HandEra 330 Takes PDA to Next Level

Improving on hand-held devices featuring the Palm operating system can be daunting. Handspring Inc. added an expansion module slot that’s proved rather popular. Kyocera melded the Palm with a cell phone.

Now comes Des Moines-based HandEra (formerly TRG Products), which is leveraging its experience building industrial-class hand-helds to come up with a new $349 model that’s bound to heat up the competition.

The HandEra 330 claims to have one of the highest-resolution screens of any hand-held on the market today. It also boasts a larger viewing area, easy-to-use software and two expansion slots for expandable memory up to 1 gigabyte. Add to that a side-mounted combination “jog wheel” and select button and twice the battery capacity (four AAA batteries versus two in most battery-operated Palms and Handspring Visors).

It gets even more impressive. There’s also the ability to record and play back audio, which seems best suited to quick voice memos.

For me, the icing on the cake is that the HandEra 330 has the same connector as the Palm III series, letting users take advantage of a whole bunch of accessories designed for the Palm III, including portable keyboards and the Kodak PalmPix camera.

Let’s not forget the expansion slots--one a CompactFlash slot usually found on devices using the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system, the other a Secure Digital card slot for data storage. With its Palm-style connector, the HandEra 330 has one of the broadest ranges of expansion options of any hand-held on the planet. Expansion is good.

Surprisingly, none of the extra features of the HandEra 330 detracts from it being a “shirt pocket” hand-held. This one still can be slipped into a shirt or jacket pocket without any hassle, and its weight is on a par with other Palm III-style devices.

It’s not as slim and light as the Palm m500 or the Handspring Visor Edge, but it’s not too bulky for most of us. It’ll probably fit nicely in one of those holster cases for the Palm III that Al Gore was fond of showing off during last year’s campaign.

But size is a minor factor when compared with performance. The unit’s 33-MHz Motorola DragonBall VZ processor is the same one found in the new Handspring Visor Edge and the Palm m500.

I had no problems with the HandEra 330’s operation, and that jog dial, a feature found also on Sony’s ill-starred Clie hand-held, does offer an easy way to scroll through an address list or a roster of appointments.

One feature that has yet to reveal itself to me: the 330’s touted ability, “with special software,” to rotate the display 90 degrees to allow better viewing of spreadsheets, e-mail and the like. No additional software was supplied with my test unit, and none is available on the firm’s Web site. It would be nice if the feature were included in the basic operating system.

Even with this shortcoming, the HandEra 330 is a good, solid value that offers much in the way of performance.

The price is in the middle of the PDA pack, and its expansion capabilities are impressive.

If you’re shopping for a new Palm-powered model, this one is worth investigating.

*

Mark A. Kellner is editor at large for Government Computer News and hosts “Mark Kellner on Computers” at https://www.adrenalineradio.com from 5 to 6 p.m. Thursdays.