On 09/29/04 18:06 ET, Matt Boon said...
In my research to find a PDA that would be a suitable
platform for remote control applications such
as TotalRemote, WinPDA, Novii, etc. I saw a bit
of excitement about the Axim X30's consumer-grade
IR, which would give these apps a 25-foot range.
My X30 arrived last Friday and it is painfully
clear that this is *not* a capability of the X30.
That is partially correct; no Dell PPC has what could literally be termed a "CIR" port. They are just reasonably powerful IrDA ports that can work decently for CIR applications.
With these applications I could operate my home
entertainment devices at a maximum of 6 feet.
When I called Dell they confirmed that this
is all I should expect from the IR transmitter
(though it can use Bluetooth or 802.11b at longer
ranges).
Hmm, sounds like the kind of misinformation you would get from OUR technical support guys! I have gone over this will the Dell tech support guys, who I am afraid have a different job description than the guys who make decisions like calling a strong IrDA port "CIR". I thought we all agreed that while the Dell-authorized specs on IrDA may say that it is only for extremely short-range transception, that the physical reality of their PPCs (post-X5) have been such that we all agreed that a nebulous phrase like "up to 30 feet with consumer gear" was indeed valid, dependant on your testing procedure. For them to go back and say that the X30 does not transmit over _SIX FEET_ is in direct conflict with what I KNOW to be true, what Dell's partners have TESTED to be true, and what Dell explicitly intends to specify in terms of "CIR" capability. I am not going to speak for Dell, but the number _I_ have been given as Dell personal internal benchmark is quite a bit more than 6 feet.
FYI, I am sitting at my desk controlling a Sony DVD player set up slightly over 35 feet away, and it is working flawlessly on both a X3 and X30. You WILL get different range results dependant on various characteristics of your gear, but SIX FEET? No...
--Don
