Taiwanese manufacturer MiTAC has a long history of designing and manufacturing Pocket PCs for companies like NEC. But only recently have they ventured into the U.S. market under their own brand name. In this issue, we review two of their new “DigiWalker” Pocket PCs, the Mio 168 with built-in GPS and the Mio 558.

The Mio 558 is their version of the latest Pocket PC trend—a high-end device with a fast processor, plenty of RAM and ROM, a user-replaceable battery, and the standard wireless protocols (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). By releasing this device in the U.S., MiTAC will have to compete against a number of devices from HP and Toshiba, as well as a similar device recently introduced by ASUS.

Packed with power

The Mio 558 sports the latest version of Intel’s XScale processor, the PXA263. Benchmarks of PXA263 devices are impressive.

The Mio 558 has a respectable 64 MB of SDRAM and 64 MB of flash ROM. Approximately 32 MB of the latter are available to the end user for data/file storage. The two card slots—one CF, one SDIO—offer plenty of expansion capabilities. The 1200 mAh rechargeable battery is adequate for powering the device in general use. Fortunately, this is a user-replaceable battery. If you intend to use the wireless capabilities of this device for extended periods without access to a charger, I would definitely invest in a spare battery. MiTAC wisely decided to build a spare battery charger slot into the synchronization cradle that is included as a standard accessory.

Activating and using the wireless capabilities

Activating Mio’s wireless capabilities is easy. Tap on the small, grayed-out, PDA-shaped icon in the lower right of the Today screen and a menu pops up (Fig. 1), allowing you to turn the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth capabilities on or off. Unless you are using one or both, leave both off to conserve battery power.

Fig 1: Tap on the PDA icon in the lower right of the Today screen to turn Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off.

Once I turned the Wi-Fi (listed as “Wireless” in the menu) on, the device sniffed out the Wi-Fi link to our company network, walked me through a short connection wizard, and connected me to the network. I was able to browse the Web without any problems. The whole process was painless. According to Mitac, the Mio558 can also be used as a wireless adapter for your laptop. For example, you can connect the Mio558 to your laptop via the sync cable and the laptop can use the Pocket PC’s Wi-Fi capability to connect to a wireless LAN. Instructions on how to do this as well as the necessary “USB Dongle” driver software for the laptop are available on Mitac’s Web site (http://mio.mitac.com/download.asp).

The Bluetooth connection took a little more effort. The first thing I tried was to connect to another Bluetooth-equipped Pocket PC, the Asus A620BT. The devices have Bluetooth managers that function differently, and the process of establishing a link was not extremely easy. This lack of a standard way of doing things is a problem with Bluetooth in general. My suggestion to Microsoft and everyone involved: Standardize the process!

Once the devices were paired, the Bluetooth file transfer capability was very easy to use. I simply opened File Explorer on the Mio, tapped and held on the file I wanted to transfer, and selected the Beam option from the drop-down menu. The Beam screen then showed me all the available ports or access points to which I could beam my file. I tapped on the name of the ASUS device to send the file to it via Bluetooth (Fig. 2). I also had no problems sending a file from the ASUS device to the Mio 558. It doesn’t seem to be possible to access the file folders of another device from the Mio. However, MiTAC has informed me that they plan on posting new Bluetooth profiles on their Web site, which would enhance the Bluetooth connectivity of the device. The end user would download and install them on the Mio 558. According to MiTAC, the profiles should be on their Web site (http://mio.mitac.com/download.asp) by the time you read this review.

Fig. 2: It’s relatively easy to use Bluetooth to beam a file from the Mio 558 to another Bluetooth-equipped device.

I also tested the Mio’s Bluetooth capabilities with my Windows XP desktop PC. First, I installed the Bluetooth DBT-120 adapter from D-Link (http://www.dlink.com) on my desktop PC. This involves installing D-Link’s Bluetooth manager software on the desktop PC, and then attaching a small Bluetooth radio dongle to the PC’s USB port. The D-Link installation places a Bluetooth Exchange folder in your desktop PC’s My Documents folder. Whenever you send a file from the Mio 558 to your desktop PC via Bluetooth, it is saved in this folder. When you use the D-Link Bluetooth manager to send a file from your desktop PC to the Mio, it is saved on the 558 in the My Device > Temp > Ftp folder. It was easy to send files back and forth, but I couldn’t explorer the file structure of one computer from the other.

You can also use a Bluetooth connection between your desktop PC and Pocket PC to synchronize data and install programs via ActiveSync. You can find instructions for doing this on the BluetoothNews Web site (http://www.bluetoothnews.com/features/ActiveSync.htm).

Standard and bonus software

Like the Mio 168 reviewed on page 10, the Mio 558 DigiWalker comes with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 2003 Premium Edition built into flash ROM. This includes Pocket Outlook, Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Microsoft Reader, MSN Messenger, and more. A full description of this software can be found on Microsoft’s Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/prod...).

The Mio 558 also comes with the eBackup file backup and restore utility, the E-Viewer digital photo album program, and the Mio Utility configuration/setup utility. Mio Utility has an additional Flash Disk tab that lets you re-format the flash disk. The Mio 558 comes with Microsoft’s Companion CD, which includes the desktop PC programs ActiveSync 3.7.1, Outlook 2002, and a link to Windows Media Player 9.0. It does not include any other user installable programs for the Pocket PC.

Reasonable choice for full-featured Pocket PC

The Mio 558 DigiWalker is a reasonable choice for a high-end, full-featured Pocket PC. I think MiTAC should consider including some business oriented add-on software. Similar solutions from HP and Toshiba offer a rich selection of free and trial add-on programs. And while devices in the Toshiba e800 series cost $150 more than the Mio 558, HP’s h4000 series devices and the Asus A716 are competitively priced.