Now for the quirky bits. As this is an infrared modem, you must ensure that the modem is lined up properly with your PDA's infrared port. With the iPAQ, this isn't too much trouble as you can see from the picture below.

But you have to place it lying down on a table and some people may not like writing on a PDA they can't hold in their hands. The Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 (and other Cassiopeia models for that matter) brings with it a little bit more hassle though because its infrared port is on the side!

Although I have yet to accidentally break the transfer beam with my left hand, I think it's bound to happen one of these days...

Usability

I have yet to run a full battery life test on the modem. But after about 30 minutes of hectic surfing, mail retrieving and other stuff, my EM-500's battery life was still fluxing around 75%-100%, and the modem... well, it still had power above its battery low level.

So, I guess it's safe to say that you can use it with your Pocket PC running on battery power for more than enough time to check your mail and go through important web pages. You should be able to surf about an hour and a half with some power left on both devices (but don't take my word for it!). There is also a power adapter jack on the modem so if you can find an appropriate AC/DC adapter, you can use it to power the modem instead. Or you could always buy the Psion adapter.... :)

Data transmission speed-wise.... well, it feels like 56K since the WinCE doesn't tell me what speed it connects at. But it is retrieving data as fast as it does on my desktop's 56K modem. So, I guess it should be running at 56K.

There is also a speaker on the Travel Modem. It's quite soft but it's there if you absolutely need to hear what's going on with the connection.

One piece of advice - CLEAR YOUR CACHE once you're done surfing or lower the cache storage with the Pocket PC Power Toys which you can get from PocketPC.com. My EM-500's precious storage space was literally sucked up after testing it for this article!