Rosie's Reviews

By Sandra Rosenzweig
     
      iPAQ Travel Companion
      The rx5915 is a prime little number for GPS novices.
      So, you've noticed that I've been pushing Pocket PCs a lot in the past few months. (Background for you newbies: I've been pushing Pocket PCs a lot in the past few months.) Now I'm here to tell you that none of those gadgets is ready for prime time. But then neither is any other computing device.
      Prime time is when we have forgotten that everything around us is a computer?think Woody Allen's Sleeper. Prime time is one click of your mouse to file a pleading with the court, store it and the return receipt together with the correct matter, update the case's vital statistics, and send an invoice to the client?all, as I said, in one click. And in prime time you don't have to spend days or months trying to get it to work in the first place. Someday, we will be the "dumb terminals" that speak instructions to our appliances, be they refrigerators or books or clipboards. (Dumb terminal in computer speak really refers to a computer, a keyboard, and a screen, but not a processor. It sends and receives its data to and from a large centralized computer or server, but it can't process information itself.)
      In our present world, however, we confer prime-time status on any product that actually works right out of the box. And we give kudos to any product that actually works easily right out of the box. So, I must finally admit that I feel guilty about recommending Pocket PC (Windows Mobile) and Palm handheld computers, because they rarely work right from the get-go. I know how to make recalcitrant units communicate with a desktop PC, which, really, is the first actual installation step, but once in a while a model is designed with built-in glitches that don't seem worth the effort. This is not prime time.
      Still, when I plugged Hewlett Packard's iPAQ rx5915 Travel Companion Windows Mobile device into the USB port of first one, then another desktop computer, it worked. Just like that. And, just like that, I loved it. The Travel Companion is a new gimmick for HP, in that built into the rx5915 are GPS (Navigator software by TomTom of Amsterdam) and MobiMate's WorldMate Standard travel software.
      Using Navigator was easy, even for this map-phobic, GPS-deprived user. It locates the signals from up to six satellites without requiring any know-how from the user (and it's a good thing too). Enter a zip code, city name, or place of interest (nearest gas station, perhaps, or nearest civic center), and Navigator displays a three-dimensional image of a map of your entire route to get there and, if you like, will read it to you, step by step: "Turn left," says the rx5915 woman's voice, "in 80 yards. 60 yards. Now. Now. NOW." (But why does the map have to be so ugly? Workmanlike and practical may be OK for Europeans, but I'm a California girl, and I don't do ugly. Even Microsoft's Streets and Trips 2007 software gives you better-looking maps.)
      On the other hand, I'm not much of a fan of WorldMate Standard. It purports to give you an abundance of travel info-weather forecasts, national holidays, time zones, a currency converter, and more. But several of these screens are redundant or useless. I mean, if the time-zone page tells me that the current local time is 21:35, or 9:35 p.m., I don't need a separate map to tell me whether it's night or day. The WorldMate Professional edition, on the other hand, does give you that abundance of information, including access to the reservation desks of most airlines and flight info.
      If you want to receive updates?such as five days of weather forecasts for your target cities or up-to-the-minute currency rates?you'll need an annual subscription. (The standard edition costs $35.95, including the first year's subscription for data and upgrades. The professional edition costs $74.95 for the program and the first year's subscription. For subsequent years, you pay two-thirds of those rates.) To my mind, that's way too expensive, but if I had a loose $80, I might indeed buy one.
      The Travel Companion has design details that work: a landscape display for Navigator-so you can see more of the map-buttons along the side of the device to change screen orientation or call up Navigator or your music player, and an OK/close button next to the screen. But the rx5915 shouts for a phone. No luck. Without this feature, I'm not sure it's worth HP's asking price of $599.99.
     

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