New Sony Clie: PalmOS Is Back in Style 166
"According to the sonypdadev email sent out just before midnight in Tokyo, Sony will start selling a new model of their PalmOS-eqipped Clie, the 160 gram PEG-N700C on April 7. Not only is it chock full of hot tech, the handheld also could redefine the mobility of music. The page and Japanese PDF explains how this promiscuous unit offers music downloading side-by-side with copyright managed content on removable sticks and CD track ripping through your laptop.. and it connects to a software VCR they've had for a while called GigaPocket, which could finally put the Vaio's memory stick port to some good use!
The new Clie features a 33MHz DragonballVZ cpu, PalmOS 3.5, USB cradle, infrared, TFT, and special features aimed at networked media.. it can play back full consumer range (20Hz-20KHz) audio, takes normal and copyright protected memory sticks, has ATRAC-3 compatibility, 132Kbps audio recording, sports a new extra high resolution 320x320 dot display and font, and comes with stereo headphones, and shuttle remote, 11 hour stamina battery, and a digital phone connector for Internet connectivity.
OpenMG Jukebox 2.0 for CLIE lets you "Record your CD on a MagicGate Memory Stick.. and play it on your Clie" (with jogdial support). The largest stick (128MB, on sale the same day) supposedly can hold up to 240 minutes of audio.. or up to 160 minutes of MPEG, AVI, Quicktime 3/4 video. I thought the Zaurus was sweet (and it is) but this has got to be the ultimate A/V package for now.
Incidentally, some other Sony products that use the memory stick are a new mobile phone (Java version coming soon), the Cyber-shot digital camera, and the network walkman. You can buy 2 songs online with an 800 yen Network Music Pass web money card."
Re:multimedia, etc.? (Score:2)
Yes and no; mostly no.
The pilot, III, &c, came with a small amount of memory, and therefore limited functionality. I've got a Vx, and while I still use it for more or less the same stuff, it's handy having a camera, extra IR, etc.
If this new machine can have up to 16Mb without affecting performance of all the simple apps that traditionalists know and love, so much the better. In fact, it would be a waste not to. If you want a simple PDA, buy an Palm III.
Of course, if we see emacs coming out for the clie, then it is time to worry.
Re:Multitasking (Score:3)
If you only wanted multitasking so you could pull up a calculator while writing a note or something, you might want to look into Palm "desk accessories" which are basically identical to the "desk accessories" on Finder 7.
I think the Palm's biggest strength is it's simplicity.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
In related news... (Score:2)
Maybe it's because, um, it's crappy, proprietary, and copy-controlled? And if so, won't the same thing happen to Clie?!
Re:Potential Problems (Score:1)
Agreed (Score:1)
test (Score:1)
Re:Multitasking (Score:1)
Ever gotten sick of waiting for a web page to load on your PC and flipped over to another app to occupy yourself during the wait? Can't do that on a Palm, and you really wish that wasn't so, especially when you're using a slow-as-death CDPD modem. But that only begins to scratch the surface.
Of course, a lot of your feelings do stem from the fact that it's somewhat underpowered; this was OK with me back in the days of AAA batteries, but now that I have to plug the darn thing in every couple nights to charge its batteries, they might as well give me a decently powerful processor.
Re:Describing color to the colorblind (Score:1)
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
Those who typically can't stomache me are those who are insecure about their own lives. If you look at me, look at what I have, and how I act and hate me for it - because this is what I have made for myself then fuck off. I've worked damned hard to get where I am at, I deserve to enjoy it and if you don't like it then kiss my ass. Besides, my true friends love me -- and that's what I care about.
Anonymous for obvious reasons
Yes, it's called cowardice.
Re:Multitasking (Score:1)
Why do you want multitasking on a device with a 320x320 screen and a 33mhz processor? (Score:2 Insightful)
Insightful my ass. Try blind.
Multitasking is one of the great ways to make computational devices actually useful. What's the point of being able to execute hundreds of thousands of instructions/second if you have to serialize operation and do things at human speeds.
Sometime back in the late 70's or early 80's I wrote a letter to the editor of Infoworld complaining that the OS designers of PC's were ignoring the lessons learned by mainframe and mini designers, lessons like security and multitasking. The printed the letter and topped with a comment saying "Why on earth would we need multitasking on a personal computer?"
