Editor's note: This is the first in-depth review of a Windows CE 2.0 H/PC we've published. We chose the Hewlett-Packard 620LX for a very good reason—they were the first company to send us a demo unit. As we get other H/PCs and Palm PCs in to demo, we'll let you know about them. We also accept reviews from independent sources, so send us your comments about the new Windows CE 2.0 PC companions.

First impressions last!

Perhaps it was the fact that that HP sent me the demo unit one week before Christmas—they wouldn't intentionally do that, would they? In any event, I got an early Christmas present today (well, I have to send it back after test driving it).

The HP 620LX Palmtop PC comes in a colorful, box that almost screams, "Buy me, I'm fun!". It has a substantial heft to it and those hard-to-open box tabs that ensure nothing falls out accidentally. It took a little while to figure out how to open the box, which just increased my desire to get my hands on the new color-display H/PC.

The box contained seven items: The HP 620LX, a docking station, a PC connectivity cable, an AC adapter, a rechargeable battery, Microsoft Windows CE 2.0 documentation and CD ROM, and HP 620LX documentation and CD ROM. I pushed everything else aside except the 620LX.

The first thing I wanted to do was turn on the 620LX and play with it. Of course, I had to insert the battery pack. I did so, and connected the HP to its AC adapter, pressed the ON button and immediately got a message that the backup battery was low or missing. I frantically search the package for the coin-sized backup battery, but could not find it. I was just about to call HP when I decided to check the backup battery compartment. HP's PR department had thoughtfully installed the backup battery for the press review units. Unfortunately, by the time the unit got to me, the message indicated that it was already drained. I replaced it with a fresh CR 2032 coin cell (battery) and I was up and running. I don't imagine that off-the-shelf units will have their backup batteries preinstalled.

You'll notice I don't mention anything about looking for a quick start guide. The first thing I (and I believe most users) want to do is turn the thing on and play with it. This involves putting in the rechargeable battery pack, plugging the 620LX into the AC adapter, and pressing the ON button.

Additional programs included

I was not disappointed. The first thing I was greeted with was a crisp, readable color display, with a raft of application icons on the main screen.

The Windows CE regulars were there (Inbox, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, and the new Pocket PowerPoint. The 620LX had a number of additional programs on the desktop, all built into ROM and ready to go. I noticed bsquare Fax Professional, Microsoft Voice Recorder, Quicken ExpensAble, and Month-at-a-Glance Plus. The first one I tried was Microsoft Voice Recorder. (Voice Record is not really an extra built-in application. It comes with all Windows CE 2.0 H/PCs.)

Voice Memo

A little history lesson is in order. Of the first batch of H/PCs, one of the more successful ones was the Philips Velo 1. One of the reasons for its success was its built-in voice memo recording capability, and everyone took notice! Windows CE 2.0 comes with Microsoft Voice Recorder (voice record and playback application) built in. All of the Windows CE 2.0 H/PCs (and Palm PCs) I've seen or read about come with a microphone and speaker to support voice memo recording capability. Anyway, I tapped on the icon to start voice record.

Without consulting the manual, I tried to record a memo. There are two buttons at the top of the Voice Recorder main screen, one with a black square in it, and one with a red circle. I assumed that the red circle was the image of a stop sign and was the "stop recording" button and the button with the black square in it was the "start recording" button. Actually, it was the other way around.

I pressed the red button, and recorded a ten-second voice memo, with the 620LX sitting on the desk about 18 inches from my mouth. How did I know it was a 10 second message? Voice Recorder comes with a nice little seconds counter at the bottom of the screen. Next to it is an available memory counter that tells you how many KBs of memory you have available for voice memos. With no messages recorded, the memory counter indicates that I can record 1,029 KBs of memos. My 10.6 second memo occupied 83 KBs of space. Sparing you the mathematics, that works out to be a total of 131.41 seconds worth of memos. I tried the math with a 3.3 second memo and it worked out to be roughly the same.

You can record voice memos two other ways. There is a small LED button on the hinge of the 620LX that is visible with the clamshell case closed or open. With the 620LX off and the case closed, you can press that button, wait for a single beep, and record a message. When you are finished with the memo, press the LED button and you'll hear a double beep, indicating the end of recording. Also, next to the ON/OFF button (upper left keyboard) is a REC button. You can press that while in another application to record a memo.

