Product Description

Slim and powerful the Compaq iPAQ H3870 features a TFT screen capable of displaying over 65,000 colours, increased battery life, the fastest available processor all in a sleek, award-winning design. Add to that integrated Bluetooth for wireless link to Bluetooth phones, printers, and PCs. Looking further than today, you can expand the H3870 with anything from wireless to multimedia to GPS and more via Wireless Packs, Expansion Packs and the internal SD memory slot.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85962 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Compaq
• Model: 230398-031
• Platforms: Windows, Windows XP, Pocket PC 2002
• Dimensions: 3.35 pounds
• Display size: 3.8

Customer Reviews

Great Pocket PC
An excellent assistant in every way... and extremely powerful to keep up with the job. The bluetooth functionality goes very well with my....Mobile Phone, allowing me to see my mail whenever I feel like it. The conectivity is also great, having 3 different means of communication (USB, Bluetooth, InfraRed). Certainly lacks the WLAN capabilities of the new iPAQ H5450, but if you're not going to use WLAN, this one will do just fine. It runs Word, Excel extremely well, allowing you to take your work with you for meetings. Great for e-books, great for games, very decent autonomy, not very heavy. Worth buying.

Read this before you buy an iPAQ!
Although I haven't seen this particular model, I've been using an H3660 now for nearly a year and as the products are so similar and both use PocketPC OS, it's worth checking this out before you shell out your hard-earned cash!

The hardware design and build quality are excellent, as is the synchronisation with Outlook. Even the included apps are good. What really lets the product down is the PocketPC OS. The included PocketMoney program will not sync with the UK desktop version of Money which means you have to use the US version. The daily alarm functions are unreliable and quirky and the all of the sounds used for audio alerts are accompanied by an irritating 'CLACK' sound! The latter only affects iPAQs running PocketPC 2002, but considering the amount of money spent on the presentation of this device, it's a real blunder by Compaq.

The Money sync problem is due to the fact that the UK version of desktop Money is quite different to the US version, but this is of little consolation to the many users who could benefit from this feature.

Microsoft is aware of the daily alarm problem which affects all Windows PDAs. Nevertheless it has remained unchanged in the latest release of PocketPC 20002. In my opinion, it is quite unacceptable that such a basic PDA function is not reliably implemented in a product of this maturity.

A flawed gem
Don't get me wrong, I love the machine. The software is good [with one huge exception, which I'll come to in a moment], MS Outlook 2002 is bundled with the machine, the Bluetooth comms. are faultless, the battery life is OK [but not brilliant, especially if the backlight is on a lot]. It comes with a basic protective cover and a spare stylus, both of which are handy. What it doesn't come with is any helpful documentation. Getting set up is a bit tricky unless you devote a good hour or so to the task. Follow the disc instructions to the letter-load the software in the order stated or beware!
So, where's the problem? The bundled PC/Pocket PC synch. software. It is really not very good at all. The machine comes with Microsoft's ActiveSync 3.5, which on my disc was not the latest build, so a swift download from the MS site was needed. The software is unreliable and prone to failure: after less than a week I ditched it for a different program altogether.
As I said, a flawed gem. Get the synchronisation stuff sorted out and it would be a 5 star product.