La plus sa change, la plus sa meme chose.
Re:Wow, could be neat (Score:1)
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
4.
And I trust all of them with my life, and if they shit on my arrogance behind my back they do it too my face too.
Re:Clie's Not As Coolio As Sony Says (Score:1)
Re:Putting a laptop in your pocket? (Score:2)
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Re:Multimedia doesn't add up (Score:1)
Re:Widescreen on a PDA? (Score:1)
Re:audio (Score:2)
Re:multimedia, etc.? (Score:1)
Seriously, give me a break. If they can pack all of this into the same size box without taking a major hit in either performance or price, I'm all for it. Why would you not want your PDA, which happens to be the same size as a MP3 player, to play MP3s?
What I really want is a PDA the size of the new Visor Edge with color, Bluetooth support, wireless video-conferencing, and streaming media from the web. Is that too much to ask? This thing from Sony is a step in the right direction.
If all you want to do is fiddle around with datebook and IR your business card back and forth, you should buy an M100. But please, don't complain about the cool gadgets.
This will never see the light of day in the US. (Score:1)
No, not really. (Score:3)
The PalmOS today is supposed to be more powerful and flexible to keep up with advancing technology just like the new Sony. If this were unleased 2 years ago, it would have been stupid, but in today's tech, it would seem to make sense.
What I wonder is why the thing doesn't have a built in 320x320 camera!
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:More worthless crap (Score:1)
Re:Clie's Not As Coolio As Sony Says (Score:4)
Sony chose to make the events that the jog dial triggers be completely proprietary instead of mapping them to something like the pageup/down arrows. Therefore, if you want to support them, you have to listen for those events specifically. It's not hard, but it requires you go to Sony's poorly designed developer support site, and wait 5-7 days to get a header file with the events in them, then go back and implement support in every phase of your app. I've done it, and it's cool, but really since the Clie market penetration is small, most people probably won't bother.
As to the memory stick. Yeah, this is pretty worthless right now, but Palm made a promise that the expansion manager technology they're using in OS/4.0 will support the Clie's memory stick as well as Palm's new SD/MMC standard. Therefore, support for memory sticks might get better, assuming you can flash the Sony devices with OS/4.0 when it comes out (which I doubt since it looks like OS/4.0 won't fit in 2mb).
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
Damn, and I was just starting to have fun - oh well, I'll see ya soon - if at any point, the next party should be good right?
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
Moderators, please mod the parent post offtopic!
r. ghaffari
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
moderators, please mark the parent post offtopic!
thank you.
r. ghaffari
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
Thank you for your commentary though, it has changed my perspective.
Besides, didn't you get it - they are fairly acquanted with me...
Feel free to mod me down, in fact slashdot should have a "Post At 0 because this is offtopic" option.
When can I get one? (Score:1)
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
Aren't you a bit old for #teenchat?
Palm IIIxe (Score:1)
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
r. ghaffari
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
When you are stupid, do you ever stop and go "wow, I am really fucking dumb" or does it not even phase you?
Re:audio (Score:1)
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
r. ghaffari
Hey! (Score:1)
They used to market 170mb, but even IBM's webpage only mentions 340, 512, and 1gb.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
I'll show you hostility then.
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
r. ghaffari
Re:audio (Score:1)
What is needed is a cheap, durable, IP free storage medium upon which a CE firm can build a player around (using something like Ogg as the codec).
Re:PDA help (Score:2)
otherwise, get a keyboard, plug and play. built-in newtonWorks text editor/word processor. sync/backup to PC, Mac, Linux..
real handwriting recognition, bigger screen, voice notes, PCMCIA, speaker.
cheap on ebay.
An English version of this web page (Score:3)
John
Re:Potential Problems (Score:1)
Re:Clie's Not As Coolio As Sony Says (Score:2)
The memory stick is a godsend for people who use their handhelds to read books (I suggest Smoothy [handwave.com], which uses the Jog Dial to change auto-scrolling speed). I have the entire Lord of the Rings on my CLIE and don't have to pay with reduced space for my apps. Also, there are a handful of programs that are kind of large for keeping in memory but that I still want to pull out every once in a while. For example, I keep LispMe on the Memory Stick so that if I write a Scheme program in MemoPad I can move LispMe on to it just long enough to run it, not taking up any permanent space. I can think of dozens of other uses for the memory stick off the top of my head that do not involve backup, and that's without even waiting for developers to really start working it into their applications.
