MiTAC Mio 558

Taiwanese manufacturer MiTAC has a long history of designing and manufacturing Pocket PCs for companies like NEC. But only recently have they ventured into the U.S. market under their own brand name. In this issue, we review two of their new “DigiWalker” Pocket PCs, the Mio 168 with built-in GPS (reviewed on page 10) and the Mio 558.

The Mio 558 is their version of the latest Pocket PC trend—a high-end device with a fast processor, plenty of RAM and ROM, a user-replaceable battery, and the standard wireless protocols (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). By releasing this device in the U.S., MiTAC will have to compete against a number of devices from HP and Toshiba, as well as a similar device recently introduced by ASUS (reviewed on page 14).

Packed with power

The Mio 558 sports the latest version of Intel’s XScale processor, the PXA263. Benchmarks of PXA263 devices are impressive.

The Mio 558 has a respectable 64 MB of SDRAM and 64 MB of flash ROM. Approximately 32 MB of the latter are available to the end user for data/file storage. The two card slots—one CF, one SDIO—offer plenty of expansion capabilities. The 1200 mAh rechargeable battery is adequate for powering the device in general use. Fortunately, this is a user-replaceable battery. If you intend to use the wireless capabilities of this device for extended periods without access to a charger, I would definitely invest in a spare battery. MiTAC wisely decided to build a spare battery charger slot into the synchronization cradle that is included as a standard accessory.

Activating and using the wireless capabilities

Activating Mio’s wireless capabilities is easy. Tap on the small, grayed-out, PDA-shaped icon in the lower right of the Today screen and a menu pops up (Fig. 1), allowing you to turn the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth capabilities on or off. Unless you are using one or both, leave both off to conserve battery power.

Fig. 2: It’s relatively easy to use Bluetooth to beam a file from the Mio 558 to another Bluetooth-equipped device.

Once I turned the Wi-Fi (listed as “Wireless” in the menu) on, the device sniffed out the Wi-Fi link to our company network, walked me through a short connection wizard, and connected me to the network. I was able to browse the Web without any problems. The whole process was painless. According to Mitac, the Mio558 can also be used as a wireless adapter for your laptop. For example, you can connect the Mio558 to your laptop via the sync cable and the laptop can use the Pocket PC’s Wi-Fi capability to connect to a wireless LAN. Instructions on how to do this as well as the necessary “USB Dongle” driver software for the laptop are available on Mitac’s Web site (http://mio.mitac.com/download.asp).

The Bluetooth connection took a little more effort. The first thing I tried was to connect to another Bluetooth-equipped Pocket PC, the Asus A620BT. The devices have Bluetooth managers that function differently, and the process of establishing a link was not extremely easy. This lack of a standard way of doing things is a problem with Bluetooth in general. My suggestion to Microsoft and everyone involved: Standardize the process!