDPD card. I could have used a modem card but who wants to pay the exorbitant hotel phone charges? Another option is a wireline Ethernet Card if the hotel offers LAN access in the room.

-- What about power consumption? 802.11 cards have a reputation for being battery hogs. I am pleased to report that the PC Card sleeve's extra power supply can easily handle it. In fact, having the wireless LAN card on almost all day still yielded longer overall battery life than just running the iPAQ without a sleeve.

-- Bottomline: the PC Card sleeve provides the iPAQ with a variety of communication options. The situation is not perfect yet as the sleeve adds bulk and the sleeve and all those cards cost extra money. I wish there were one card that does it all, but we're not there yet. Future Pocket PCs may have built-in wireless LAN and packet radio circuitry, but for now the Compaq iPAQ with a sleeve offers a flexible, workable solution.

-- So did the iPAQ meet all my mobile computing needs and am I now able to leave my notebook computer at home when I go on a business trip? Yes and no. I always take notes in handwriting recognition mode on the iPAQ as opposed to many of my colleagues who bring their notebooks to sessions. Both at Mobile Insights 2001 and at the Microsoft Embedded Systems Developer's Conference 2001 I was able to use the wireless LAN Card for email, to look up schedules, to provide instant feedback, and to browse the web. I am not terribly impressed with the Pocket PC Inbox. The least it could do is tell me how many messages I have. And browsing websites designed for 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 pixel displays on a tiny 240 x 320 screen is painful at any speed. You can circumvent that problem at least partially by signing up with Omnisky (www.omnisky.com).

-- For the time being I am still taking a notebook with me so that I have a big screen to work on back in the hotel room. I see the iPAQ as sort of an increasingly powerful shuttle craft that lets me do work away from the mothership. I believe that in the near future we'll see ever more synergy between full-size devices and small handhelds that you can take anywhere.

– Conrad H. Blickenstorfer