Review: A strong enterprise PDA

HandEra 330 continues TRG's tradition of strong backup and expansion flexibility.

By Travis J. Berkley
Network World, 07/02/01

Only a few short months ago, they were known as TRG Products. Now, HandEra has emerged in its place, and hasn't missed a beat. Their first product offering under the new moniker, the HandEra 330 is the latest in their line-up of Palm OS handhelds. In essence, it is a new generation of product. And while it has the look and feel of "Old Faithful," it has got some nice, new extras under the hood.

The new unit is almost identical in size to the standard Palm form factor that has been commonplace for the past 5 years, starting with the Palm III. However, to accommodate some new features inside, the power button was moved to the top of the screen. The other buttons are in nearly identical places. They are slightly recessed and concave, and give a good "click" to confirm your choice has been selected. The front face has been given a silver color to further set it apart from its predecessors.

What TRG started, HandEra continues in keeping the business community in mind. The 330 not only has backup and restore functionality built-in as standard fare, but it also has more power options for those extended trips. Its expansion capabilities make it all but trivial to distribute copies of the latest data. They've even gone so far as to include a license for business productivity tools, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

An updated version of the operating system was needed to accommodate HandEra's changes. The HandEra 330 runs Palm OS Version 3.5.2. The first change requiring the new operating system was the updated processor, the next-generation Motorola DragonBall VZ, which clocks in at 33.1 MHz, doubling its predecessor in processing speed.

HandEra

The HandEra 330 comes standard with 8M bytes of RAM and 2M bytes of flash memory. The flash memory holds the operating system itself by default. There it resides, safe from the threat of dead batteries, as flash is a nonvolatile memory. HandEra does have applications available that can store other programs and data in the remaining flash memory as well. However, they have added additional functionality to the 330 to make that practice obsolete.

HandEra added two expansion slots to the 330, a CompactFlash (CF) slot and the Palm-designed Secure Digital slot. For those new to the technology, CF cards are about the size of a matchbook. We tested the 330 with two 8M-byte CF cards made by Microtech International under the brand name Digital FlashFilm. Microtech makes these CF cards in sizes ranging from 8M bytes up to 256M bytes.

On the other side of the fence, Palm's Secure Digital, or simply SD, format also has its appeal. SD cards are roughly the size of a first-class postage stamp, and not much thicker. Yet Palm is shipping a version of the card that can store 16M bytes of data. We tested the 330 with an SD card containing the Travel Card: European Cities application. It's an application of several European cities containing travel information about them.

Which card slot technology is better? Who cares! You can use them both simultaneously. While we didn't have the hardware to test it out for ourselves, the DragonBall VZ makes it possible to access up to 1G byte of data on these media combined. That's a far cry from the maximum of 8M bytes that we were used to.

To facilitate the use of these cards, two programs are included with the HandEra 330, Backup and CardPro. Backup does what you would expect. It will back up the RAM to either medium, and in very short time. Since the RAM is (usually) much smaller than the CF or SD memory cards, you can make several backups to the same medium. They are ordered by date, giving you many options about how long you wish to retain backups.

CardPro helps you store and find things. Since you can only run programs that are in RAM, you need something to take them to and from the expansion cards. CardPro is an easy to use application that lets you browse through the RAM and CF and SD cards, moving programs around as you need. This would let you store virtually all of your product databases, e-books, procedures, Avant-Go content, utilities ... and, dare we say, a few games, too! You are then only limited by the number of CF or SD cards that you have. You can just as easily swap between them as you do Zip disks or CD-RW's on your desktop.

A new face

Another benefit of the new processor and operating system is the 330's new screen. It deceptively has the same dimensions as all of its predecessors. However, you quickly realize there's more there than meets the eye. First, you'll notice that the graffiti area is drawn on the screen, rather than being a silkscreen image. While you'll appreciate the fact that your input is drawn on the screen while you write, even more convenient is that newer applications can actually minimize the graffiti area entirely, freeing up more precious screen real estate.

The actual screen resolution is up, from the old 160 x 160 to a crisp 240 x 320, including the virtual graffiti area. As a result, there are now nine different fonts to choose from, instead of just three. Older programs get "scaled" to the new screen size. (To see just how dramatic of a change it really is, go into Preferences and tell it not to scale the old apps up. It will put them in a smaller window in the middle of the screen.)

Finally, the screen can actually be rotated and present text in landscape mode. However, there are precious few applications that are yet written to take advantage of this new feature. One of them is included with the HandEra 330, however. A license for QuickOffice comes with each 330, and provides a conduit to read, edit and create documents compatible with the Microsoft applications Word and Excel, as well as Excel charts. Have your sales figures in Excel? Sync them up, move them to an expansion card and they're always available. Product brochures and catalogs in Word? Another CF or SD card, and you can bring the entire line.

Music to my ears

The HandEra 330 also includes audio capabilities. There is a microphone along the top edge of the 330, as well as a speaker embedded near the buttons on the front face. An included application called VoicePad lets you capture, play and store audio. It can store in RAM as well as on the CF and SD cards. They are stored as .wav files, sampled at 8 kHz, in an 8-bit mono format.

To make the use of VoicePad easier, the 330 has two new side buttons. One is a simple push button, located along the left edge, near the top. Just below that is a jog dial. The button can be programmed to do one of two things. By default, if "clicked," it will "escape" from the current option. If held, it will open a new .wav in VoicePad. The spring-loaded jog shuttle can be used to scroll text or other items up and down in the window. It also can be pressed to "enter" the current option. When used in the default configuration, at the launcher the button will change categories, while the jog shuttle will let you scroll through programs and start one. These buttons are programmable, just as the other hard buttons are.

More power!

NetResults

Product: HandEra 330
Company: HandEra
Cost: $349.99
Pros: Doubled processor speed, higher resolution, added voice recording, more power options.
Cons: Battery cover bulges a bit.

Back to top

Adding all of these goodies can consume a lot of juice. So HandEra beefed up the power supply a bit. For starters, it now holds four AAA batteries, instead of the previous two. In fact, the larger battery cover is the only drawback to the HandEra 330. The cover is only secured in the middle on one edge, so the corners have a tendency to lift up and catch on things. Sure, it's a minor nit-pick. But it could lead to a broken cover, and then what?

In any event, these extra batteries could translate into twice the amount of time you need to change batteries if you don't use any of the new bells and whistles, but we doubt that will happen.

We know you. You'll be slapping expansion cards in and out, recording things through VoicePad, and keeping the back light on as much as possible. To keep users from having to get a second job just for batteries, HandEra is offering a Li-Ion battery pack for the 330. It sits in the battery compartment just as if there were four AAA batteries in there. There's a nice little 6 V AC adapter port on the lower-left edge of the 330. Plug it in and you can charge the batteries or use it without. Don't worry, there's no risk of blowing up regular batteries while using the AC adapter. This gives you the flexibility of using the batteries when you're playing Road Warrior and plugging it in when you're at the hotel playing your favorite game instead of getting that good night's sleep.

Conclusion

As the Palm OS evolves, new features and capabilities will be added. HandEra is providing the hardware to really get the use out of these enhancements. The HandEra 330 is a great first offering in a new line sure to please for a long time to come.

Berkley is the LAN Support Supervisor at the University of Kansas, Computing Services. He has been developing applications for the Palm OS for over four years. He can be reached at berkley@ukans.edu.