Toshiba Pocket PC e800

Summary: I purchased this unit two years ago and it has served me excellently since then as a reliable unit and pleasant to use. Having 480x640 (VGA) resolution I've found that text is much sharper and easier to read than on typical 240x320 (QVGA) PDAs. It has excellent expandability. I occasionally use mine as a GPS navigator (using GPS receiver accessory) and media player (I've got a 2 gig SD memory card and it reads from USB harddrives). A month ago I decided to look at current offerings for PDAs and I find that even at two years old there are few PDAs that have such a high resolution screen or a processor at this speed (416MHz) or faster.

Summary: First of all, my advice to anyone who still has an e800 or e805 is to get rid of that unit and get the much more powerful and dynamic e830. YES! The e830 is VERY different than the e800/e805 edition. Because it was produced post-production of the e800 series, it is immune to all of the "crash bugs" that a lot of e800/e805 users complain about. The e830 also has the landscape/portrait software embedded, so it doesn't need any hacks or 3rd party for that. Compared to the e800/e805 the e830 is much more stable and powerful.
BACKGROUND WHEN I OWNED both the e800 and e805: In late 2003/early 2004 I got my hands on one the first e800s when I replaced my under-powered iPaq 1940. At first it took me a while, a long while, to get used to the larger size of the e800. But the amazing screen size and quality blew me away. The e800 was all about looking good and feeling good. The build quality and design is perfect. However, the e800 didn't really do anything more than other cheaper PDAs on the market at the time. At $599 that made the e800 expensive for what it did. Even though the unit had a lot of potential in power and function, there was not much to do with it; Third party software tended to make my e800 unit crash a lot, the VGA/undead hack was a miserable experience that literally became useless since it kept freezing my unit. After one reset too many (about 2 months of ownage), I sent it back and got an e805 (with arc soft photo software). That unit was a little better and didn't quite have the same issues with 3rd party software (namely the vga hack, an astronomy-PDA pack, Science Tools PDA-pack & some games). However, a problem that really bugged me with the e805 was the battery meter would always say 99% power left until the unit had about less than 25% power. Then the meter would go from 99% to 25% in an instant, and then go from 25% to dead within the next 10-15 minutes. The battery life was still good and I got about 3-4 hrs opf use but it's not annoying until you use your unit periodically during the work day (and the charger is at home). Eventually I got a (4 AA) battery extender on eBay ($6.99) and it actually worked and gave me about 12-20 hours on consistent use out of the e830 before I saw 25% power, but somehow the battery extender confused something within the software and once again I got freezing up (or slowing down) and ended up doing lots of resets. Also just having WiFi was a pain when I also wanted to link it with the other Bluetooth devices in my home and work office. And WiFi on the e805 was weak, slow and had bugs. As soon as I found out (about 6-7 months into owning the e805) that an e830 existed, I sold my e805 on eBay and got the e830 from a Canadian distributor.
Out of the box, the e830 powered up and was ready to go, with all the software installed. In no time I soon realized that the e830 was vastly different and superior in operating system (Win PPC 2003-2nd ed., Speed (Xscale 520mhz), Flexibility (VGA multi-mode is OEM), and power (NO slow downs, resets whatsoever), Also Bluetooth and WiFi combined and was now more powerful and easier to use (WiFi Config is amazing!). I love the Sonar-radar sweeping style detection screen that searches for all Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices within a 50 foot radius of the e830. It allows you to find all compatible (and non-compatible) sources and select the ones you want to link with. And it works. A second later you'll find yourself on the internet or Bluetooth chatting with someone in the cafe that you're in (how cool is that!)
The e830 has way faster internet browsing than the e800/e805 (even in landscape mode). When hooked up with a ThinkOutside Stowaway IR keyboard the e830 literally becomes something that will rival some of the lower to mid class notebooks out there today, in terms of power, speed, and portability. In fact, because the e830 is so powerful and I now own a Blackberry 7920, I've been using the e830 with the keyboard for the last 2 years as a my personal travel laptop. Also it's easier since SD and Flash cards are now as widely used and accepted today as CDs and floppy disc are. So data storage and exchange via bluetooth, email or an SD card is a breeze.
One Important note about the IR keyboards: PALM has an identical IR keyboard made by the ThinkOutside folks. Because ThinkOutside makes both PALMs and PPCs keyboard and it was way easier and cheaper for me to get the PALM keyboard I got the PALM keyboard and found that it worked with the e830. However, when using WORD and EXCEL in VGA-landscape mode, the PALM keyboard made my e830 lock up and crash on two occasions before I ditched the PALM keyboard and got the correct ThinkOutside PPC version keyboard and found that it was the PALM keyboard that made the e830 crash. Those were the only two occasions that I've had to reset (hard&soft) my e830 in the last 2 years and I use it about 4-5 days a week consistently for word documents/web browsing/games/MP3’s.

The only downside is, and its a shared con of all PPCs today, is that between my PSP, iPod, Blackberry, Digital camera, In-car TOM TOM GO GPS/Navigation system and my Toshiba Satellite laptop (which I leave at home now) it makes me wonder whether having a PPC, even if its the e830, in 2006 seem worth it at all. Literally, all the functions of the original PPC at its peak has been now divided, specialized and made better and faster by the dozens of other gadgets we all have. So it's hard to recommend a PPC today when there is no need for the mainstream consumer to have a PPC anymore when they could spend less and get the coveted PSP, or an iPod or a Blackberry or Treo.

The only benefits of shelling out for any PPC or the e830 in 2006 is that you will have the all-in-one feel with a PPC. The e830 is perfect on the days you want to travel light, or want to hang out at the cafe writing in WORD, balancing your assets & liabilities in EXCEL, reading downloaded MSReader books, listening to MP3’s, shopping on eBay, checking email, googling blog pages or simply picking up cute girls with Treos via Bluetooth chat (yes, it works and it works well, my favorite feature) the e830 will allow you to do all that. By the way the battery life is really good; doing all of the above(not ALL at the same time of course) in a cafe will last you about 3 to 4 hrs on the e830's battery. If you get the (4 AA) battery extender/charger pack off eBay you will get from 12 hrs(with everything on at once) to 24 hrs of power(with normal regular use) .

After 2 yrs I have no complains and my e830 has held up in light that PPCs are almost extinct in 2006. Because of that don't expect to go to TOSHIBA USA for any warranty, service help or replacements. Like the other reviewers said it's true that about 90% of the staff at TOSHIBA USA probably won't know what the e800 series are, much less recall the days when TOSHIBA made PPCs.