Reviews – ViewSonic V37 – Flagship 400Mhz PDA

Reviews - ViewSonic V37 - Flagship 400Mhz PDA

"It's a flagship PDA with a hell of a lot of processing power

But it looks dull and models by HP & Toshiba excel by far"

The PDA. Small silver and stylish. Nothing says "look at me I'm a high-flying executive with people to meet, places to go and money to burn" better than a PDA. Weather your rushing from one meeting to another or simply lying by the pool looking cool with your silver screen, the PDA is the temple of gadget.

In recent years the PDA has evolved into a device to do more than just keep a list of contacts and appointments. You can play games, listen to MP3's or even watch movies if you have the necessary disk-space. In short it's a PPC or Portable Personal Computer - You couldn't hire a Personal Assistant for love nor money that would sing dance and act, let alone play games with you… well, we wont go there…

The PDA that we are looking at in particular is the V37 from ViewSonic. Most commonly known for manufacturing display equipment such as monitors and our favourite smart-displays, this seems a logical move for the company who now has three PDA's on the market. The V35 V36 are your usual PDA's with varying specifications. The V36 even hosts a digital camera in its rear, but the flagship V37 is where the power lies.

On first appearances it appears to be nothing special, infact that's its downside, it looks… well like a PDA should; silver with a screen a 4way centre button and some programmable hotkeys. The V37 certainly doesn't win any design awards, but who needs great looks when there is inner beauty… Alright, alright we all want good looks but bear with me.

The V37 has a 400Mhz processor, which I find quite hard to comprehend. My first PC was a Pentium 100, my second a 400Mhz AMD. In this little slab of silver lies the same processing power as my 3 or 4 year-old PC! This just highlights the pace of technology and the processing power of the V37 lies amongst the highest on the market. With around 36MB of initial memory to play with you may be limited to documents and a few games, but there is a SD slot that's SDIO compatible. That means you can use the SDIO devices like the ViewSonic Wireless LAN card to link your PDA up to a home or office network.

Connectivity-wise the V37 also has infrared but surprisingly not bluetooh. IR is seeing the end of its days as bluetooh secures the number-one spot being found in mobile phones, printers and not requiring a direct line of sight. The docking station is USB, which is fine for synchronising documents and appointments but If you have purchased a SD memory card then you may want to consider filling it up by a faster SD card reader, rather then using the USB docking station.

Unlike some of its competitors the V37 has a non-removable battery, which means that should you run our of juice on-the-go you will have to find a PowerPoint somewhere. Having said this; the prospect of finding a power point is much easier with the ViewSonic: Included in the box is a travel charger with snap-on pin configurations allowing you to charge from any UK, US, European or even "Shaver-Only" power outlet.

That's what we like about ViewSonic; their attention to detail. In the box you get the PDA, nifty travel charger, docking station and a nice leather case that actually makes the PDA look smaller when its snuggled inside. The case also wipes the face of the PDA as you pull it out and makes it feel more substantial (but not bulky) when inside your inner pocket.

Alright so the name doesn't have the swish credibility of HP for example, and the ViewSonic logo makes me cringe. Three daft multicoloured parrots, or birds, or whatever the hell they are - They will probably be the butt of a few jokes and don't be surprised when somebody thinks your PDA is this years most-wanted toy from Fischer-Price… But who cares! The ViewSonic V37 is a veritable beast. Those parrots could gobble up that Palm in the cubicle opposite and still be hungry for whatever HP can throw at them

Besides, haven't you heard; angles are the new curves, black the new silver and inside the new outside. Inner beauty matters; whether you take that to be the inner processing power of the V37 or the inner sitting power of the V37 in its black leather case