Outdoor Visibility

Some of you out there might be buying a PPC for primary outdoor use in direct sunlight, if that's your No. 1 priority than let me tell you to go buy an iPAQ NOW! Just compare the two pictures below.

The iPAQ, on the other hand, uses a reflective screen and 'sidelight' to light the display. The screen itself is reflective and will use whatever light coming towards it to light the screen, therefore if you're using it in sunlight, it is actually good for the iPAQ cause you won't need to use the power sucking 'sidelight'. The picture on the right doesn't do much justice to it, but if you compare it with the picture of the EM500 in sunlight above you can see that it's much better. And when you see it for real, it's absolutely fantastic!

To get a good idea on how clear a reflective screen is without lighting, find a kid who is playing a GameBoy Color and check out how clear the screen is when viewed in light.

Of course indoors both of them look practically the same, but the iPAQ's 'sidelight' tends to wash out the screen a little. Nothing too serious.

Availability & Price

Now we come to the all important question, how much and where can the devices can be found? Well the iPAQ just made its landing here in Malaysia and in extremely limited quantites (rumor has it that only 60 is available in the first shipment). Comparatively, the price of the iPAQ seems very enticing after all, for RM200 more than the EM500, you get more RAM, more processor speed, better light visibility and a longer battery life.

But at the same time, when you get an iPAQ, you have ZERO ways of expanding it out of the box. You have to buy the extra sleeves to be able to use Compact Flash or PC Cards, you get a slow SERIAL cradle :(, and you can't replace the battery.

The EM500 might suffer from less RAM, and a non standard media type (MMC), but at least it is possible to expand its storage size out of the box. Also it is much easier to find one right now.

* RM 3.80 = USD 1.00

Misc. Perks & Flaws

If you have been reading around the various handheld sites, you'll notice that the iPAQ suffers from various manufacturing flaws and have some bugs such as dust getting under the screen, stylus getting stuck and other stuff. But currently from what I can see from my iPAQ, those flaws seemed to have been corrected, but it'll take more time to see for sure.

A very crucial and important flaw about the iPAQ is the inability for the system to detect more than one button press at once, in plain English, this means that you won't be playing games very well on this device cause the system can only detect one button at a time. i.e, you press Up and Left, but the system can only see that the left button is down. Very, very bad for playing games.

The EM500 suffers from less RAM, and you'll feel the pain the moment you start accumulating data and programs in your PPC. And because of the relatively new MMC storage format, it's hard for us to find MMCs here to expand the storage space. Therefore we will have to rely on online retailers.