By Claire Pieterek
It's finally time for me to switch. My next Palm OS handheld will be the HandEra 330. Although it's not small, nor does it have color, the HandEra 330, pictured in Figure A, sure has a lot of neat features. I haven't been this excited about reviewing a new Palm OS handheld in quite some time!
FIGURE A
The HandEra 330 is packed with cool features. (click for larger image)
In many respects, the HandEra 330 is much like the Sony CLIE PEG-N710C. At 320x240 pixels, the HandEra 330 offers higher screen resolution than Palm's standard 160x160 pixels. The HandEra 330 sports a jog dial, which makes it great for reading electronic documents. It's also about the same size as the CLIE, using the Palm III series form factor.
My trusty Palm IIIx is the one I carried every day before I received the HandEra 330 for review, even though I currently own four other Palm handhelds. Although I do like my Palm V with its 8MB upgrade, I never got around to setting it up just like my Palm IIIx. I have to be able to synchronize at home and at work. I never got around to rewriting Palm's or Sony's setup.inf file to get USB synchronization to run on my work PC, which uses a version of Windows 95 that supports USB.
Another reason I really like my old Palm IIIx is the TRG xtra xtra Pro card. I like having over 3MB of flash memory at my disposal. I can store just about all of my crucial programs and data without worry or fear of a hard reset, and I have tons of room to spare.
But I digress.
Who is HandEra?
HandEra is the new name for the company formerly known as TRG Products, maker of software utilities like FlashPro (see my article, "How to get an extra 824K using FlashPro" in the May 1999 issue of PalmPower at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue199905/flashpro001.html) and hardware products like the xtra xtra Pro card I just mentioned. They've been in the Palm add-on market for a long time.
All the best of the Palm IIIx
The HandEra 330 overcomes all of the reasons I haven't stopped using my Palm IIIx. Unlike the CLIE and other new Palm OS handhelds, Handera chose to stick with the serial HotSync connector and replaceable batteries, as shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
The HandEra 330 uses replaceable batteries. (click for larger image)
Even though the HandEra 330 takes four AAA batteries, it manages power extraordinarily well. I've been doing a lot of reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of beaming with the HandEra 330, and I've only had to change the batteries once in a month of use.
Personally, I like Handera's decision. I find it much easier to carry a few spare batteries and a HotSync cable instead of a cradle and transformer. Of course, if you prefer a rechargeable solution, HandEra has thought of that too. You can replace the batteries with an optional rechargeable Lithium Ion battery pack.
