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Introduction:::...
ASUS
is a name that's known throughout the computer industry,
though primarily for their motherboards and, more recently,
their range of graphics cards, barebone PCs, optical drives
and notebooks. What a lot of people don't know however is
that ASUS also have their own range of PocketPC's on the
market.
I
say range, it's actually just three models at the moment
though. There's the update to the impressive A600, the A620,
which came both with and without Bluetooth and, correspondingly,
with and without a "BT" suffix to to the model
number, then there's their latest model, the A716, which
I'm looking at today.
The
A620 was a very popular PDA for ASUS. It ran off a powerful
400MHz Intel® PXA255 processor, offered Built-in CF
Support and was generally a speedy performer. So why bother
with a new model?
Well,
the A716 adds a couple of new features to the already well
specified range. It now comes with not only Bluetooth as
standard, it also comes with integrated 802.11b wireless
for connection to your WLAN and adds both SD and CF slots
in the same device.
Add
to that a high capacity Lithium Ion battery with a claimed
19 hours in it and things are looking extremely tempting,
on paper at least.
Let's
run over those specs:
So
as you can see it's pretty much all there. The audio jack
is your conventional 3.5mm affair so no adaptors requires
when using shop-bought phones.
There
still seem to be power problems with running 11g wireless
in portable devices, it's just too heavy on battery drain
at present which partly explains why we're still only seeing
integrated 11b support.
I
should also point out that although the A716 features an
SD slot as well as a CF slot, it is only an SD slot NOT
the more capable SDIO slot as found on the 4150.
Okay,
so we know what it say it can do, let's now take a look
at the device itself.
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