Pop stars like Prince can change their name, in fact he went via a "squiggle" symbol for quite some time before being known as "the artist" but can HP who now have the Ipaq PDA range pull off the same transformation convincing the Ipaq fans that under management of HP things will continue to get better.

If the HP 4150 PDA is anything to go by we can sleep safely at night, the HP4150 PDA is the weapon of choice for today's IT professional, its not as bulky as the range topping Hp 5550 which is a monster of a PDA. Based around the Intel XScale PXA255 running at some 400mhz it uses the same processor as the 5550 and achieves very similar performance stats in benchmark tests, it's 64mb of RAM has 55mb accessible to the user once the OS had had its share. There is also 32mb's of flash ROM of which 2.85mb are visible to the user as a non volatile power protected area of storage.

The HP 4150 comes equipped with a 100mAh battery which gives about 2 hrs life with all the wireless capability switched on and just over 3.5 hours with no wifi enabled, the battery is removable and you can charge a second battery on the cradle supplied. One option is to upgrade to the extra capacity 1800mAh battery to give you more time especially if you are a heavy wifi user.  Unlike the cheaper models the HP 4150 PDA comes with a USB cradle as a standard to keep your PDA topped up and also in an upright position which makes it easy to use while at your desk, one small compliant is the loss of the stylus well which featured on the earlier cradles, but we'll have to a drill out when we are feeling brave.

HP have ensured that this PDA is one of the most connected on the market with full support of the 802.11b wireless protocol and Bluetooth for mobile connectivity, both of these do consume their fair share of battery life so they are best used sparingly. Full WEP encryption at 64 or 128 bit is supported by the wifi application as is VPN networks and F-Secure FileCrypto Data Encryption.

Apart from the spare 55mb onboard the HP 4150 PDA you'll almost certainly be needing some storage for MP3's or documents perhaps even large emails, the 4150 comes equipped with an SD slot (4 bit) which supports SIDO memory, currently the largest media on the market for SIDO is 1Gb but at nearly the same price as the 4150 itself this may be overkill, luckily an additional 256mb is only £50.

The HP 4150 runs the windows pocket PC 2003 operating system which is the defacto standard for mobile devices as can be seen by the number of mobile phones being released with the cut down windows mobile OS. Being pocket PC based you get all the slimed down office applications which make easy work of word and excel documents

Diving an Ipaq or HP as I suppose we should now call them has always been and continues to be a pleasure, of course a lot of that is down to the MS operating system but the feel of an Ipaq in your hand is the electronics equivalent to a wurthers original. The sleek silver shell houses the 3.5" TFT LCD which has a native resolution of  240 x 320 pixels and a 65k colour screen.

Housed immediately under the screen is a 4 way pad which is perfect for navigating online web pages or even documents, this is a lot easier to use then the Dell Axim X3's interface, small amounts of data input are easy enough via the stylus and on screen keyboard.

The strength of the HP PDA 4150 is its ability to run 3rd party applications, we know a lot of people who have them loaded up to the brim with everything from full on movie players to watch MPEG4 movies on the landscape screen to Tom Tom navigation systems. Multitasking these intensive applications is the Ipaq's strong point and in comparison with the Dell it is certainly worth the extra money.

And so neatly onto value, at a suggested retail prices of £350 the HP 4150 PDA is well priced and smaller than the 5550 which only has a few additional features and does not fit neatly in any pocket. From our experience and that of our colleagues Dell have some catching up to do if they want to make a dent in the HP led PDA market.

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