HP Jornada 430se Palm-size PC: More Power, More Fun!

Hewlett-Packard made a good thing better with the release of the new Jornada 430se color-screen Palm-size PC. The 430se is an update of the Jornada 420 we reviewed previously (see page 61, Mar/Apr 99). From the outside, it looks identical to the 420, but looks can be deceiving. HP upgraded the CPU from the 420's 100 MHz SH3 to the newer 133 MHz version of the same chip. The makes the 430se more responsive without adversely affecting battery life. The 430se comes with 16 Mb of RAM standard, instead of an option, as it was with the 420. The only other change to the hardware was replacing the mono headphone jack with a stereo version. This makes the Jornada 430se and the new Casio E-100/105 the only Palm-size PCs with stereo output capability ­ a must for listening to MP3 music. (Note: of the new H/PC Pros, only the IBM WorkPad z50 has a stereo headphone jack.)

Hum MP3 player adds music to your life

The Hum MP3 player is the most important addition to the Jornada's add-on suite of software. In combination with the built-in stereo headphone jack, Hum transforms the 430se into a mean and lean music machine. (Take a look at "PC Companions Online," page 41 of this issue for Web sites where you can download free MP3 music.)

Launch Hum on the 430se and a simple control panel is displayed (see Screen 1). The sliding bar on the left adjusts the volume. The Play button is in the center of the hub. Below it is Stop, above it is Pause. The backup (go to the previous track) and fast forward (go to the next track) buttons are to the left and right. It's pretty simple.

Tap on the icon in the upper left and the Playlist pops up, displaying the MP3 files you have on your 430se (see Screen 2). Select the desired MP3 file, tap on open and you're ready to go. If you select an item in the Playlist and tap on the Edit button, a list of the tracks in that particular MP3 file is displayed. You can change the order of tracks, delete tracks you don't want to hear, or add tracks from other MP3 files to this file. Impressive!

Hum plays ISO standard MP1, MP2 and MP3 files. It supports mono and stereo playback, and can play music through the 430se's built-in speaker or the stereo headphone jack. The speaker is not designed for playing music, but is OK in a pinch. However, listening to the new James Bond movie theme (the sample included with the Jornada) with stereo headphones was a wonderful experience.

The quality of music playback is also dependent on the processing speed of the PC Companion. The Jornada 430se, with its 133 MHz processor, did not seem to have any problems playing the MP3 files. I even ran a couple other applications on top of Hum, while the music was playing away. They loaded a little slower than normally, but performed well while Hum was humming away.

Other software on the HP 430se

The Jornada 430se comes with the standard suite of Microsoft built-in software. This includes Windows CE 2.11, Pocket Outlook (Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, Inbox), Mobile Channels (lets you view downloaded Web content off line), and various accessories and utilities.

Below is a complete list of the additional software Hewlett-Packard included with the Jornada 430se. I've placed an asterisk (*) by programs that weren't found on the Jornada 420. You'll notice that there are quite a few new programs.