HP Jornada 430se

The Journada 430se is intended as an integrated PDA and MP3 player, but HP may be a little over-ambitious in its aspirations.

Psion's Revo and the latest batch of Palm organisers from 3Com have set the standard as far as handheld screens go, and the colour competition just can't live up to these monochrome wonders. Unfortunately that's true of this Jornada, and it suffers from a certain amount of 'shimmer'.

It's a shame, too, that Windows CE is such a demanding OS. The 430se has a 133MHz processor but CE slows this to a crawl.

HP is aiming this product at the mobile professional in need of a business and entertainment tool, and with this in mind it has integrated Utopiasoft Hum MP3 player and a headphone jack.

To put this to good use, though, you'll have to invest in a CompactFlash card to increase the memory: the Jornada has 16Mb of RAM that has to be shared with your data. Even if you could devote it entirely to MP3s and no data, you would be able to store no more than four or five average length tracks.

On a more positive note, Hewlett Packard's usual excellent screen adjustment settings have been integrated, giving immediate access to presets for indoor and outside use, and EzExplorer lets you navigate the internal memory in the same way that you would explore your PC's hard drive. If you really can't get on with handwriting recognition, you have the option of upgrading to HP's external keyboard.

Hard icons on the front give quick access to contacts, calendar, tasks and calculator and can be reconfigured to suit your specific needs. Further buttons along the left edge control the way applications work, but are only labelled on the Jornada's fold-back front cover, so when it's flipped back in use they are unlabelled.

Ultimately the Jornada 430se is the logical progression of an evolving product line, but it suffers from a rather chunky operating system and a disappointing display.

Contact Hewlett Packard 0990 474747