I have some legacy programs that we use HP iPAQ 210 / 211’s for running Windows Mobile 6.
HP has discontinued those, and Dell used to sell the Axim but that has been discontinued as well. My googling has failed me (many devices will show up in a search, but in reality they are out of stock when you click through).
I am looking for a device that can run Windows Mobile 6 that is as close to the features of the HP iPAQ 210 / 211’s as possible (large VGA screen, wireless, no physical keyboard).
It’s OK if it’s a phone, but we wouldn’t get a phone plan for it, and ideally the unlocked price would be $500 or less.
There are emulators for that device which run on PCs. They’re used by the people who write software for handhelds. I don’t know if there are emulators which run on Netbooks or moderm smartphone devices.
If replacing your bespoke software with something that runs on a modern platform is impossible, you might look into emulation as your next-worst fallback.
Another question … How many iPAQs do you need? Finding 1, 100, or 10,000 are each different problems.
There are some ruggedized Windows Mobile devices, created for military and industrial applications. These have a much longer product life than consumer devices. They’re also much more expensive - around $1500 to $2000 each.
New or near new HP iPAQ 210’s and 211’s are readily available on ebay for $ 300-$400 each & $500 -$600 each respectively. Why would this not be a slam dunk solution to your quest? You might have to get them one at a time from individual buyers, but they are seemingly exactly what you want at the price you want.
Irrespective of condition, there are only a total of eight iPaq’s on eBay. Even if I bought all of them I’d still be short, and I’d be out of luck if some of my current supply broke in X months. The legact software I have is being re-written, but I still need to plan for how to support the legacy app I have for the next year…
Just as a side note if you are looking for win 6.0/6/1 PDA type devices I don’t really believe that anyone is actually making them anymore as Win 6.1 is essentially a dead platform. In real world terms I think that pretty much all you are going to be able to get from non-eBay sources is closeout and overstock of various sorts. If the app is that mission critical buy 20 or so of the units over a few months on eBay and you should have enough backup for at least a year or two.
can you abide by using smartphones? You can find used/refurb or even NIB HTC Touch Pro/2 phones on ebay for like $150. And I had a Touch Pro back in the day, and as I recall the phone is still functional when not activated, you just (obviously) can’t use the phone stuff. If you turn off the “TouchFlo” app from the Today screen, it just gives you the standard WM 6.1 UI.
The negative about the physical keyboard is it takes away room from the display. The app that these people are using doesn’t require any typing, and all pointing and clicking is done using the stylus.
Yes, a de-activated smartphone would work. But we currently sync via wifi, so idealy it would have wifi. I’ll take a look at the HTC Touch Pro.