1. FSC Pocket LOOX 720 – real-life experience with USB Host, Article ra… 2. Related articles, Reader comments (0 comments)

FSC Pocket LOOX 720 – real-life experience with USB Host

I should refrain from technical details and get to the main points straight away. Most Pocket PCs connect can connect over USB only to devices that can control them (typically a desktop or laptop computer). By contrast, devices that support the USB Host technology can connect to any other USB device and control it. The only condition is presence of an appropriate device driver. As you will learn later, this is an absolutely vital prerequisite in the world of Pocket PC. I have not heard about any other driver than the one for memory storage devices embedded in the operating system, which means keyboards (update: some USB keyboards work with LOOX, no additional drivers required!), printers and other USB peripherals are out of the game for the time being.

I tested the FSC Pocket LOOX 720 with several types of USB-enabled memory devices I was provided by Fujitsu Siemens Computers for this purpose. I first tested a common 128-MB USB flash memory FSC MemoryBird. Upon connection (the USB connector is integrated in the synchronization cable), a new drive called Hard Disc pops up in the Explorer. Now, the memory is ready to use. Just out of curiosity, I tested the flash disc with Spb Benchmark. The results are available for download here (FSC MemoryBird 128MB) [0KB] . They are much worse than those of an SD card. Especially writing is quite slow but overall functionality is flawless. I could play MP3’s stored on the disc without any problems but movies were sometimes slightly jerky.

Another device I tested was MP3 player Creative MuVo TX 128 MB. Unfortunately, this did not work. Although there is no need for a special driver on the desktop, the PDA simply did not recognize this device. That’s life, let’s move no:)

The last USB mass storage device I tested was a real specialty for power users – 80 GB FSC StorageBird USB 2.0. Unlike the USB flash disk, it was necessary to use an AC adapter because the USB port did not provide sufficient power. Then I had to reset the LOOX (which is quite a common action when you work with the USB Host, unfortunately), but then everything worked fine. The Explorer showed a new Hard Disc drive and I could start working with it immediately. I should not that the disk was half full of data (mainly movies and MP3 files, 6500 files altogether). If you are interested in benchmarks, you can download them here (FSC StorageBird 80GB) [0KB] .

Working with a large disc requires patience. Upon connection, the system spent a long time checking the disc and examining what it is actually supposed to work with. During that time (approximately 5 - 10 minutes), only reading was fast but writing or trying to display disc properties were desperately slow and sometimes resulted in an error message (when some application reached a timeout). I was quite disappointed before I found out – the process was completely transparent and ended without any notification. However, when the system took the memory device for its own, working with it was as comfortable as with a memory card and substantially faster than the USB flash drive I mention above. MP3 and video playback was seamless, only rarely did I experience jerkiness. To be more precise, the LOOX could not handle an unoptimised DivX intended for the desktop but did well with its optimised version. It took just a few seconds to copy a common 3-MB MP3 file from a memory card to the disc and vice versa, just cool:)

Finally, I performed a trial when I used an active USB Hub (with own AC adapter) to connect several USB memory devices at the same time. Here is what I found out: this is not ideal for everyday use. I needed to reset the PDA about twice a minute but everything did work eventually. Forget about connecting more than one USB memory to the LOOX without external power (no matter whether for the LOOX or the Hub, just one will do). The LOOX simply could not handle more than one – LED indicators went dark and communication stopped. After half an hour of trials and countless resets, it started working (all of a sudden – some magic, maybe?). There were the following memory media active AT THE SAME TIME: a Pretec SD card (1 GB), IBM Microdrive CF card (1 GB), USB flash drive (32 MB), USB flash drive MemoryBird (128 MB) and USB disc StorageBird (80 GB). The USB peripherals were called Hard Disk, Hard Disk 2 and Hard Disk 3, respectively. Unfortunately, I did not have more of them. They all worked fine and I took a photo to have some evidence:) It is not as convenient as it may seem because copying data between two cards is quite slow. Nevertheless, it is technically possible and may come handy from time to time.

Conclusion

The USB Host is undoubtedly a useful technology with a great potential. At present, however, it can be used only for memory media, some digital cameras and keyboards due to a lack of device drivers. Yet many users will surely find it beneficial. Ordinary users will typically use a USB flash drive to transfer data between their PDA and a desktop computer, whereas power users have another reason to sell their laptops and use just a PDA with an external USB drive. Transfer speed is very good, especially with the USB hard drive and makes it possible to work with large mounts of data. There are still some drawbacks, mainly frequent resets are annoying, but the USB Host works fine on the whole. If you put up with its limitations, you will surely be satisfied. What could be a very convenient feature is the possibility to connect some digital cameras directly to the PDA but I could not get a compatible model for testing. If you have experience with this solution, please share it in the discussion. That’s all:)

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