NEC 790(Gray)

This was NEC's HPC flagship for a long time. It is the best of the MIPS cpu machines. The internal 14mb of useable flash rom ensures you never lose data through a battery drain or hard reset. The keyboard is superb for typing on and the screen is easy to see.

The cons: It does't fit in your pocket. It needs to be carried in a small pouch about the size of a double CD case. The DSTN screen stinks outdoors and is practically impossible to see. All DSTN color units are this way. It uses a non-standard earphone jack (2.5mm) so you need an adapter to listen to the HiFi (not stereo) sound. It doesn't support the latest software as most of it is written for the ARM processor such as in the Jornada 720. It handles animated graphics very poorly as does all HPC units no matter the brand. Forget any action game play.

The pros: A real workhorse for typing on and data entry. Responsive touch screen and great colors indoors. Lots of HPC software available to do most anything. There are hundreds of great utilities, games, and productivity programs available for free. Batteries last a long time...you can use this thing for well over 5-6 hours without a recharge. Try that with a laptop. Instant on means just that...no warm up time. Works great with wireless networks and the Windows CE 3.0 offers a much better Internet Explorer than you will find with the CE 2.11 machines such as the Mobilepro 780 and earlier, or the Jornada 690 and earlier.

To see more info, visit HPCNEC.COM for non-partisan information, or the forums at HPCFactor.com to talk with real everyday users.