[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] Yanktar03:
I got my MDA in July or August, I believe. I got it from T-Mobile, not one of their distributers, because I could control the family plan better, that we already had, and could request the area code I wanted (Also got a Samsung t-809 slide--a really cool phone).

Coming from an HP IPAQ 6315, I am VERY pleased with the MDA. However, I did not synch it with my Jensen B/T headphones because the driver wasn't compatible with WM5. More importantly, no matter what I tried I couldn't hook it up to my Garmin GPS 10--a B/T GPS unit that works AMAZINGLY well at finding your location--Both the headset and the Garmin work with the HP.

So I followed T-Mobile's directions to upgrade the MDA firmware to the ROM version 2.26.10.105 and I am SO glad I did!

The new version has its own A2DP driver, so the Jensens immediately synched beautifully.

The Garmin was trickier. I had to buy a registry editor--I went for Kilmist which works very nicely. You need to hack the registry to reveal the GPS Icon in the System tray.

The tree is:

Pocket PC\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ControlPanel\GPS Settings.

You delete ALL the keys under GPS Settings, especially the REDIRECT key.

I've read that you can switch the HIDE key from 1 to 0, but I couldn't get that to work--when I cleared the REDIRECT it worked.

Reboot, and the GPS Icon should appear. This allows you to tailor the device's COM port to match the GPS software from Garmin.

I'm not really crazy about the Windows Media Player--it's a pain to use, a pain to set up, and I have NO idea what MS was thinking. Instead, I use something called BetaPlayer both for movies and music. It's simple, clear, obvious, and you don't have to go through stupid gyrations to get either music or movies to it (it plays AVIs). When we travel, I'll rip movies using Pocket PC DVD (an nice, inexpensive pgm) to AVIs in the 15-225 meg range, and dump them to the Mini-SD card. BetaPlayer allows me to play them without any problem and rotates to landscape mode with a tap.

BetaPlayer is a free download, that Pocket PC DVD sets you up with. I THINK they have replaced it with an upgrade.

I can use it with AIM, but the return key on the keyboard doesn't "send"--so far I've had to tap the Send icon with the stylus--Is there a way around this?

eMail works very nicely--I route to my own account, not T-Mobile's, so I can get and send my mail. But it ALWAYS truncates the mail, forces you to click on it and re-download. Again, anybody have a way to fix this?

Compared to the HP IPAQ 6315, there's really no comparison. The HP has a bigger screen, but it's a bigger, bulkier unit and I don't notice a difference. It does just about everything better than the HP, and I don't have to soft-boot it every single day!

BIG plus on the MDA/Wizard--the antenna doesn't stick out so you can't break it off (I actually broke off the cover of the antenna on the HP in an airport--Had to replace the entire antenna assembly to replace the cover!)

I really like the SanDisk cards. I have 4 2-gig cards I bought on-line for about $40-$50 apiece (I forgot which). I THINK it was at Buy.com--not sure. I've never had a SanDisk card or flash drive fail or fail to connect. Yeah, 2g mini-SDs work just fine on this PDA.

The MDA is more like a thick cell phone than a PDA in size and feel. I hope to explore a lot more of its capabilities.