The sound quality is sufficient for voice memos. You can record them at your desk with the 620LX approximately 18 inches from you if you speak up. If you're a soft speaker, speak directly into the microphone (on the front of the case, close to the button that opens the case). If you're recording a memo on the go, hold the front of the case up close to your mouth and speak clearly—especially in a noisy environment like an airport.

I let my 11-year-old son Robert play with the 620LX one weekend and was rewarded with an "I love you, Daddy" message when I turned on the 620LX Monday morning.   He had not only recorded the message in Voice Recorder, he had gone into the Volume & Sounds Control Panel and customized the H/PCs Startup sound to play his recorded message.

Month-at-a-glance

The next extra built-in application that caught my eye was Month-at-a-Glance-Plus. The built-in Calendar application can display your appointments in daily or weekly views. This built-in utility lets you display your Calendar in month and six-month views.

You can access the built-in Calendar program from Month-at-a-Glance. However, if you start Calendar before opening Month-at-a-Glance, you cannot access the month or six-month views from Calendar.

Sending/receiving faxes with bFAX Pro

The HP 620LX comes with a commercially-available fax program built-in. bFAX Pro from bsquare development enables the 620LX (or any H/PC) using a standard PC Card fax/modem to send and receive text, bitmap, tiff, Word, and Casio Digital Camera files. bFAX lets you add a cover page and even specify a graphic file for a signature.

A confession: Although I'm the managing editor of a magazine about H/PCs, I hardly ever use their communications capabilities. I do almost all of my emailing and faxing from my desktop, and leave the mobile communications (and writing about the topic) to others. The point is, I'm a relatively decent approximation of an inexperienced user, as far as mobile communications is concerned.

To test the fax capabilities of the 620LX I first rummaged around the office for a PC Card modem. I found a Megahertz 14.4 PC Card modem, slipped it into the 620LX's PC Card slot, and wondered what to do next. Then I remembered a couple of excellent articles I edited about configuring the H/PC for a modem (see Fall 1997 issue, page 59-60). I won't go through the steps here, but I managed to set up a new remote connection session, which automatically detected the Megahertz card modem in the card slot.

I decided to try faxing the company from home. It worked!

bFIND

Another utility included with the 620LX is bFIND (from bsquare development). bFIND is a global find utility that lets users search the contents of their H/PC for text or character strings. This utility looks for characters inside a file, not for file names. So, for example, I had taken some notes on Bill Gates' keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show, but I'd saved them under some file name that I didn't remember. I opened bFIND and typed "gates" into the Look For: field. I tapped on the Search button and quick as a wink, the Search Results showed that the text "Bill Gates keynote Sat,..." was in file DOC2.PWD in the My Documents folder. I tapped on the file name and it opened up in Pocket Word.

Quicken ExpensAble: tracking expenses

Another commercial program built into the 620LX is Quicken ExpensAble, a program to help a mobile professional track travel expenses.

I only travel a couple of times a year, and tracking expenses for reimbursement is a simple process. I keep an envelope in my coat pocket, and put all my receipts into that envelope. When the trip is over, I total the receipts on a separate piece of paper, slip that into the envelope along with all those receipts, write the name of the trip on the envelope, seal it and hand it to Wayne (our manager of accounting). Of course, I keep a copy of the receipts and total to check against the reimbursement check.

ExpensAble lets you create an "electronic envelope" on your H/PC to track expenses of a given trip or project. Here's how it works.

Tap the ExpensAble icon on the desktop to open the application. When you start a trip (or project), tap the "New" icon at the top of the ExpensAble main screen. A dialog box appears, prompting you to give the new trip or project envelope a name, and specify some expense-related information.

The new trip or project envelope appears on the main screen. The envelope is open, indicating that the trip or project is still underway. Tap on the trip or project's envelope twice to bring up the individual expense screen, where you enter the type of expense (food, lodging, etc.) date of the expense, amount, payment method, whether it's reimbursable or not, and other information.

This application will be most useful for mobile professionals - people who travel frequently. But it's easy to learn (or relearn) so even if you only travel once or twice a year, it's a nice application to have around. And even though it was designed to track travel expenses, you could just as easily use it to track expenses associated with small projects.