So the Jog Dial and the MemoryStick remain useful beyond anything the Palm Vx offers. Then we get into opinions:
I like the fact that the CLIE is narrower. It feels nicer in my hand; more like a small notepad (the paper type, people. Remember those? Very high resolution, blue lines accross a white screen-like surface?
As far as accessories go, it is true that the CLIE is currently barren. But so was the Visor when it first came out. Sony is developing tech [memorystick.org] that allows a MemoryStick to essentially double as a Springboard Module. This in itself is enough to counter arguments about the CLIE not having accessories. And BTW, I personally like the case.
Finally, as to video and sound and such, I would like to point out that there are thousands of programs written for the PalmOS that are downloaded every day that the vast majority of people would look at and say "WTF? Who on earth would want to do that?" Fact of the matter is, the strength of PalmOS is that you can make it do anything without sacrificing the ease of use of the basic functions. If you want to play movies or sound and have the space on your handheld, you can, and without really bloating the interface.
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Wow, could be neat (Score:1)
Oh well, a man can dream though...a man can dream....
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Compare to WinCE (Score:2)
It's an entertainment device, like a minidisc player. ATRAC support.
It's a PDA, like a palm pilot!
It's got a high resolution screen and a faster CPU, so it can play Gameboy games!
You can finally do maps decently on it, with double the resolution and high color.
Is it doing too many things at once? I dunno. But it's pretty feature complete against Windows CE machines, and really doesn't compete against other Palm devices yet.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:Multitasking (Score:1)
Why buy it? (Score:2)
Yes it has a memory stick so you can play ATRAC music, but so what? I bet you could buy a Palm Pilot or Handspring and a dedicated MP3 player for the money you'd save. And your music playing wouldn't be hampered by Sony doing it's damndest to lock you into their hobbled music technology.
Re:Wow, could be neat (Score:2)
Could be cool, but it's not. Then they lie with numbers.
"up to 160 minutes of MPEG, AVI, Quicktime 3/4 video"!!!!
Yeah, what ever. As you pointed out, that's a bitrate of 12K/s, which by my in-the-head calculations equals 80x40 video at 30fps MPEG1.
Yippie.
Call me again when Sony has implemented MPEG4 and 1G storage.
---------------------------
Re:audio (Score:1)
Back in my day.... (Score:2)
Who needed a pixel based display anyway? Why I just about cried tears of joy when my electronic organizer displayed somewhat readable characters on a segmented LCD display.
I still remember when my pappy gave me that 'ol organizer which displayed a full telephone number in the display without scrolling - even with the dashes!!
It even had a BUILT-IN keyboard. Something you need to buy separately for these new fangled devices.
Oh, and the wonderful music it played. Type on the keyboard (TICK), save an entry (BEEP), alarm or appointment reminder (BEEP - BEEP).
It was great for games, too. I could use it to look up my friend Joe's number and call him over for a game of checkers.....
Re:Personally, I like WinCE (Score:3)
Of course, Palm has a color model now. If you don't care about battery life, I guess.
> 2. It had just as much software as my palm device did.
Fair enough. Of course, MS always claimed that it had *more*...
> 3. I remember reading about a palmOS emulator for WinCE devices.
That won't help you keep your batteries alive or help you with your WinCE OS crashing.
> 4. CE devices get all the cool gizmos. My Vx has IR and a serial port. My friend's CE device has IR, serial, and a compact flash card compartment
HandSpring sells models with Springboards. That's not really a function of the OS, though. The OS is how you interact with it.
> filled with a 90MB IBM microdrive
Good lord, what are you doing with that thing? I still have a Palm III with 2MB. I push that (with e-books), but don't know what I'd do with much more memory.
I use my PDA as a "Personal Digital Assitant", not a handheld desktop computer. I keep notes, shopping lists, schedules, addressbooks, and e-books/web scrapings. It fits in my shirt pocket and I can get to any info very quickly. Batteries last a month.
