15% Off Handango Software for Pocket PC Japan Readers

Readers of Pocket PC Japan can now gt 15% of software at Handango or Handango Japan. Just enter the special discount code F98ADFD6 at the checkout. (Valid until 31st Dec 2004). If you forget the code you can find it on the footer of the Pocket PC Japan Yahoo! Group mails or on the Pocket PC Japan Shopping page.

Here are some useful (affiliate) links to Handango:

• Handango Pocket PC Software - Including New, Best Selling and Specials
  
• Search Handango for 'Japanese'
  -> Sort by price, free software first
  -> Sort by rating, best first
  -> Newest software first
  -> Most downloaded software first
  -> Best selling software first
  
• Pocket PC Software at Handango Japan
  
• Search Handango Japan for 'Dictionary' in Japanese
  

Japanese Dictionary for Pocket PCs - PPDic

PPDic is a very interesting looking free dictionary reader for Pocket PCs. The instruction page is also in English. It explains that you can use it by highlighting a word in Pocket Word or Pocket IE and clicking an icon on the tool bar. The definition is displayed in a pop up balloon. The instruction page links to dictionaries in PDIC and KDIC format that can be used as well as linking to pages listing more sources (in Japanese only). It's great to see Japanese freeware developers making the effort to provide instructions in English!

Cheapest places to get iPAQs in Japan

HP iPAQ Pocket PCs are not available in the mainstream electronics stores in Japan. Other than a few small Akihabara shops which probably order from HP for each order they receive one of the only other options seems to be Amazon Japan. Although the listed prices on Amazon are roughly the same as the HP site and include free shipping, they are currently running a campain where you get up 15% of the purchase price back in gift vouchers. That's a nice bit of money back you could spend on English books or more electronics :-)

They have the following 3 models but not the h1937 (affiliate links so please use to support Pocket PC Japan):

	iPAQ Pocket PC h5550 - 39,600 yen minus 5,000 yen back in gift vouchers		iPAQ Pocket PC h4150 - 44,800 yen minus 5,000 yen back in gift vouchers
	iPAQ Pocket PC h5550 - 70,000 yen minus 7,500 yen back in gift vouchers

Note that the Amazon Japan site has a link to 'English site' which provides key parts of the site in English to help English only speakers place orders. It's great to see this type of support for the English speaking community in Japan.

All information correct at date of posting. For more information on the above hardware see the Pocket PC Japan Hardware page.

NTT DoCoMo's FOMA Blutooth Adapter

NTT DoCoMo are launching a limited trial of a of Bluetooth adapter for the 3G FOMA mobile phones. Pocket PCs or other PDAs or computers with bluetooth can connect to the internet via the bluetooth link to the phone for theoretcial speeds of up to 384 kbps. Of course the adapter looks rather large and unpractical and packet charges are still far to high for serious internet usage, but it's good to see things like this in the works.

http://www.fomasquare.com/ (Japanese only)

On a related note AU have just announced fixed rate data plan for their phones and I think this is one of the signs that there is going to be more activity and competition in the flat rate data market for the rest of the year.

HP iPAQ h4150 Released in Japan

HP have released into the Japanese market their iPAQ h4150 featuring built-in Bluetooth and WLAN in one of the smallest and lightest Pocket PCs available.

HP US
HP Japan (Japanese only)
Windows CE Fan News & Review (Japanese only)

To compare to other Pocket PC 2003 devices available in Japan see the hardware comparison table.