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Time Capsule: HP iPaq h1940 out of the box. What does a PDA from the 2000s do?



Last weekend I bought another gadget at my Granada flea market . It was the HP iPaq h1940 PDA. The choice fell on this device, because the PDA was sold in a box with all the documents and even a disk with additional software. The handheld cost 10 euros, just like the laptop I wrote about last time .

What was in the box





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The box contained the device itself, a battery, an extra connector, a USB cable, documents, and a software CD. On the disk - MS ActiveSync 3.7, Pocket Outlook plus several additional applications for PDAs.



Design


The device looks quite modern and stylish. In his hand is good, in the pocket of jeans or jackets enters without problems. The buttons are pressed perfectly - time has not affected them at all.

The display is also like a new one - it has not faded and has not lost its brightness (I compare it with other PDAs and with my own memories of how it all looked when it was new). The past years had no effect on the case either - plastic did not degrade, stickers and inscriptions are as they were before.



This handheld is less dimensional than many other models, for example, HP iPAQ rx3715, which I wrote about a couple of years ago .


HP iPaq h1940, iPAQ rx3715, Acer 50n Premium

It is noticeably thinner. Most likely, the CCP was made more elegant so that it could be easily carried in a pocket.

Body - plastic, color - metallic.

Buttons are common for the KRK iPaq - these are four buttons for launching the organizer, calling contacts, task manager and mail messenger, plus a joystick with a button to confirm operations. At the top there is a control button for the voice recorder, a power button.

Specifications



This PDA has a Secure Digital (SD) / MutliMedia Card (MMC) expansion slot. In addition, you can work with information stored on the device using a USB cable. In other words, the PDA can be connected as a USB flash drive.

This is the first HP handheld with Windows Mobile 2003, which became the next version of the “pocket OS” after Windows CE. It improves, for example, Pocket Internet Explorer, which can work with GIF and supports SSL.

PC connection


So that everything went smoothly, I decided to connect the handheld to his age mate - the Packard Bell Easyone Silver laptop (his review was published last time ). It is running Windows XP, and the PDA, when connected to USB, was immediately detected, drivers were found in the Windows storage, and it all worked.



I installed CD Active Sync from the bundled one for synchronizing data and viewing information on a PDA in Explorer.







Active Sync was activated without problems and began to synchronize data on a laptop and handheld. For full synchronization, you need to create a user profile, but since there is nothing to synchronize, you can do without it.



Multimedia


The HP iPaq h1940 has an SD card slot (microSD also works through the adapter). It turned out that the PDA only accepts cards of 2 GB or less. All files from the card were read without problems, plus it was possible to launch an mp3 file from 2013 (it turned out to be Louis Armstrong).



With a 2 GB memory card and a PDA, you can turn this device into a media player. The sound quality is not bad, everything is good with headphones.



I evaluated the sound with the help of two melodies that were found on the memory card. These are Bensonhurst Blues by Oscar Benton and Go Down Moses by Louis Armstrong. I remember that on the PDA I also listened to audiobooks, so the device is also suitable for this.



With the video, the situation is much worse. Firstly, the device is unable to play video in the quality above 320 x 240, and the device will not cope with the new formats. Somewhere else there are resources on which movies converted to PDAs have remained, but for the most part such sites have already been closed, and if not, many download links simply died.

And who wants to watch video in such a quality, even if an inexpensive Chinese smartphone does it much better?

Soft


The software is no different from the default applications that were installed on other versions of a PDA with Windows Mobile or Windows SE. There is “Contacts”, a calendar with an organizer and a list of tasks, a mail application, a notepad, a voice recorder, a text editor, and spreadsheets. In addition, there is the iPAQ Image Viewer HP.

With third-party software, everything is much better than with video. Still work sites with huge archives of software for PDAs. For example, HPC - from it I downloaded the most famous AIReader reader, which provides a lot of functions to the e-book lover. It works with a large number of formats (epub, fb2, txt, and others). The reader was installed without problems, showing a screen with Cyrillic text (the PDA is Spanish, and I thought there might be problems with the Cyrillic alphabet, but no).

With other software more difficult - some programs need to be installed from a PC. And since my laptop is Windows 10, the installation does not go. For this you need ActiveSync, which does not work in the environment of the "tens" The only way out is to download applications to the memory card, then insert it into the PDA and install the packages already from the card. Actually, I did the same with AIReader.



For Windows Mobile 2003 Professional there is a lot of software, the only thing is to look for either exe or cab, since other formats are usually designed for installation from a PC.

In addition to the reader, I also installed the Sega emulator, PicoDrive version 0.03. For the trial, I downloaded the ROM of the most popular game Dune: The battle for Arrakis and launched it all on the PDA. The game earned, I even played a little (at one time I passed it several times on this emulator on another PDA). But the impression is not the same - it is better to run the emulator in the OS and play on the big screen than to break your eyes from the PDA.





Wireless connection




PDA iPaq h1940 is equipped only with Bluetooth and IrDa modules. BT did not work - I tried to pair with the iPhone 8 Plus. Both devices saw each other without problems and even issued a request to enter the code and confirm it. But after I entered the code and confirmed it on another device, the PDA wrote about the connection problem. Most likely, the problem with the compatibility of protocols.





But it turned out to connect to the network via Bluetooth, by connecting to the Android phone Huawei Y6. To connect, you need to turn on Bluetooth, select a connection to the LAN, find the device in the list and connect.











On the phone, you must turn on the detection and visibility of the device, plus activate the Bluetooth modem. Only in this case the PDA will connect to the phone and through it will go online.

Through the built-in browser, it was not possible to open either Habr or Google with Yandex. The reason, as they wrote in comments to the previous post, is the inability of the old browsers to work with the new standard SSL, IPv6 and other modern technologies.

I managed to download only once popular site hpc.ru, because it is optimized for viewing on a PDA. Plus, even managed to download the application - the same AIReader, in the normal operation of the installer I was convinced. The application is loaded in the browser and installed. By the way, an interesting fact - after installation with default settings, the installer file is deleted.









Wifi on this PDA is not.

Battery




It is surprisingly well preserved. I charged it 100% before the first power up. During the night and part of the day, the charge level dropped only to 50% - and this, with active use of the device, connecting it to the network, etc. Battery in very good condition.

Can a PDA from the early 2000s be useful now?


Yes maybe. Here are some applications that come to mind (some of them I implemented with another device, HP iPAQ rx3715:


In general, the PDA can be used as a backup gadget in case of failure of the main device. Of course, it will not be possible to call using a handheld, but it can duplicate many other functions that are now given to the smartphone.

Here is a video with unpacking and review of the device.


Well, according to tradition - this is what the flea market itself looks like.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/448188/

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