The Mobilon HC-4600 is Sharp's update of the popular HC-4500 reviewed thoroughly beginning on page 6 of the May/June 1998 issue of Handheld PC Magazine. Check out that review for more details. I'm going to keep this review brief, focusing on the improvements Sharp made in the unit.
The Sharp Mobilon HC-4600 ships with 16 MB of EDO RAM (expandable to 32 MB), and slightly more powerful batteries. Otherwise it's identical to the Mobilon HC-4500. The Mobilon HC-4600 comes with some of the same applications I liked in the first review, including:
- Image Editor built into the HC-4600's ROM, this application lets you edit photos you take with the option Digital Camera Card (or any .JPG image).
IntelliMigrate installed on a desktop PC from the CD ROM, this application lets you "migrate" data from a number of different PDA formats to your Mobilon (or any H/PC). The program was developed by Puma Technologies (www.pumatech.com).
Additional software improves functionality
The big change with the HC-4600 is the additional software Sharp chose to build in and bundle with the Mobilon. These programs include:
- bFax Pro installs to the HC-4600 from CD ROM and adds fax send/receive capability. Includes a utility that "spools" faxes and sends them out all at once when you connect your Mobilon to a telephone. (Developed by bSquare Technologies: www.bsquare.com).
PC File Viewer built into the Mobilon, this application lets you view common PC-formatted documents on your Mobilon. View MS Word, WordPerfect, MS Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, common graphics formats, and more. (Developed for Sharp by INSO.)- Citrix ICA Client lets Mobilon users access and run desktop Windows applications remotely from their H/PC. (Developed by Citrix.)
PhotoLink lets you link a .JPG, BMP, or .GIF image or photograph to a Contacts entry. You can link images taken by the Sharp Digital Camera Card, or images you download from other sources. (Developed by Randsoft: www.randsoft.com.)
MPEG Player lets you play MPEG 1 format movie files. The image size is fixed at 160x120 dots. You can use this application to play MPEG movies you create with the Sharp Digital Camera.- IR Communication utility lets you exchange data via infrared communications with Sharp ZR Series PDAs.
Digital Camera Card
This doesn't come with the HC-4600, but slips into the Mobilon's PC Card slot and turns the HC-4600 into a digital camera that can take pictures up to 640x480 VGA display size with up to 16.7 million colors. You can adjust the size and quality of the image to reduce the size of the .JPG file. The Digital Camera Card has an optical zoom feature, and is capable of continuous shooting in manual or automatic mode (which helps create MPEG movies). The Digital Camera Card comes with two additional applications for the Mobilon.
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