Mini PC runs Windows CE
The HP Jornada 720
Specs: http://www.hp.com/jornada/
Price: US$999
As we wrote in our review of the HP Jornada 540 elsewhere in this section, HP's designers are really beginning to understand what makes a successful handheld PC. This unit is such a vast improvement over first-generation devices such as the Casio Cassiopeia A-10, that we started to have those "gotta have it" pangs. Such a sensation is, in the journalistic world, the equivalent of "Spidey Sense" -- you know you're onto something.
The Hardware
The Jornada 720 is essentially an upgraded version of the Jornada 690, with the newer Handheld PC 2000 software applications, Windows CE 3.0, a SmartCard reader, an optional VGA port for use with Pocket PowerPoint, USB support, a stereo headphone jack and a few other enhancements.
As with other models in the Jornada lineup, there is a strong sense of quality about this product. The case is highlighted with chrome-finish buttons; the keyboard and stylus feel anything but cheap (and indeed, with a street price around C$1300 on the unit, they shouldn't) and the colour display is crisp and easy to read. As with other Handheld PCs, the hardware includes with a built-in audio recorder, headphone jack, infrared communications port and media player. The Jornada 720 includes a Type II PC Card slot, Smart Card reader on the side of the unit for high-security applications and a CompactFlash slot for a wide array of expansion options via memory cards, wireless networking cards, etc. In addition, there's a thin-wire security cable connector port on the unit, to physically secure the unit to an office desk.
The Jornada 720 comes standard with 32 MB of SDRAM memory and, if you're super-rich, you can spring for CompactFlash RAM cards up to 440MB in size from third-party vendors.
The unit includes a built-in 56K V.90 modem which, when combined with the Jornada's built-in email and web browser features, makes the 1.1-lb unit an ideal traveling companion for on-the-road message or information retrieval.
The 720's Intel StrongARM processor runs at 206MHz, with a high-speed 51 MHz memory data bus. The Jornada's 65,536-colour display is enhanced with 2D graphics acceleration, at a resolution of 640x240. While not unpleasant to look at, we found the screen suffered somewhat from faint but perceptible vertical lines in the display -- an observation not dissimilar to our assessment of the Jornada 540's screen. An external VGA adapter is optionally available, for those who want to produce big-screen presentations using the included Pocket PowerPoint or another application.
The Jornada 720's keyboard is essentially a standard PC keyboard (complete with numeric keypad) reduced to 3/4 size. This makes it possible to either touch type (or hunt and peck, if you prefer) when the unit is sitting on a desk, or use one's thumbs, while standing up.
The unit also includes a flashing light on the top that alerts you of appointments and other events requiring your input. Pressing the light (or clicking an on-screen dialog) acknowledges the event.
The Jornada 720 uses a rechargeable Li-Ion battery cell that, in our tests, provided about 9 hours of normal use between charges. The unit recharges automatically when connected to its or into the included docking cradle and/or AC adapter. The Jornada's cradle includes two PC connectivity ports, one of which is designed for a standard USB cable (not supplied); the other supports an included serial cable terminating in a standard AT-style serial port.
The unit supports syncing to computers running Windows 98, Me or Windows 2000 -- sorry Mac owners! -- and is capable of connection to your computer with or without the use of the cradle.
The Hardware
The Jornada 720 is based on the Microsoft Handheld PC 2000 specification, and uses the same ARM processor as Compaq's popular iPAQ Pocket PC model. As a result, some software titles designed for the iPAQ will run on the Jornada 720. We continue to believe that the issue of too many different CPU architectures is probably the greatest weakness in the PocketPC platform. Although the operating System control panel of each model has a Device tab that identifies the processor used, it does get a little confusing when there are often 10 or more different versions of a given program, for the various incarnations of PocketPC, Handheld PC, Palm-size PC, and the various processor architectures used. StrongARM, SH3, MIPS, etc. When you are downloading software, it can be a bit confusing when a Jornada 540 uses an SH3 processor and a Jornada 720 uses a different, completely incompatible, StrongARM SA1110.
The Software
We were delighted to find that the ARM version of Leo's Flight Simulator (we tested beta 3) for Handheld PC works very well on the Jornada 720. This is a great little program, with a brilliantly straightforward user interface that we prefer even to that of the Microsoft Flight Simulator which it so closely resembles. Basically, you just drag the right-hand slider up to the top and use the cursor keys to take off and navigate, then click and hold over various parts of the screen to select interior or exterior views, zoom in, out, rotate left, right, view maps and so on. You get a choice of three cities to fly in (including New York and San Francisco), and sound, too. It's free. Recommended.
During our tests of the Jornada 720, we created a dial-up account using the Web Setup Wizard, successfully connected to the Internet via our Internet Service Provider and used the included version of Internet Explorer to download several files and peruse numerous web pages. We would rate the browser's ability to render pages as expected as excellent. Our pages here at PC Buyer's Guide and TheTechnoZone.com looked almost exactly as they do on a standard desktop PC, and even subtle enhancements such as JavaScript messages, animated GIFs and Java applets ran correctly.
The Jornada comes with the usual complement of Windows CE 3.0 software -- Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Internet Explorer 4.01, Pocket Access, Pocket PowerPoint, calculator, address book, to-do list, calendar, etc., plus a few HP extras -- most notably, an enhanced calculator with scientific notation.
