Expert: Werner "Menneisyys" Ruotsalainen

Answer: Unfortunately, the HP iPAQ 1910 is one of the devices that are the least meant for using GPS units because

1. it has no built-in Bluetooth and it has no SDIO meaning you can't use SD Bluetooth cards with it to connect to external Bluetooth GPS units
2. it doesn't support serial cables - cabled solutions, which are very popular when used in cars, won't work either

This all means you can only use infrared-based GPS units with the 1910. Very few GPS models (more exactly, cradles) support this; for example, the Haicom HI-203.

Please also see this thread.

(Also note that, while the iPAQ 1930, the “basic” WM2003 model in the 19xx series, doesn’t have serial support either, it already supports SDIO. That is, while many recommend using infrared-based GPS units to be used with the 1930, getting a SDIO Bluetooth card if you otherwise have enough built-in memory for your apps may be preferable.)

Q: What should I choose: the iPAQ 1940 or the rx1950? I've heard the rx1950 has very little dynamic memory.

A: The question boils down to the following: do you plan to use programs that use a lot of dynamic memory or not.

Some programs consume 8-10 Mbytes of RAM when loaded. An example is Minimo - version 0.07 consumes 10 Mbytes of RAM. (Other Web browsers are far better in this respect: NetFront 3.2 consumes 4M, PIE some 1M and Thunderhawk even less). However, if you load Web pages in multiple tabs/windows and/or load large(r) Web pages, the disadvantage of, say, PIE, disappears really fast: one tab can consume up to 2-5 Mbytes of RAM, depending on the Web page rendered. See for example this PPCT frontpaged article for more quantitive data on PPC Web browsers' memory consumption if interested.

Furthermore, there're other memory-hungry apps; for example, some games. Also, if you plan to use for example image converter utilities (see for example this roundup on this), the meagre 12 Mbytes of (by default) available RAM of the rx1950 can very easily become a bottleneck.

This all means that, if you use a pre-WM5 Pocket PC and you are ready to clean up / relocate everything off the main RAM by hand to keep it as clean as possible, you can run far more memory-hungry applications than on a WM5 device that has only 12 Mbytes of available RAM.

Note that if you don't relocate anything from RAM (not even the PIE cache), then, a WM2003/WM2003SE device can easily lose its advantage in the area of free RAM very-very fast.

If you do relocate/cleanup everything, though, then, you can have about four times more available RAM in the 1930/1940 than in the rx1950. That IS some difference!

Bottom line: for a PPC freak that loves fine-tinung his/her Pocket PC, a WM2003(SE) device can give more power, memory-wise, than most of today's WM5 devices (and especially the highly constrained rx1950). For casual users, however, who keep a lot of shared DLL's, .unload files, HTML help files, the PIE cache and/or apps/games that can't be installed into the storage card (see for example the multiplayer PPC game roundup I've posted today for some examples) in RAM, these files may actually result in less available dynamic memory size than even with the most restricted WM5 PDA's.

BTW, if I had to choose from the two devices (there weren't others), I'd go for the rx1950. (I weren't particularly happy, though. 12Mbytes of available RAM is very-very little for a power user like me. The lack of BT is another big problem - excluding it from the rx1950 was a big mistake.)