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T-Mobile MDAThis Windows Mobile device offers a great keyboard and terrific connectivity, but it has a few gotchas, too.
Chris Manners
T-Mobile's MDA--which stands for Mobile Digital Assistant-- delivers a lot of punch at a pretty reasonable price. The $400 unit (as of April 7, 2006, with a two-year contract) is a highly functional Windows Mobile device with a big screen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. We wanted to adore this little powerhouse, but it has too many minor annoyances for us to give it an unqualified rave.
Chief among the MDA's praiseworthy features is its super- convenient Wi-Fi. The setup screens for the wireless connections are easy to use; we encountered no difficulties, even with the 128-bit WEP encryption key that secures PC World's Wi-Fi network. The unit includes options for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, as well as T- Mobile's GPRS/EDGE network (which offers data speeds comparable to-- or slightly faster than--dial-up). And it has a dedicated icon to simplify logging into T-Mobile hotspots.
Web browsing was delightful when we used Wi-Fi, and pages didn't look half bad on the sharp 320 by 480 touchscreen display--when viewed indoors. In bright sunlight, however, the screen was...