NEC P300

Ahrr! Just tell me what to buy! (click on image)

This PDA is no longer in production, but you may have one or find one locally. This is a nice PDA. It has a nice feel to it. The display is very readable in almost any lighting situation. In a car running OBD2PDA you won’t have any problems.

The P300 has a built in Compact Flash (CF) slot and a Secure Digital (SD) slot, which is a nice combination that not all PDAs have. It only comes with a USB based cradle, which means there isn’t any way to connect to a GPS receiver without using the CF slot in some way.

Click here to learn more about the NEC Mobile Pro P300.


	There are two options to connect a GPS receiver to an NEC P300. Both use the CF slot.

The first option uses a serial port adapter to add a high speed serial port to the NEC P300. The adapter plugs into the slot at the top of the NEC and a cable plugs into the adapter. The cable can then be connected to a wide variety of devices including GPS receivers.

These adapters work very well. The connector to the adapter isn’t as sturdy as you might like, but with a little care it should last. Click here for more information about the adapters we’ve used, made by Socket Inc..


	The other option is to use a GPS receiver that plugs into the Compact Flash connector. At least two models (Holux 270 CF, and Pharos iGPS-CF, shown here) has a connector for an external antenna which is necessary to collect the best possible travel time data. This option works well and may be a little more rugged than using the serial port adapter.

The main problem with this PDA is the lack of a serial port without using the CF slot. If you only plan to use the PDA for GPS2PDA then it works fine. If you use Jamar Trax counters then you might want to use your PDA with or without GPS to retrieve and validate your traffic data. (Click here for more details). You can’t do that as well with this PDA as with others since if you have a GPS connected then you can’t also connect to the Trax counter without removing adapters or cables.

Since other Pocket-PC based PDAs don’t have this limitation (notably the Dell Axim X5) then this would not be our first choice for a PDA. If you have one already, then fine, use it.


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