Full Review

So you people shopping for a handheld, you have 2 choices - Palm, or PPC. Palm is undoubtedly more streamlined, easier to use, and simpler for the beginner. However, those looking for advanced performance, storage, or just the most complete PDA around should look no further than the PocketPC platform.
Then to have it narrowed down, you don't have THAT many people making them. Toshiba, Casio I think have recently come on, but it was pretty much a market saturation that HP/Compaq had with their IPAQ style PPC's. Well, Dell has countered that last December, and countered well. The price of the PDA may shock you, at half of what HP/Compaq are offering their PPC's for, with similar features. I paid $540 for my unit, which has a 400MHZ processor, 64MB Ram, 48MB Strataflash ROM, a 2 yr. warranty, a case, crade, extra HUGE battery, USB sync cable, and a 256MB CF card. Damn good deal I must say (with comparable IPAQ's starting @ $500) I must say that if you do not need superior demanding performance (speed I mean) the functionality of the 300 MHZ unit, at $100 LESS, will be appealing to you. I normally keep my unit on a mode called "Powersave", which bumps the processor down to 200 MHZ, and I notice no difference until I'm going to save or convert a file, or play a demanding game, etc. (Tomb Raider PPC is out!!!) First of all, the inclusion of a Secure Digital and a CompactFlash slot is awesome. For those of you who want to wirelessly connect to the net, you can use the CF slot for Ethernet cards, etc. and then the SD for file storage/whatever. But for those like me, who do not need Wireless Internet, 2 open slots is great news! I keep all my MP3's on my CF card, and all my school/work documents on the SD card. SD has a maximum capacity of 512 MB for their cards, and prices range from 30-150$ for a 32-512 MB card, but they are constantly going down. CF has cards up to 3 and 6 GB, hugely expensive, but the lower capacity cards (256/512MB) are very cheap, and for those of you who will NOT use this PPC for a dual purpose MP3 player, I cannot imagine how you would fill up a 512 MB card. You could have every PDA application/game on the market and maybe not fill up a 512 MB card.
Back to the unit: So Pocket PC2002 is a mini-version of windows - sort of. You have your start menu, programs, settings, find ability.....yea, it pretty much ends there. File explorer makes it much easier to navigate around folders, but to make it even quicker, they should have the little go up arrow (c'mon, you know what I mean) to go up a folder level.
My favorite thing about the unit is the ability to write and transfer MS word & Excel files back/forth between your computer and PDA. I find this to be amazingly convenient for school, and regularly take notes in all my classes. (You can type using the stylus, handwriting recognition, or an external laptop size keyboard.)
Microsoft Outlook users will rejoice as the unit is fully compatible with most (if not all features of Outlook)...Email, contacts, etc. and will synchronize the information for you to have at your fingertips. I do not use Outlook on my desktop so I will not be an authoritative figure on this however.
I find the unit to be not bulky and heavy at all. People do not give it a fair shot comparing it to IPAQ models (which do not inherently have CF compatability and must use a CF sleeve, which is MUCHO expensive, $199 or something) and with the sleeve, the IPAQ unit's are disasterously large and heavy compared to the Dell. The only time I find my unit to be anywhere near bulky is when I have the 3300 capacity battery attached as opposed to the standard 1400. This more than doubles my battery life, but it is really unecessary as the unit will last all day and then you recharge it for a min. of 30 minutes at night.
My biggest complaints with the unit stem from this: You know how cell-phones have a keypad lock so you won't turn it on or press buttons by accident
(Horror story: I was with a friend once bitc*ing out my mother in a parking lot, the cell-phone had pressed re-dial and she was listening to my conversation), The dell does not have this protection. So, twice so far, the unit has turned itself on without my desire and run out of battery life. If you completely run the battery out, you're unit will DIE and you could lose all information you've put on it since your last sync. This is NOT good, NOT fun, and is very scary. I save my important things to the memory cards, and you can even save them twice and have them on the Hard Drive and memory cards.
Note: After my power drainage, the unit started from scratch, rebooted and basically re-installed like when I just got it new. The MS Activesync program then replenished all the data I had lost, but not fun nonetheless.
The only other beef I have with the unit is that I have not used screen protectors, and I have a few tiny hairline fractures on my touch-screen from the stylus. Not noticeable, not a big deal, you can just feel them when you run the stylus across the corner of the screen.
I would have bought the Dell Folding keyboard to take MUCH faster notes by now, but it must be plugged in, and there are not plugs everywhere I will need it. There is a wireless keyboard available,(3rd party) but reviews have rendered it near useless.
Bottom line, the Axim is a great Deal, and at the price, a steal.