Not good at all.

I've been using a Garmin iQue 3600 religiously since it came out a few years ago. My sense of direction is terrible. I need a GPS at all times almost. And my profession requires traveling to clients. Went cross country twice with it and no map. After years of nearly trouble free usage (a fluke because Garmin iQue 3600 had lots of problems which I found out from other users on the forums), I sat on mine and broke the screen.

Instead of buying another Garmin, I decided to go with this iPaq. By the description, I can't go wrong it seems. Lots of memory. Lots of features, etc... This is my first Microsoft Mobile OS after 5-6 Palm OS units. OMG, Palm is so much better it's ridiculous. I messed around with computers everyday and used to be in the business for over 10 years (so I'm not well updated, but still decent). My tech savvyness is at least average geek level.

Let's start with the movie function. Terrible. I have thousands of movies on several hard drives. I tried multiple types of .WMVs of various resolutions. They all played in frame-by-frame slow motion almost with an erratic increase & decrease in speed. And it only plays WMV's. Most movies online are in AVI formats. Lot's of porn in WMV formats, but still in choppy motion. :D Converting a movie is a royal pain. Even with a decent computer, it takes a very long time to rip and convert a full DVD. An average 85 min. movie downloaded is about 700mb in decent resolution. So you can fit about 2 movies on a 2 gig SD card. Hmmm, I think I'll continue to carry my Creative Zen W with 20gig and nice viewable screen to the airport. Therefore, video viewers using SD card is kind of moot unless you like carrying a bunch of SD cards around.

GPS function is Tom Tom. Pretty good. I'm just more used to Garmin so I can't say that Tom Tom isn't good. The SiRFstarIII GSC3F chip is much faster at picking up the GPS and can do it indoors (much better than my old PDA).

WiFi capability is very good too although I don't have any experience with any other WiFi PDA product. It picks up many hotspots while I'm at stoplights and seems to outperform by 3 notebooks (of which one, is an expensive gaming notebook). Surfing the net is doable. Again, no other experience so I can't compare.

MP3 player is good. My old iPod 20gig still have better sound though. Nice feature, but not too important.

But here's the worse thing about this HP iPAQ....I could not figure out how to sync my Microsoft Outlook CONTACTS with the Tom Tom GPS. I'm not sure if it's possible or not, but I did spend quite some time trying. This is a HUGE DEAL. I have about 3 thousand contacts with full address, phone numbers, notes, etc. My Garmin iQue 3600 PDA was able to sync all of these contacts from my computer and locate them on the map and routing me there immediately....WITHOUT having to RE-ENTER in everything all over. And entering in the name, address, phone number, etc...using a touchscreen is pure torture. Not only that, the letters are in alphabetical order and not QWERTY/keyboard style (maybe there's a way to switch). I use the GPS and the PDA for appointments and notes almost everyday. This is the deal breaker right here. I always use my computer to enter in my contacts and their notes...then sync to the PDA. It's easier. No way would I want to use a PDA (while traveling) to do all of this and having to look at a Contact on this HP iPAQ...then write it down on a piece of paper...then switch to GPS mode....then key in the address (from the piece of paper).

Another weakness is the availability of programs for Windows CE. There's a ton of Palm OS software available. I returned this product to Buydig(dot)com after one week and they were great. No hassle, no restocking fee, etc... I would buy everything from them if I could.

I will admit that I only had this product for ONE week and have not explored every little detail about it. I'm sure that HP will come out with updates and downloadable flashes to correct problems. It seems like HP hurried to get this unit on the market. Perhaps there are ways to address some or all of my negative comments concerning this product. Maybe I didn't spend enough time nor search through the manual thoroughly for the solutions. Although I did spend at least 15+ hours playing with it. I kind of wish I still have this unit for just its WiFi function even though Windows CE was pretty slow switching between applications. I ended up buying a new (yet discontinued) iQue 3200 for $200 but is having reliability problems (as they are known for being lemons). I spent the other $200 on a Mio C230 standalone GPS for backup, which was money well spent since the iQue 3200 crashed right during an important trip yesterday).