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Sunday 11 January 2015

Upgrading my HP iPAQ 4700

I have an HP iPAQ 4700. It's essentially the same device as the Fujitsu Loox, which is my preferred caching handheld; far better than any Garmin/Etrex/Montana, because it has better screen resolution, uses CF cards that can store 16 gb (maybe more, I haven't tried), has replacable batteries ... anyway, I like it a lot. The trouble is, it's been a while since you can buy them, even on Ebay, because they stopped making them 10 years ago.

I'm OK for now - I have one that works fine, another that's pretty good, and a couple more in various states of "works well enough but not perfectly". So I had a sniff around, and it turns out that the Dell Axim X50V and HP Ipaq 4700 are essentially the same device with minor variations. So I bought one of each a while back (obsolete PDAs are pretty cheap), and today, I brought them out to have another look at them.

The Dell, which worked when I got it, doesn't seem to start up now. The HP starts up just fine ... but it's in German. My German isn't too good. So I went to the HP site to get a ROM in English.

They have them. But if you have a German ROM, they won't let you switch to English. It's a licensing issue, they say.

I tried. It wouldn't. I tried various ways to trick it into doing it, none worked. Eventually, I gave up, and I'll just memorise the German phrases that I need.

  ... update ...

I got the Dell Axim X50V working! I'll try it out tomorrow.

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