Packard Bell 2030 sneaks in under radar
By: Jørgen Sundgot, Wednesday, 30.10.02 11:56 GMT

While we weren't watching, Packard Bell's latest contribution to the handheld market - the PocketGear 2030 Pocket PC - snuck in with a low price tag and advanced features.


While Packard Bell has had its PocketGear 2060 - for the most part a clone of the NEC MobilePro P300 (at first known as the NEC PocketGear) - available for a long time, the company hasn't made much of a dent in the handheld market. That might be about to change, though, with the company's last addition to its handheld product line - the budget-priced PocketGear 2030, which was announced in mid-October but managed to elude our attention until just recently.

 
The new PocketGear 2030 has shed weight, size and features compared to the 2060 model to compete in the low-end market
 
Aimed at the low-end market and to compete with devices such as the Toshiba e330, Viewsonic V35 and Dell's upcoming Pocket PC, the Packard Bell PocketGear 2030 is a device that has shed a bit of weight - and features - compared to the 2060. Wrapped in a metallic silver finish and with chrome navigation bars, it not only appears more streamlined than the multi-colored 2060, but is too with a thickness of only 11 mm.

The thickness is a result of the 2030 no longer sporting a CompactFlash Type II expansion slot like the PocketGear 2060, but only an SD/MMC Card expansion slot. In addition to that, it comes with 64 MB of RAM, has a 3.5" 16-bit reflective TFT display, an Infrared port - and an Intel XScale PXA250 processor running at a yet-to-be-determined speed powering it all.

Bundled software includes Pocket TV, Acrobat Reader, iGolf, IA Album and the Westtek ClearVue Viewer for viewing files stored in Excel, Word and PowerPoint formats, and more.

To be available in seveal European countries starting November 2002, the PocketGear 2030 will in the UK market be priced at 299.00 GBP and comes with a USB cradle.

Additional hi-res pictures of the Packard Bell PocketGear 2030 are available on the following pages.

http://www.infosync.no/news/2002/n/2518.html

goto www.google.com
and enter a search for "pocket gear"

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