I like gee-whiz stuff, but not if it detracts from battery life or ease of use.
Re:Personally, I like WinCE (Score:2)
There are sites that sell or document how to construct a Handspring module that is essentially a passive CF to PCMCIA adaptor with 2 or 3 wires changed to allow a Visor to see a CF card.
And there aren't any 90mb IBM microdrives. They come in 340mb, 5xxsomething and 1gb sizes.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Resolution is nice, but only in Japan (Score:2)
Myself, I'm going to wait for the Palm m505 (aka the "Palm Vc"), which is due out next week [cnet.com].
Alex Bischoff
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Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
Try again on the insults.
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
HAHA - you're such a lying sack of shit [themes.org]. Or maybe it's just a furry gerbil you like putting on the back of your neck. Or maybe you recently cut your hair short as part of being a special agent for the Marine Corp.
I'm not worried about some fat ass like you.
For your information, some of us bench 275 and curl 60 pounds, which is why we don't look as frail as such a lightweight like you. Did you remove that gerbil off your neck before you weighed yourself to be 173 pounds?
So pony-tailed geek with a goatee - did you beat Bruce Lee in Tae Kwon Do, Aikido, Jui-Jitsu, or Shodokan? Or did he shove all your imaginary tournament trophies up your ass, because you're so fucking bad at being a compulsive liar?
r. ghaffari
Re:Battery life? (Score:1)
The other great thing about the Prism is that I just pop it in the charger every night (or at work during the day) and I never have to worry about it running out of juice. (Nor memory effects of the batteries.) I have not used it enough in one day yet to wear down the rechargeable.
Re:Multimedia doesn't add up (Score:1)
Re:audio (Score:2)
Yet another reason NEVER to buy Sony (Score:2)
Their software also attempts to delete the source mp3 once conversion is complete.
This is really appalling. This fact should be included in all articles talking about Music Clip / ATRAC / Sony Palm discussions. I for one consider this denial of service and theft of my documents. Class action lawsuit anyone?
Re:Potential Problems (Score:1)
Correct. There is a DSP to handle ATRAC3 decoding.
>you'd get decoded audio with no system load, but it would suck you batteries dry in only a couple of hours.
Not necessarily. Yes, it would suck extra power, but there are low power options.
Let's go to Quebec! (Score:1)
NCR is suing Palm over Patents... (Score:2)
I just noticed this story [cnn.com] over at CNN: NCR (yup, old National Cash Register) is suing Palm for patent violations. Seems that NCR claims patents on a "Portable personal terminal for use in a system for handling transactions," and on a "System for handling transactions including a portable personal terminal." Those sound like broad concepts to me; I wonder if WinCE handhelds have licensed these patents from NCR?
--
Scott Robert Ladd
Master of Complexity
Destroyer of Order and Chaos
Can it beat Kyocera's Smartphone? (Score:1)
PalmOS is becoming like DOS/Windows/Mac (Score:1)
But I think the prices that Palm and Palm licensees are charging are out of proportion to the software and hardware. PalmOS is a pretty messy and limited OS, and the company has gotten its return on investment many times over. And the screens and processors on most PalmPilots devices are laughable--pay $400 for some of the Palm devices with a 33MHz 68k with a 160x160 screen? At least the Clie has 320x320, but how well is software actually going to support that?
I think Palm computing is turning into the equivalent of Microsoft: they are falling way behind technologically, but they have a proprietary platform that a lot of people have invested a lot of time and money in and they are squeezing it for every dollar it's worth.
I hope my Palm Pilot will last until PocketLinux becomes a feasible alternative--I would feel silly paying that kind of money for a technologically outdated platform. If I need to buy another one, the lowest end Palm will be just fine: PalmOS doesn't know what to do with a really powerful machine as far as I'm concerned.
Why not a Palm w/ minidisc? (Score:1)
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The real advantage of WinCE devices... (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I've had my PalmPilot (original + the PalmIII expansion card) for 4 years, and wouldn't replace it with Windows for nothing, but I first put my hands on a WinCE device (a Cassiopeia) last week and I think its input method is MUCH better.
