Can HTC take Advantage of Eee-fans?
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
But it’s not going to get the same public reaction because instead of Linux, it runs Windows Mobile. It’s the HTC Advantage and I reviewed it at http://www.itpro.co.uk/reviews/133941/htc-advantage-x7500.html; I was minded to bring it up after all the interest in the Eee PC because in some ways it’s a better solution.
You can create and edit office documents; the latest version of Office Mobile in WM 6 lets you create charts and you get full file compatibility with Office. You can get HTML email. You can run Opera. The QWERTY keyboard is a nice size for typing - but if you want to draw on screen or read an eBook with Microsoft Reader or play a game with the stylus you can pull the keyboard off because it’s magnetic. OneNote Mobile works best with a keyboard but PhatNotes lets you write on screen nicely. You can hook it up to a TV and play video; it’s got a full media player built in and there are other players available.
It’s got a VGA screen and although WM 6 doesn’t do much with that you can download SE_VGA (http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=1277) or ozVGA (http://oz.sciox.org/) to get the full resolution; this causes problems with some icons and it’s not a perfect solution but neither is having to scroll down to get the bottom stripe of the screen on the Eee PC running Windows XP (widescreen ratio at the lowest resolution and smallest size = something missing).
It’s got GPS and it makes a fantastic personal navigator with CoPilot 7 - and even using the GPS, with the phone switched on and a non-roaming SIM in (which means the radio is ramped up to full power, trying again and again to find a network that will talk it) you get over three hours of battery life. It charges over USB so you can easily charge it in the car from the cigarette lighter and in use without GPS you’ll get six to eight hours of push email and browsing over 3G, intermittent Wi-Fi and application use plus phone calls. Yes - it’s a phone too, although you’ll want to use a headset because it’s like holding a paperback book up to your ear.
It’s a phone, a PDA, a navigator, a personal media player, a note taker, a presentation runner - it’s a real portable computer. Depending on the contract it could easily be cheaper than the Eee PC as well as lasting for longer and fitting in a smaller pocket. What matters with the Eee PC for me is having a real OS - Windows or Linux - so you can add your own applications. But the Eee PC only has 4Gb of storage; the Advantage has 8Gb plus an SD slot and much more of that is free because the OS is in ROM. Unless there’s a specific app you want on the Eee, the Advantage might be the portable of your dreams instead.
-Mary
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