Mobile devices Toolkit

Add-ons for your handheld

Rob Beattie ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 07 Nov 2003

Zip-Linq iPAQ DataSync I
£19.96

Pros
Cuts out clutter
Cons
Nearly £20
Verdict
It’s a bit pricey for a cable, but it’s beautifully simple and very compact
Editors’ Rating
8/10

A name that no-one could love conceals one of the most useful gadgets in this roundup -- an extendable USB synchronise-and-charge cable. At rest, it's the length of a cigarette (if you can remember those), but pull gently on both ends and the cable unrolls from a central spindle to a full, glorious 80cm (more than the length of your arm). As you pull, you'll hear a series of five tiny clicks. Stop just after any of these clicks and the cable stays fixed at that length (make sure you don’t just pull on one end though, because it’ll will tangle).

And that's it. It works with 22xx, 38xx, 39xx and 54xx series iPAQs, synchronises perfectly, charges perfectly and fits in a shirt pocket. Lovely.

Widget (0800) 138 1639

1 2 3 ... 10

Did you find this article useful?
251 out of 490 people found this useful

What to Buy

Fully equipped: the mobile professional

Do you spend a lot of your working life out of the office? If so, check out our selection of the best kit to take out on the road.

Mobile devices: a buyer's guide

Businesses going mobile need to consider whether to buy notebooks, handhelds, smartphones or other mobile devices. Then there's the various wireless connectivity options, and the extra management burden on the IT department. We take a look at some of these issues.

Buyer's Guide: smartphones for business

Want to work on the move but don't want to lug a laptop? You'll need a smartphone of some kind that lets you do email, open business documents and browse the web, among other things. Here are ten recent contenders.

Buyer's Guide: Santa Rosa notebooks

Which is our current favourite Intel Santa Rosa notebook? Check our Buyer's Guide to find out — and keep checking back to see if it changes.

View all Buyer's Guides

Featured Talkback

Put simply, what is the compelling reason to pay ~$200 extra for an Eee with Windows XP? A Windows Eee won't come with any useful applications and you'll have to buy anti-virus software to boot. The truth about low cost computing is that nobody really cares whether the machine is running Windows or Linux as long as its cheap, its easy to use and it works.