That graffity area is part of the screen, and when you want to input text, you click on a button and the graffiti (Jot, really) area appears, just like the Palm's on-screen keyboard. Hasn't any PalmOS device manufacturer thought about incorporating this ingenious idea???
That would be THE real "must-have" feature for a PalmOS device.
--
a change in Zawinski's Law ? (Score:2)
Potential Problems (Score:2)
First issue - the 33mHz VZ *is* fast, about as fast as a 66 mHz SuperH-3, but even that is nowhere near fast enough to decode that they're saying -- this means there must be another ASIC in the mix for decoding the audio. This is a blessing and a curse -- you'd get decoded audio with no system load, but it would suck you batteries dry in only a couple of hours.
Another potential trouble spot -- many, very many, PalmOS apps are (thanks to bad design) dependant on the fact that PalmOS device screen is 160x160, and it it's bigger than that, some things can freak out; we saw this is the 'Newton' world, when the screen resolution changed from 200x336 to 200x320 -- many of your favourite Apps for their butts cut off, and some wouldn't run at all.
And, my finaly gripe is ablout the Graffiti area -- Why, when there is all this screen space and processor power, is the HWR area still *screen printed* on the glass? We can't they make it software?
I don't want to beat up on the (damn good looking) Clie, and I'm not saying this is a bad unit by any means, but I would ask that these specs be taken with a bit of realism. Remember, the first 'Griffin' class WinCE devices made similar claims, and few could deliver them all.
Re:Multitasking (Score:2)
On the palm, whenever you start a new program, the OS sends a stop signal to the running program. The running program then is supposed to store any data it has out and close so the new app can run. Everything is in RAM but the RAM is split into storage and executable space. Only one program gets executable space at a time.
There is multitasking of a sort on the palm. You just have to do it at app level and you don't get any cycles for your background apps. Hmm... Not really multitasking at all.
Dan
Not True (Score:2)
You CAN run programs directly off the memory stick. You just need to download the MSAutorun utility from the Sony Clie [sony.com] website. It was released on Oct 4 (not long after the Clie came out).
My fiancee is a resident physician and she uses her Clie constantly. For someone that wants a small handheld that can store up to 64 MB of medical textbooks on a single memory stick, the Clie is a godsend. Even better now that the 128 MB sticks are coming out.
--
Re:a change in Zawinski's Law ? (Score:3)
I don't think Zawinsky's Law is obsolete yet - remember, email is the gateway drug of the Internet [slashdot.org].
Clearly, mp3s will evolve until they can send email. This is in accordance with Zawinsky's Law.
Re:Clie's Not As Coolio As Sony Says (Score:2)
Sony was correct in making the jog dial events "proprietary" (i.e. vendor-specific), since anyone writing a Clie-aware app might want to treat the jog dial differently from the up/dn arrows. Where Sony missed the boat was by not making the event handlers built into PalmOS smarter. Similar to Windows or MacOS event handlers, any code that knows what to do with an event flags the event as having been handled. This allows the built-in event handler to provide default actions for unhandled events. Sony should have made the built-in event handler resubmit unhandled jog-dial events and up/dn arrows.
As for the memory stick, I agree that things will be getting much better with the release of PalmOS 4. The support for external file systems is going to look a lot like TRG's existing CF extensions, so it should be trivial for developers to port apps already written for the TRGpro.
--
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: Screw you, Dave!
Will the real killer PDA please stand up? (Score:2)
I finally have the money to spend to get a PalmOS based PDA and there is no clear decision. Bah!
Re:Sony screws themselves with ATRAC (8-track?) (Score:2)
I don't think this argument holds water when there's a dozen portable MP3-CD players on the market from major manufacturers (like Philips, Casio, Sonicblue/Rio, Teac, etc.) in addition to lots of cheapo chinese oems. None cost more than $200. The RioVolt is about $160, has an MD-style remote and displays ID3 info on a dot-matrix LCD.
All these players support CDRW, allowing for well over 10 hours of 128kbit MP3 on a single rewritable disk. Granted, there's no stereo component recorder for such disks, yet, but then manipulating/storing MP3s is still much easier on a computer with a real keyboard and display.
