Dell Axim X51v review

Dell provides all the basics to get you started. Accessories in the box include a soft protective case, a desktop-synchronisation cradle, a power adaptor and a companion CD. The cradle has an extra slot for charging a second battery, which is useful. A high-capacity battery is available for £58 and promises to double battery life. Other optional accessories are available, such as a car charger (£10.50) and a leather carrying case (£15).

Features
The Dell Axim X51v's biggest makeover is in the features department. Some elements remain the same, though, such as the 624MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor and the Intel 2700G graphics engine. Also, there's still 16MB of dedicated video memory and 64MB of SDRAM, but the good news is that Dell has bumped up the flash ROM from 128MB to 256MB, 192MB of which is user-accessible. This, coupled with the dual expansion slots, amount to ample storage space. Another thing that helps is the addition of the Windows Mobile 5 operating system. The new OS has built-in support for persistent storage, so when the battery drains completely, your data remains intact.

With Windows Mobile 5, Microsoft has also ditched Pocket Word and Pocket Excel in favour of a new Office Mobile Suite that includes Word Mobile, Excel Mobile and PowerPoint Mobile. Although you can't edit slides on PowerPoint, you can now view presentations on your PDA. We were impressed not only with the ability to watch slide shows, but also with the various options. You can skip directly to specific slides, change the orientation and choose playback options, such as loop, turn off/on animation and zoom in/out. The last option is particularly handy, since a thumbnail of the slide is presented in the lower-right corner of your screen. What's more, you can choose particular spots on the page to zoom or automatically go back to the full slide.

Unfortunately, these tasks seemed to take a lot out of the X51v, as there was a noticeable delay in response time (see Performance). As for the other applications, Word Mobile now supports documents with embedded images and tables, plus Excel Mobile handles charts. We put these applications to test, and while the experience was not ideal, given the size of a PDA's screen, we were able to open and view tables and charts in all our documents.

On hand to sync your PDA with your PC is the updated ActiveSync 4. It allows for easier and faster synchronisation, but be sure to pay attention during the installation process. You first must install ActiveSync 4 from the companion CD before ever connecting the X51v to your PC -- otherwise, the wrong driver will load, and your computer will not detect the handheld. Also, there have been a number of reported problems with ActiveSync 4, such as partial synchronisation and dropped data transfers -- Microsoft will soon issue an update to resolve the problems. In the meantime, you can find troubleshooting tips and more information on Microsoft's Web site.

If you're wondering about the X51v's multimedia capabilities, here's the skinny. The Pocket PC still features Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, so you can listen to your favourite WMA, MP3, and WMV music files and view album art. Plus, Windows Media Rights Management 10 gives you access to audio and video content from subscription services, such as MSN Music and Napster.

Wireless on, wireless off: The Dell Axim X51 features one-touch access to the wireless radio