In addition to the software suite in ROM, several useful tools are available on the CD, or for download from HP's website. One of our favorites is Intranet Solutions' Quick View Plus 6.0, which allows the Jornada 720 to read a bevy of foreign file formats. See HP's website for more details on this utility and other special promotions for Jornada customers, plus links to commercial utilities that provide other important capabilities, such as the ability to read PDF files.
The HP Website lists a few other goodies, among them, a full version of the Zaio Golf game and a full version of a program called PeaceMaker. This program allows the Pocket PC to seamlessly transmit contact information with users of other handheld computers -- even those running the Palm OS. With PeaceMaker, we successfully transmitted contact list items to a Palm IIIc using the infrared send and receive features built into both units. This is a great feature! (Find out more about PeaceMaker at www.conduits.com.)
There are a few unique dialogs and settings in the Jornada. A "Socket LP-E Settings" dialog brings up a dialog box of TCP/IP settings (IP address, Subnet mask, Default Gateway, DNS, etc.). This could be very useful on a corporate network, where IP addresses are not dynamically assigned. As well, HP has enhanced the password dialog over that provided as a standard part of Windows CE -- again, potentially useful for corporate intranet logins with specific, non-numeric requirements.
HP also provides some custom settings for the unit's audio recorder not found in competing units. The "HP Dynamic Voice" setting on the Jornada manages 8,000 Hz or 16,000 Hz mono recording in just 1KB/sec of memory; the unit also provides memory hungry PCM audio recording, which can consume up to 43KB/sec for what one might term "medium fidelity" music recording or transfer to PC-based audio programs for further editing. The unit comes with Windows Media Player for handheld PCs (unfortunately, not the video capable version that runs on PocketPCs) and a couple of samples tunes in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format that really show off the unit's sound quality. Through the Jornada's speaker, the audio fidelity sounded decent, but when a set of headphones is connected, it really rocked. Initially, we figured the unit's audio playback quality was as good as any other portable MP3 player we'd heard. However, further testing revealed a few caveats.
Little luck with MP3s
One of the biggest disappointments in our tests was the surprisingly weak implementation of MusicMatch Jukebox offered by HP. For starters, the version supplied on the CD, or downloadable from HP's website, isn't the full ("Plus") version; it's the free version. The freebie's encoding performance is arbitrarily crippled to a slower speed than that of the commercial version. It doesn't have a "Send to Device" option, such as is available for a wide array of dedicated MP3 players. Worse, we noticed that the Jornada didn't seem to play a number of the MP3 files we loaded and played successfully with the MusicMatch software, but then re-saved and dragged to the Jornada, using the ActiveSync software's "Explore Mobile Device" option. In short, MusicMatch didn't save the files in a format the Jornada could interpret.
We were, of course, curious as to why. As it turned out, the files that wouldn't play were all high-quality MP3s, encoded using the codec developed by the original MP3 patent-holder, Fraunhofer. These files failed to play on the Jornada even when the "attempt to play MP3s with unsupported bitrates" option was turned on. We tried both 128K/sec and 160K/sec MP3s without success. The unit was, however, able to play "sample songs" in MP3 formats at 112K/sec and slower. As well, Web pages with ASX redirectors to ASF (active streaming format) files did not work. We were, however, able to get the unit play Microsoft's proprietary WMA files with no problems. Conspiracy theorists may have their opinions as to what all of this amounts to; to us, it means that the unit is a weak MP3 player.
Fortunately, Christopher Coey of CD-Mediaworks has released a tool that may help. His WAV to WMA converter makes it possible to convert WAV audio files to WMA. It's at www.greatlittleprograms.com/wavtoasf.zip.
Video Support
We were also disappointed to discover that the recently released Media Player 7 for PocketPCs does not yet have a Handheld PC equivalent, capable of playing Microsoft Windows Media video files. Fortunately, the most recent version of an alternative called PocketTV works well.
PocketTV is an MPEG Movie Player for Pocket PC and Windows CE devices -- and, in fact, now fully supports all color Handheld and Pocket PCs other H/PC Pro devices (690, 820 and so on). Early versions, however, locked up the Jornada 720 and 820. Despite the developer's original claim of a "serious bug in the audio driver on the Jornada...." and suggestion that the cure is to "try to get a software update from HP" to address this issue, it turns out that this was not the problem that made early releases of the program freeze on some Jornada models.
Tristan Savatier, the President, MpegTV LLC, says "The problem that we used to blame on HP's audio device on the 820 was in fact a complex problem that involved the ARM compiler and some Microsoft header files, and we found a way to work around the problem."
Download site: http://www.pockettv.com/
Even without buying the $49.95 version, you can work around the bug. By disabling the audio, the HPC 2.11 version of the program for ARM processors can successfully display MPEG video on the Jornada 720.
PocketTV received the Windows CE Program of the Year Award in the Third Annual ZDNet PDA Software Awards. It is also the most downloaded Pocket PC software according to Handango.com and PocketGear.com. PocketTV can play any standard MPEG-1 file (extension .mpg or .mpeg).
PocketTV is also capable of streaming MPEG video files using standard internet protocols such as http or ftp, provided that your device has a network connection (wireless or ethernet) that supports the necessary bandwidth i.e. the bitrate of the MPEG file that you want to stream. If you want to try streaming video with PocketTV, go the following URL from your Pocket PC using Pocket IE: http://pockettv.com/stream/.
For further reading:
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