Toshiba e350
The e350 is thin, light and comes with Pocket PC 2003.Toshiba's initial foray into the PDA market bore some fruit for the company, as its initial run of PDA models combined dual storage card slots and attractive pricing. It's no longer the newest PDA competitor in the local market, and units like the e350 do show Toshiba settling into some more conventional designs.
The e350 sits in the middle ground of processors for the units we've examined in this review; it packs a 300MHz XScale processor and 64MB of onboard memory. Where it does rise above the rest of the pack -- at least in the model being released to the Australian market, and in the review sample Toshiba submitted to us -- is the presence of Microsoft's Pocket PC 2003 operating system.
Pocket PC 2003 isn't an entirely new OS, and, for most end users the differences will be hard to spot. The primary changes have been under the hood of the OS, introducing bug fixes, integrated wireless support and, at least in theory, better support for Intel's higher-speed XScale PXA255 processors. There are new bundled applications, including the highly addictive Jawbreaker game, but the difference in performance seemed slight, if any, in our testing. Having a PDA with the latest OS in it is a good future-proofing hedge, however; Microsoft is leaving it up to OEMs as to whether older models will be offered the upgrade flash package for units running Pocket PC 2002.
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PDAs
Introduction 1. Dell Axim X5 2. HP iPAQ h1910 3. HP iPAQ h5450 4. Palm Tungsten C 5. Palm Zire 71 6. Sony CLIE PEG-SJ22 7. Sony CLIE PEG-TG50 8. Toshiba e350 9. Toshiba e750 Editor's choice |
The e350 is finished in a brushed grey metal design, and at 80x125x12.4mm and only 149g it's slim and light enough for most shirt pockets. Toshiba's kept the e350 slim by offering only one storage slot for SD/MMC cards. Aside from that you've got the normal directional pad plus four button combo; the directional pad on the e350 protrudes solidly out from the unit and is exceptionally responsive, although those with larger fingers may find its small size annoying.
Like the Dell Axim, you won't be bowled over by a large bundle of included software packages; apart from those applications that are part of Pocket PC 2002 (Pocket Word, Excel, et al.), you'll only get a data backup application to tide you over until you can install additional downloaded software -- say, from ZDNet Australia's handheld downloads channel.
Toshiba advertises the e350's Lithium Ion battery as being good for up to ten hours. We're always wary of battery life figures on PDAs, as it's an incredibly subjective score, depending on your exact usage model. The absence of an integrated wireless connection technology should boost the e350's battery life; in previous tests we've seen the battery last around five hours under a continual barrage of MP3 playback.
Ultimately the e350 is an attractive looking package, but at AU$639 there are PDAs available that beat it in hardware and software specifications. It's hamstrung to an extent by its lacklustre software bundle, but could be the PDA for you if you specifically want a thin and light unit.
Toshiba e350
Company: Toshiba Australia
Price: AU$639
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 30 70
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I am interested only in limited features in a PDA like the Phonebook, Birthday or Anniversary date storages etc. etc.
So which pDA do you recommend me to have that should have some high Battery backup and long-life warranty?