Can a PDA be substituted for a laptop?

By David Chappelle

An advantage of notebooks is that one can be your only computer, while Pocket PCs must be connected to a PC at some point. PDAs also lack spindles, memory, and storage capacity.

HP loaned us a model FA301A#ABA iPaq, and a BT wireless keyboard. As you can guess, the BT stands for Bluetooth.

Both the iPaq and BT keyboard really will fit into most shirt pockets; an obvious advantage over laptops in size and weight. Stuffed into side coat pockets they balance out the wearer like no laptop could.

The iPaq measures 12 x 8 x 1.9cm and weighs 192g (4.75 x 3.275 x 0.75 inches and 6.77oz for those of you stuck in the previous millennium).

The HP Bluetooth keyboard measures 14.5 x 9.9 x 2cm folded; opens via one hinge to 18.6cm, and weighs 218g. The single hinge makes it easier to operate than the four-hinged keyboards.

Our second advantage was unexpected: going through the placebo that passes for airport "security" (don't get us started) other business travelers were pulling out notebooks and placing them in separate trays. "No laptop sir?" asked the unusually pleasant Fatherland Security Association worker. "PDA" we responded. She waived us through. We smiled smugly as we shuffled past all the notebookers fumbling to repack their bulky cargo.

The iPaq came loaded with popular applications like Word, Excel, Windows Media Player, Pocket MSN, and print manager and backup utilities. Pocket PC developers offer numerous specialty apps for those willing to look. Both "Getting Started" guides were ridiculously easy to follow, and we were soon typing away with wild abandon.

The HP Bluetooth keyboard is similar to most notebook keyboards, but is superior in one important respect: the DELETE key is where it is SUPPOSED to be! Notebook designers are not typists, because they stick the DELETE key way out at the top of the right field fence, unreachable without looking. This BT keyboard wins over all notebook keyboards for this reason alone. It was a pleasure to use.

Wireless Internet capability allowed us to surf the web. Not having loaded an email client, we used a web interface for email. Unfortunately our connectivity was sporadic, and for some reason we couldn't delete emails on the server. It was disconcerting to sit in a meeting surrounded by Internet-connected laptops while our iPaq stubbornly refused. Shutting down all the unused apps didn't help. Re-connecting required a soft reset.

Outside the conference room networked thin clients set up in kiosks easily handled all email tasks. Hmmm.

HP informed us our unit had come directly from another reviewer, without the usual going-over a new unit would've received. Was our unit typical? An informal survey of a limo driver and a network administrator found they too had experienced connectivity issues, albeit with earlier models. Hearsay evidence. Your mileage may vary.

The 7.4 x 5.5cm display serves up gorgeously rich colors. Application view can be rotated 90 degrees, which you might prefer in some instances, like when viewing spreadsheets. Brightness is adjustable, ostensibly to conserve battery life. Which leads to our only other criticism.

If you're going to travel with this iPaq, CARRY THE CRADLE with you. If you're in a meeting, pick a seat near an outlet and plug it in. Lithium-ion batteries lose power even when the unit isn't turned on. Out of the cradle and turned off, our iPaq went to 70 per cent battery strength in less than a week. During uncradled operation you can almost use the battery meter as a cooking timer. For hassle-free use, plug it in nightly before going to bed, and your iPaq will wake up refreshed and ready for work, even if you're over-refreshed from the night before.

After less than two full days of use we folded up the keyboard. Two weeks later we opened it in a fairly important meeting, only to discover that the two Duracell AAA batteries were Elvis On Arrival (EOA). There is no cradle; when the keyboard batteries go to the carbon landfill in the sky, your only option is to buy more.

To be fair, most OEM batteries have less than 50 per cent strength of typical store-bought batteries. And wireless sucks juice like there's no tomorrow, which for regular batteries, there isn't. Still, it was an unwelcome surprise. The lesson: ALWAYS carry spares. Or carry a small wall charger and re-chargables.

Hey, even with extra batteries, the entire package is lighter than a notebook, and everything will fit in several small pockets.

HP iPaq FA301A#ABA
MSRP: $689
Warranty: one year
Yays: wireless; easily carried and stored; passes airport "security" unmolested.
Nays: dubious wireless connectivity; battery dies quickly; you still need a PC; model name too long.

HP Bluetooth keyboard
MSRP: $139
Warranty: one year
Yays: DELETE key placement; realistic size; DELETE key placement; folds and stores easily; DELETE key placement.
Nays: batteries die quickly.

  This article was published in The Computer Paper, a Canada Computer Paper publication.

Managing Your Paper

By Dave Chappelle posted on 4/21/2002 7:17:49 PM

Scansoft helps digitize and organize documents

Remember the promise of the paperless office? Futurists told us we would run everything electronically, and printers would be used sparingly, if at all. Paper, filing cabinets, and storage boxes would become obsolete.

Well, it's 2002, and we're still denuding forests to print out our forms, correspondence, and even really cool Web pages. But there are some alternatives if your budget or conscience motivates you to look for them. We recently looked at two paper management products from Scansoft: PaperPort Deluxe 8 and Omniform Premium 5.