Synchronizing data/backing up the H/PC

One of the big features Microsoft and all the manufacturers promote about the H/PCs is how easy they are to synchronize with a desktop PC. Hewlett-Packard even included a special docking cradle with the 620LX to facilitate this process. I couldn't find instructions in HP 620LX Palmtop PC Pocket Guide or the Microsoft Handheld PC Companion guide. Fortunately, it seemed pretty straight forward. There were two ports in the back of the cradle: one for the connectivity cable and another for the AC adapter. I connected the cable into the Cradle and a serial port on my desktop PC, I connected the AC adapter and plugged it into the wall socket. Then, with fingers crossed, I inserted the 620LX into the Cradle.

The orange LED light came on, indicating that the battery was charging—the 620LX was getting its power from the Cradle.

Next I slipped the Microsoft CD ROM into my PCs ROM drive and set up CE Services 2.0. Setup uninstalled the 1.0 version before installing 2.0. I tapped on the icon to synchronize with the 620LX in the Cradle and eventually got a message indicating that there was no H/PC connected to the PC.

I pushed the 620LX down into the cradle gently until I heard a "click" and tried again. It worked, and I was walked through the synchronization setup dialog. After answering the appropriate questions, the Mobile Devices screen appeared on my desktop PC and the data in the Pocket Outlook applications on the 620LX was synchronized with Outlook's on my desktop. Whenever I connected the 620LX to my desktop PC (via the cradle or by inserting the connectivity cable into the 620LX's serial port) synchronization took place automatically and without problems.

The next thing I wanted to try was copying some Word documents over to the H/PC and see what they looked like in Pocket Word. I figured I had to drag and drop something, but didn't know what to do. I looked at the menu options in the Mobile Devices screen and found some interesting items. It's Tools menu has a selection called Applications Manager. From this you can remove applications you have installed on your H/PC. The Tools menu also had selections for Back Up Now, and Backup/Restore. There was even a File Conversion option in Tools. You checked a box to enable file conversion, but you didn't actually convert anything.

Finally, I went back to the Mobile Devices File menu and noticed the Explore option. I tapped on it and a window opened up, showing my desktop PC drives, our network drives, and the 620LX's drive. I selected a Word document from my desktop (TASKS.DOC) and dragged it to the Handheld PC folder next to the Mobile Devices icon. A dialog box appeared, telling me that the conversion was in process. A few seconds later, TASKS.PWF appeared in the Handheld PC folder. Mobile Devices gives you the option of automatically synchronizing Word and Excel documents every time you connect.

I opened the document on my H/PC and it looked fine. The tabs were still there, the headline was 16 point Times New Roman and the body of the text 10 pt. Copying the document back was just as easy. Microsoft says that some formatting options do not transfer from desktop to Pocket versions of Word.

Next I wanted to see how easy it was to back up the 620LX. On my desktop, in the Mobile Devices screen I tapped on Tools, then Backup/Restore, and finally OK. Mobile Device backs up the entire H/PC to a single file, which can be restored if your H/PC's batteries die and you lose everything. I don't believe you can restore individual files from the backup. If you want this capability, you should copy the files individually from the H/PC to the desktop, as described above.

The backup process takes a while. I had installed the Microsoft Entertainment Pack on the H/PC and copied over a number of Pocket Word documents. Fortunately, it runs in the background on your PC. As a matter of fact, I'm typing this sentence while the backup is going on. (It just ended, taking a little over 10 minutes.)

Looking back

Some of this review was written the first day I got the 620LX. The rest was written after three weeks of use. HP says that the batteries will last 5-7 hours on a recharge. They mean 5-7 hours of use, and one would rarely use an H/PC continuously for 5-7 hours. I didn't run the batteries dry, so I don't know if that's accurate or not. What I did do for a week was use the 620LX all day on the battery and attach it to its AC adapter at night. I never received a low-battery warning.

I can't think of many situations where a mobile user would need more than that. Maybe international travelers on long plane flights might be away from a hotel room for longer than that. In that case, one could keep an extra battery pack charged and ready to go.

This has been as much a review of Windows CE 2.0 and some software from independent vendors as it has been a review of the 620LX. For the most part, I liked what I saw. You can still go all day without worrying about the batteries and the color screen is very readable. It still fits in your coat pocket, but is rather heavy to carry around. In truth, when I took it with me to the Consumer Electronics Show in January, I carried it in my cloth briefcase.

Microsoft did a good job improving Windows CE, independent software vendors did a good job providing useful software for the H/PC, and Hewlett-Packard built a solid, well-engineered device. Too bad I have to send it back.