HP's IPaq Rz1715 Mobile Media Companion wants to be the fun-loving friend you take with you everywhere. Its welcome screen puts its Music shortcut at the top and its Photos link on the left, leaving the less glamorous Contacts and Schedules to the right and the bottom, where readers of English will find them last. The Rz1715 is a perfectly good PDA that aspires to be a miniature entertainment machine.
Equipped with the familiar Windows Media Player 9, the Rz1715 plays various kinds of music files with good sound quality. The five-way navigation button on the device's bezel lets you pause, adjust volume, and skip forward or backward. Unfortunately, the 32MB of internal RAM--low for a Pocket PC, but on a par with PalmOne's Zire 72--is sufficient for only about a half-dozen tracks. If you plan on using the Rz1715 to play music, consider investing in SD Card or MultiMediaCard media to fill the SD Card slot. (The PDA's slot also accepts SDIO devices.) But don't plan on taking the Rz1715 out of its box, popping it into your pocket, and heading out: It comes without headphones or a carrying case.
HP's included Image Zone software lets you view, rotate, and zoom in on photos. Unfortunately, the screen's low resolution and small angle of view, though adequate for most apps, do little for photos. Though the Rz1715 comes with a charge/sync cable and no cradle, the installation software instructs you to place the PDA in the cradle for charging. Unlike other HP models we've seen recently, this one has no wireless capability.
In my informal tests, the Rz1715 synced perfectly with my XP-based desktop system, and the battery took about 3.5 hours to drain 90 percent of its capacity.
The HP IPaq Rz1715 is a serviceable PDA, but the entertainment touches are of limited usefulness, and the add-ons add up.
Laura Blackwell