The newest generation of these players don't even run the CD continuously, but buffer several minutes into RAM and then spin down.
Media cost is less than Minidisk (I bought 100 cdrs for $19 the other day, at a retail CompUSA), and I can use whatever bitrate I prefer, rather than fixed 132kbit ATRAC. I can play the disks I burn in my MP3-supporting DVD player in addition to my portable. There are mini-component and car stereos from Aiwa, Philips, and others that support MP3-CD as well.
Minidisk's looking much less attractive now. I do like the small disks and the hard shell, though.
-Isaac
Re:Clie's Not As Coolio As Sony Says (Score:2)
Sony screws themselves with ATRAC (8-track?) (Score:3)
No MP3 support here, no-how. As if regular joes (or even fickle early-adopters) are going to start using sony's ATRAC, when they can't play them in anything but sony players (no, you can't digitally copy ATRAC files to/from minidisc) and must suffer Sony's onerous SDMI requirements (like mandatory check-in of files after x listens, etc.)
This looks nice, but reinforces my belief that the worst thing Sony did to themselves was to get into the music business. Trade MemoryStick(TM) and ATRAC for the open, industry standard CompactFlash and MP3, and they'd have a huge winner. But this thing doesn't look like a particularly good multimedia device - more like a color CLIE with a MusicClip grafted on. Two mediocre devices that go poorly together.
I won't be using a PDA as an MP3 player until it's forgettably seamless, has ample removable solid-state storage (several hours of 192kbit MP3 at least), supports the full range of bitrates to 320kbit, and battery life long enough to spend a week out of the cradle playing a few hours of tunes a day in addition to PDA functions. This thing falls down on all counts - hell, it doesn't even play the MP3's I already have (and I'm not going to convert already lossy mp3's into another lossy format, degrading them further). MagicGate Memorysticks are scarce and expensive, and bitrate is limited to 132kbit in any case.
And it's a chunkster, the thickest PalmOS device yet. And I wonder what kind of battery life they're getting... I wouldn't want to inadvertently drain my batteries dry listening to tunes and find myself needing to look up a contact or be reminded of an appointment later.
I think I'll keep my 2 meg Palm V for PDA use and my MP3-CD player for MP3 use for another few years.
-Isaac
Re:audio (Score:2)
Oh yeah, and probably with source code so those of us who use alternative operating systems can compile it for ourselves... (not!)
Re:Battery life? (Score:2)
At #35 you should have at least read the story :P
audio (Score:2)
Without the full specs on the clie, it sounds like there will be additional software to purchase from Sony if you want to move your mp3s to ATRAC3 format.
(I wait impatiently for the english version)
Hmmm (Score:3)
Yours,
Re:An English version of this web page (Score:2)
I'm sure it will eventually be available but I reckon we'll have to wait 3-6 months first (and more for us in europe who still haven't seen the old version).
multimedia, etc.? (Score:3)
Uncouple PDA Software & PDA Hardware (Score:2)
Please compare versus: Compaq iPaq H3635 [compaq.com] (64MB coming soon) & the Casio's E125 [casio.com] This Sony device comes close - but IMNSHO dosnt measure up.
Ive said this a thousand times: What we need in the PDA 'industry' is an uncoupling of OS & Hardware. People have a hard time arguing that the Casio/HP/Compaq devices aren't better hardware; its simply that people don't want to buy into a(nother) M$ product. I had a hard time deciding to buy my E100 (I got it shortly after release) because M$ was 'inside'... what I want to be able to do is get it out!
The PDA industry needs to form a 'standards' body of some kind. Once this occurs I would hope to see 3Com, PocketLinux(Transvirtual), M$, Qt, Yopy, Agenda, RIP, SHARP and others write their OSs to that standard! Let the Hardware people compete on hardware (and drive features up/prices down) and let the Software Compete on Software (and drive the features up/price down). What we have here is a mess of compromise when choosing PDAs. I would have loved my Casio to come with a LinuxPDA distro of some kind, or maybe PalmOS - but the E100 had their features beat hands down.