PaperPort Deluxe 8.0
From: Scansoft
www.scansoft.com
Price: US$99
Includes: one-year subscription to PaperPort Online with 25 MB online storage.

When Visioneer introduced the PaperPort system for the Mac several years ago, we considered it something of a breakthrough. It included a small sheet-fed scanner that was just slightly bigger than the cardboard core of a paper towel roll. The software allowed you to store images and documents as thumbnails, and it even offered a nifty method of stacking multi-page documents so they would show up on screen as a stacked thumbnail with navigation arrows to turn the pages.

Visioneer has gone on to concentrate on scanner hardware, and Scansoft, formerly a division of Xerox, has the PaperPort software in its portfolio.

PaperPort works with Windows 9x, NT, 2000, or XP, and needs a system powered by at least a Pentium or equivalent CPU, with a CD-ROM drive, SVGA monitor, 64 MB RAM, and 80 MB disk space. The software supports more than a dozen scanner makes out of the box, including the Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 5370C we used for testing, connected to a PC running Windows 98.

A thorough manual in Acrobat PDF format is included on the CD. As a version 8.0 product, it's not surprising that the interface is mature. For example, toolbars are laid out for easy use and mouse rollovers indicate the function of each button.

PaperPort worked seamlessly with HP's PrecisionScan Pro scanning utility. Clicking on the Return button after scanning with PrecisionScan took us back into PaperPort. From there we could do pretty much anything we wanted with the scan; for example, import scanned documents into Word (PaperPort includes optical character recognition--or OCR--software, discussed in more detail later in this article), and images into a mail program or image-editing software.

The software's ability to stack thumbnails to save desktop space has been retained. Stacking is simple: drag one page icon onto another, and as with real paper on a desk surface, the images form a stack. Navigation arrows appear below any multi-page thumbnail, that allow you to access each page in the stack.

One of the biggest barriers to sharing files is the number of different applications and versions available for creating a document. Unless the people you are sending a file to have the same software or the correct translation filter, there is no guarantee that they will be able to open your document. One solution is to make a file self-executing, so a viewer is launched when the recipient double-clicks on it.

In our virus-ridden world however, email attachments with EXE extensions (which such self-executing viewers often use) are untrustworthy. PaperPort circumvents this by saving its self-viewing files in a format that uses a MAX file extension.

OCR is the software technology that interprets letterforms on a scanned page into correct alphanumeric characters, which can then be imported into a word processor or spreadsheet. The OCR capabilities of PaperPort are very impressive, which is not too surprising, considering that ScanSoft also owns OmniPage and TextBridge, two leading OCR standalone packages.

Most of our the test pages that were scanned with the OCR software were very accurate. However, no OCR software is perfect (yet). By importing these text documents into a word processor, though, we were able to correct the few OCR errors. Overall, even with OCR corrections, this was much faster than retyping the entire document manually.

For managing images, PaperPort includes basic editing tools, including an easy way to eliminate redeye, and controls to adjust brightness, contrast, colour, and orientation.

A document management system is only as good as its ability to find the stored information. PaperPort's Search function allows you to search for exact or approximate words and phrases. It works well, but the large caveat here is that the search success is only as good as the key word index you must manually create for each document.

Omniform Premium 5
From: Scansoft
www.scansoft.com
Price: US$699
Includes: one-year Web hosting service at www.eomniform.com for up to five forms with 256 fields each. Additional storage for more forms is available. Also included are 20 Omniform Filler/Data Managers and a licence for a total of 100, with additional Fillers available optionally.

OmniForm requires Windows 9x, NT, 2000, or XP running on at least a Pentium CPU, with CD-ROM drive, VGA monitor, 32 MB RAM, and 50 MB disk space. Internet access and Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher are required for publishing forms and retrieving data from www.eomniform.com.

Over a dozen scanner makes are supported. We installed OmniForm on the same Windows 98 test system used for PaperPort 8 test, and used the same HP scanner. The OmniForm wizard hung the system after an initial scan, which required a reboot, but that proved to be an isolated problem.

In case you are not familiar with forms software, depending on the program, you would be able to do some or all of the following: design forms electronically, convert paper forms into electronic ones, process completed paper forms electronically by scanning them into the software, and/or design and accept data electronically without going through the paper form stage.

Omniform allows users to both design forms and to convert existing forms in an electronic format, including OmniForm, Mailable Filler, PDF, HTML, and RTF. For maximum versatility, a form can be saved in all formats.

A flat-file database can be created for each form, with up to 10,000 filled records per database, according to documentation. Once forms are filled in, the data can be searched.

Omniform supports online forms. By publishing a form on a Web page, users can collect data from any visitor who fills in a Web-based form.

When Omniform is opened you can create a new form or work with an existing one. As part of our tests, we scanned in an existing form, following which the software opens a ProofReader wizard that highlights all the blank fields of the form in yellow.

When the Form Image button is clicked the actual form image is displayed in a lower window, allowing you to check the electronic version against the paper original.

The software includes some design automation tools. For example, field numbering can be done manually or automatically. Also, text formatting can be copied from one text object to another with the Text Formatting tool.

Copyright © 2002

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