Toshiba e740 Pocket PC

Ok. So I bought this PDA for myselft as a gift.I chose this model because a friend at work reallyrecommended it as "The Best" at the time. This wasone time where I didn't do my homework and it bit mein the ...Ok. To be fair, on the surface it looks like this thinghas everything. Built in CF, Built in WiFi, ReplacableBattery... etc.. But for every positive there is a "gotcha!"or a catch.Long story short I returned it an got an Ipaq 3900. Am veryhappy now. But let me tell you my specific gripes with the e740.1. Screen ... You are going to be looking at the screenquite a lot right??? Who cares what you have under the hood, ifit looks [awful] (bad, uneven lighting, color is off to blue).2. Speaker .... Tinny at best. Very small, quiet. Hey meybeits just me, but my PDA is got to be an all in one gadget. One of the uses I need is for it to wake me up. This thing did not come close.3. WiFi (hmmm). Problems connecting, dropping connection. What's the point? (nuff said).4. Record function. First of all this thing really sticks out. Who designed this??? I kept turning it on by mistake. To make it worse, my had a mic problem. It kept making thumping sounds in the background (I tried turning the dynamic gain off, not much help). I went online and found out I wasn't the only one with the problem.These are the problems I had in the 2 days I owned the thing.I was so frustrated I went online and found out other "irritants" that people were reporting, which I won't go into here. Just look. Plus this thing was originally recalled, ok? it says something about the testing of a product. It's just sloppy.So where is the advantage. There is just one. The attachable docking thingy (if you need that sort of thing). It's good for a business person who needs it. I don't.GET AN IPAQ INSTEAD...Like I said earlier, I got an Ipaq. I went to a store and justcompared. The screen is beautiful, the colors ... wow wow wow.The battery on the Ipaq is great. I got a sleve for the CF memory (not a problem, its real thin), Extra juice, its in the sleeve. Need more juice, get more batteries for the sleeve. Same processor, great memory. Great speaker (loud :) )... Recordbutton won't be turned on by mistake. Sleek well thought out through and through. No dissapointments. Plus... Extra software (Nevo remote, Backup...), Auto Light sensor (automatically adjust backlight if you want), Two mic (one on top, one in front), Power button on the face so you wont turn it on by mistake. The toshiba seems flimsy compared to this.That's my take. Hope it helps.

Really love this item, I had to retire my old one, This item was a life saver, Now I have to stock up on the batteries.. Thank You

I read the reviews, thought I'd take a shot. Built-in WIFI was the seller for me.Got the unit, and despite some of the reviewer's luck in using the wireless, I found it to be flawless. Worked beautifully, good range and good strength compared to my notebook computer.Battery was the problem, though. It started out like the "good" reviews - lasted a while (2 hours only used 25% of it w/o wireless), and with the wireless going, I could surf, remotely control my servers, or do email and messaging for over 2 hours and still have battery time left over.Then suddenly it would go from full charge to 1% and give me warnings about imminent data loss. I contacted Toshiba Tech support, who made me jump through some hoops I had already jumped through on my own, and they offered to replace the battery. But they're backordered - 2-4 weeks *minimum* wait. The battery issue is a *known* issue and isn't a guaranteed fix. There *is* no guaranteed fix for this known issue... So rather than wait to see if the battery fixed the problem, I'm returning the unit before it's too late.Unit was great, but as long as Toshiba is pushing things out the door that they know are defective, it's going to be tough for them to compete.

More than a year ago I made a switch from the PalmOS-based Handspring Visor to this PocketPC-run Toshiba e740. The switch was motivated by my desire for native Windows compatibility and for a built-in wireless capability.At both fronts Toshiba e740 has performed as advertised. Syncing with Microsoft Outlook is effortless and cruising the Internet on my wireless Linksys home network is flawless.What I didn't expect was such a short battery life, and the poorly designed stylus and its holder.I believe that the poor battery life is due to both high consumption and frequent inadvertent turning of the devise on rather than due to insufficient battery capacity. (The standard battery is rated by Toshiba at a decent 1000 mAh).Even after checking address book and calendar only a few times during the day one may drain the battery to 60% of its full capacity even with moderate screen brightness.Toshiba support staff gave me several explanations for this high battery consumption mainly that the unit uses electricity to communicate with the add-on storage cards even when e740 is off.The more important reason for the poor battery life, in my opinion, is the unintentional turning on of the device in my pant's pocket. Along the upper left side of the devise sticks out the Recorder button. Pressing the button turns e740 on and launches the Recorder function.The button cannot be deactivated and it is almost impossible not to depress it while having the PDA in the pant's pocket.I tried several leather cases: (1) Toshiba sleeve shipped with e740, which is ugly and useless; (2) Belkin SKU 772053 leather case (which is compact but ineffective in stopping inadvertent activation of the Recorder button), and (3) Toshiba zipped case PA1313U-1PCS (which is effective but so bulky that there is no pant's pocket large enough to accommodate it).Another annoying feature is the flimsy plastic stylus that won't stay in its holder because the only thing that is supposed to keep it in is the friction between the very top of the stylus and the top of the plastic-lined holder. Buying replacement plastic styli from Toshiba (PA3182U-1ETC) will only waste your money as these styli won't stay put in e740 either. If you ask Toshiba support staff for help, they will tell you to put some Scotch tape around the stylus. Wow!Through trial and error I have found these two solutions for above problems: (1) aluminum case from Rhinoskin (here at amazon.com), and (2) metal stylus from pdapanache.com. Finally I can now enjoy all the wonderful things that come with e740.