Dell Axim x51v PDA Review - Ready for a Balanced Analysis
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Now That the Glory has FadedSo now that I’ve been using it for almost a month, I feel that I’m in a much better position to give it a full review, hopefully untainted by any of the infatuation I first felt. I’ll detail as much as possible about the performance, some screenshots, good point, and yes, the bad points.
PerformanceI downloaded a freeware application from IVE software called Pocket PC Benchmark. Can you guess what it does? Anyhow, the results of a benchmark test were as follows:
CPU
Integer Arithmetic – 2701
Heap Management – 5357
Floating point arithmetic – 4438
Graphics
GDI graphics routines 1 - 2923
GDI graphics routines 2 - 1207
GDI graphics routines 3 – 3625
Flat File Benchmark
File: writing – 6185
File: writing – 165.6 kb/s
File: reading – 4663
File: reading – 219601.1 kb/s
The x51v is quite speedy, and compared with other Pocket PCs, is only beaten by the Compaq iPaq. I find that the only slow thing about it is waiting for the Start menu to load for the first time when clicked. After that it is cached, and there’s no lag.
Voice Recording
I recorded a 45 minute discourse to test out the memo recording functionality. The sound quality was marginally better than say, a cassette recorder, and the recorded wav file took roughly one megabyte per minute. You can increase or decrease the recording quality by changing the default recorded wav sampling. But I find the factory setting to be quite alright.
Wireless
The wireless connectivity is decent. It is 802.11b & Bluetooth. Both WEP and WPA are supported. You can maintain the properties for many WiFi connections, just like XP. Once connected, I find the connection to be pretty good. As I mentioned, I hook up the Axim to my sound system through the phono jack, and stream MP3s from my desktop, which works flawlessly.
I have found two issues with the WiFi:
1. If I try to play a large playlist of MP3s over the network, the Axim freezes. I don’t know if this is due to Media player trying to read the info from each song first? Perhaps I need a better music streaming app.
2. Once connected, I fire up Internet Explorer, but it still takes a good 6 seconds to navigate anywhere. I’ve used AvantGo browser, and this lag doesn’t exist. I can’t wait for Minimo!
Video Playback
I’ve tried both Divx and WMV video formats on the Axim. I’ve downloaded DivX videos straight, and I’ve re-encoded them to a much smaller frame size and bit-rate. But no matter what I try, I still find that the WMV playback is much more fluid. So now I encode everything in WMV before transferring. The full-screen video is just beautiful, it blows away the video iPod!
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