Digital Trends

HP iPAQ 310 Travel Companion January 27th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Trip Planner

One of the more interesting features of the 310 is the ability to create trips on your PC and then import them into the 310. We tested this feature out and it does work as advertised, though you have to jump through a number of hoops to get it working, which makes it a bit of a pain to use.

First you have to go to this website and register. Registration requires name, email, and the serial number of the device, which is located on the box. Then you have to authenticate your account and log in. Next you give your trip a name, select the dates of it (it can’t be longer than seven days, for some reason), and you have to say where you are traveling from and where you’re going, but it only gave us a dozen or so locations to choose from as our destination. Whatever!

The online trip planner only lets you travel to and from a small number of locations, for some reason.

Once your trip is “created” you have to add destinations, which you do using a web interface, so you click ‘add” and then you can choose hotel, attraction, and such. Then, once you’ve finished making your “trip,” you have to download some software called the “content manager,” which installs on your machine. From there you then have to figure out how to import the trip, which involves downloading the file from the web and then manually loading it, and so forth. It seems like a lot of steps, right? It is, and it would be wonderful if this process was simplified. 

Extras

You are supposed to be able to add music, movies and pictures to the 310, but we were unable to figure out how to do it. There’s nothing about importing content in the instructions, and when we connected the device to our PC we got a notice saying the drive in the 310 had to be formatted before it could be used.

We connected the 310 to our PC only to be told we had to format the onboard flash memory.

We opted to not format the drive, and then looked in Explorer and saw the device listed, but there were no folders named “music,” for example. We went back to the manual and looked again but were still unable to find any information whatsoever about how to import data to the device.

The games are pre-loaded, however, and are actually quite fun. They look great on the brilliant LCD too.

Conclusion

We had a lot of problems testing the 310 Travel Companion; more problems than we’ve had with any other device in recent memory. This product feels half-baked, is not user friendly, and is frustrating to use, to say the least. We constantly felt like we were fighting the device, rather than having it actually make our lives easier. We do not recommend this product, obviously. If you’re in the market for a full-featured GPS, check out our Garmin nuvi 350 review. It’s the same price and runs circles around the iPAQ in every way possible (except screen sexiness). As a first generation product the HP 310 Travel Companion shows a lot of promise, and we cannot wait for the next iteration once HP has polished the device more.

Pros:

• Gorgeous display
• Games are fun
• Lots of features


Cons:

• Navigation is non-intuitive
• Instructions are lacking
• Trip planner is just a novelty
• Loading media onto the device is confusing