Ipaq H3870... packs punch to open large files?

[RafaelLopez]

Hey there folks.

I'm in need of a cheap PDA, fast, and my main need is to read e-books on the go. I found myself a very good deal with an Ipaq H3870, but then I got worried. Problem is, such e-books are sometimes rather large PDFs, over 30MB.

I'm buying it second-hand, and my friendly seller lives five states away, so I can't test it myself. Aforementioned friendly seller swear he has tested it, but I'm not so sure... I'm not too familiar with PDAs. Maybe someone here knows best and it's trivial to open a 50MB PDF on a 2001 PDA (it was high-end too, back in the days, 64MB RAM, 200MHZ clock etc.). Or maybe it's common knowledge that it's stupid to try to open such large files in any handheld that old.

So anyone with a more educated guess thinks I could be lucky? Or should I look for a better PDA?

By the way here's an information page with specs:
Compaq iPAQ H3870 Pocket PC Review Specs in Handhelds Reviews at ZDNet.co.uk

 

[hikaricloud]

I don't see why it would have problems with large PDF files any more than any windows mobile device would.

 

[RafaelLopez]

I don't see why it would have problems with large PDF files any more than any windows mobile device would.

That's the point. Can most Windows Mobile 2002 PDAs open such large files? I heard a Symbian-powered Nokia is limited to like 20MB files for example.... but I don't know these things for sure, maybe someone more experienced has a better guess.

 

[hikaricloud]

After doing a little searching, I can't find anything that says it can't open large pdf files...I've seen programs for it that say they can open "any" size file, but I doubt that.

Since it's so old, though, I'll take the safe bet and answer that it probably can't open large files, and if it can, it would be very slow. But I can't be sure.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

I have an Axim X50v (64MB RAM, 624MHz XScale CPU, Windows Mobile 6.1) and I open a lot of PDF's on it for school. Nothing I use is very big though, I could always test it but I don't have any really big PDF's. PocketXPDF is the viewer I use, it can do full rendered PDF's (one page at a time) or it can do text mode.

As for generic file size limits, I don't think that's an issue. I watch 600+MB videos on my PDA and it has no problem handling the large files. Mine came with Windows Mobile 2003 SE though, so I don't know about 2002.