Asus Pocket PCs
Asus from PC hardware to complete mobile computing
Asus has been well-known for making mother boards for PCs and other computer parts for many years. As a PC parts manufacturer their gear is renowned as being second to none in terms of quality, power and reliability. Any time you've read Power PC reviews or designs for the fastest, most elaborate gaming computers, an Asus mother board is usually what grounds out the project.
Recently, the company has been delving into the handheld and notebook market, bringing the same attention to detail they've brought the PC parts industry all these years. The reviews so far rave of the Asus line of Pocket PCs as one of the best lower-priced alternatives to the iPAQ, with some unique features that not even the kings of mobile computing offer.
Many of the Asus Pocket PCs include NAND flash storage. NAND is non-volatile memory that can store your files that will survive a hard reset or complete power outage. This is a great place to store critical files for backup. The drawback with consistently using the NAND storage found on an Asus Pocket PC is that's comparatively slower than regular RAM. When working with NAND you should consider it only as a backup and work with the decidedly speedier RAM.
Other unique features found on Asus Pocket PCs include their System Settings applet that allows you to set processor speeds. Turbo, Standard and Power Saving modes are available at the touch of the screen. What a gorgeous screen it is, too. Asus system's offer a VGA display at a resolution 640x480 pixels; standard Pocket PCs only have a 240x320 resolution display. This means your Pocket PC desktop is more spacious than a normal Pocket PC, giving you more room to work and beautiful high-resolution images.
For the causal user looking for media playback on the Pocket PC, Asus includes a free applet called PocketMPV for viewing movies and music files in DivX, Mpeg1, AVI and MP3. The trouble with a regular codec designed for the Pocket PC has been the limitation of the 320x240 resolution. For Asus Pocket PC users you shouldn't be hampered by this constraint and with the free PocketMPV you can watch movies in higher resolution.
One fun way to exploit the power of the Pocket PC (and lord it over the average PDA handheld user) is to watch full-color, full-motion video files downloaded from your PC. These are especially impressive at 640x480. But it's a common problem for any Pocket PC's codec to digest larger block sizes such as a very large video file. An alternate codec is recommended if this problem occurs and newer Asus Pocket PCs like the current flagship model MyPal A730 can take advantage of Betaplayer, one of many freeware applets available for the Pocket PC. This is just one of the many ways that the Pocket PC community seems to support each other in the use of their respective handheld devices.
Asus has taken pains not to be just another player in the Pocket PC market and ride the wake of the more established manufacturers like iPAQ and Dell. Asus offers uncommon value, competing with the big boys with their own unique features at enough of a savings to warrant a look from even the most orthodox mobile computer user.