Armed with the ideas I've picked up here already I'm going to shop around the next time I'm in an urban centre and see what's readily available locally.  I've retired to a rural area where the local idea of slick communication is to use  a sharp pencil, not a blunt one.

-cranioscopical (February 12, 2007, 09:26 PM)

*lol*

Can I ask you both, if your unit's battery runs down, how long would it take to recharge it to the point where it can once again access it's non-volatile memory?

-cranioscopical (February 12, 2007, 09:26 PM)

About a minute or 10 after I start charging it can be booted and used when it ran totally down, but again that's hardly ever the case with me. I don't travel so much for work so I don't really have to worry a lot about it.

I'm using an old Orange SPV M500 with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. It suits my needs which are minimal as well. I really only need a calendar to keep track of my appointments. Another feature I use a lot is Notes. The SPV M500 has excellent handwriting recognition and it is not limited to letter-by-letter. You can write a complete note and click 'Recognize' to scan the entire message and convert it. I think 90% is a good estimate of the correctness of this method. There are some letters that get mixed up almost by default, like a 'k' becoming a 'h' and a 'v' becoming a 'u'.

This pocket pc is also a phone, so I naturally can store and retrieve contact information quite easily.

The size of the device is ca. 10.5 x 5.5 cm (4 x 2 inch) which I think is just large enough , but not too large. The only major drawback is the battery, which is exhausted quite fast if you use the device a lot. If I use it only occasionally the battery will last for about 2 days, but if I use it more frequently then it will last for about 4 hours tops.

Seems like its more of a hardware related problem than software. The software tries to copy bit-by-bit perfect, but the hardware you use might be limited. This cdfreaks thread recommends using Plextor hardware and software for the least amount of CRC errors and best cd ripping.