Can someone direct me to an effort, mailing list, website of some group/person who also sees this major flaw in the direction of the PDA world? What we need is a de-coupling, witness the result of the PC world when IBM opened the PC, contrast this with the direction that Apple took. Not to slight the Apple camp, but the diversity, power, price, ubiquity, 'openness' of the PC and its model would be a good idea for the PDA world.
No it's more complicated than that (Score:2)
Re:Personally, I like WinCE (Score:2)
That won't help you keep your batteries alive or help you with your WinCE OS crashing.
Hmm.. Although I could hardly say my iPaq *never* crashes, I had far more paperclip moments with my palm.. -Not to mention the iPaq is a way faster reboot from soft reset than the palm. When my palm bit the dust I bought a IIIc, for the G-wiz factor - On the second day I had it, it froze up solid, and worst of all, a soft reset deleted all records in memory - not to mention that 256 colours is hardly stunning, and you cant actually *read* the screen outdoors or in any bright ambient light.
These are basically two completely different types of devices: The palm is an excellent address book/ PIM, but the CE devices are basically 'pocket computers' - 2 megs of addresses and appointments is plenty, but I really love listening to hundreds of megs of MP3's while I type in pocket word at 320x240, -To each their own.
BTW - I've not found the battery life to be an issue, I've used my iPaq all day long and never had it hit low battery, I sync daily and this tops the battery up - For trips there are battery extenders that take AA batterys, and my favorite - The PocketPal [plastecs.com] folding solar panel - battery life till the cows come home (or the sun goes behind a cloud)
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Widescreen on a PDA? (Score:2)
The screen is the size of less than half of a paperback. No way anyone would watch a 2 hour movie on that.
Then there is the battery life with it running streaming video and audio.
Any sort of multimedia is nice on these things but have very little pratical, real-world use.
Clie's Not As Coolio As Sony Says (Score:5)
When my trusty Palm III (original!) died several months ago, I was forced to replace it. Since the Palm V was the same thing that'd been released a year before, I gave the Clie a try.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad device. But the Jog Dial, while a great idea, is poorly implemented and supported by almost nothing. (An exception is Vindigo...that shocked the hell outta me!) The memory stick suffers from the same problem: It's neato, but worthless. You cannot do anything with it except copy data back and forth between it and RAM. This essentially makes it into a harder to use backup device that is pre-obsoleted by Hotsync.
Now, none of this really hurts the Clie, and it costs the same as a Palm Vx without the added neat-o devices, but the big killer has been accessories. The Clie doesn't have the support of 3rd parth accessory makers like Palm (or even Handspring) has. The case that comes with the Clie is retarded, but I can't replace it because a replacement doesn't exist!
The new Clie doesn't seem to offer anything really new and must-have. I mean, who really wants to watch a 2-minute movie clip on their PDA? Not many...
Any price info? (Score:2)
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Memory stick (Score:3)
I thougth they'd tried that (years ago) before and found nobody would buy. I know I've been burnt by proprietary memory (10x the cost of regular memory), and have no desire to buy any product that doesn't use a standard memory chip.
silly name. (Score:2)
Personally, I like WinCE (Score:2)
1. It was color.
2. It had just as much software as my palm device did.
3. I remember reading about a palmOS emulator for WinCE devices. Not sure if it's true, but judging by the PalmOS SDK, it'll be easier to emulate palmOS on a CE device than vice versa.
4. CE devices get all the cool gizmos. My Vx has IR and a serial port. My friend's CE device has IR, serial, and a compact flash card compartment (which he filled with a 90MB IBM microdrive). Needless to say, his handheld was more fun to use and could hole a HELL of a lot more stuff.
Re:Sony screws themselves with ATRAC (8-track?) (Score:2)
I haven't seen a miniCDr mp3 player, but that may be the same size of an md player.
I was comparing size and portability when I said 64mb units. Those things are overpriced and underpowered, compared to a mdplayer or even one of your CD-mp3 devices
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:Clie's Not As Coolio As Sony Says (Score:2)
I'm surprised that a hack [dmoz.org] hasn't been written for this functionality yet, but I would expect it within the next month or two.
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Re:Yet another reason NEVER to buy Sony (Score:2)
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Re:The real advantage of WinCE devices... (Score:2)
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Did I miss something here? (Score:2)
When did the PalmOS go out of style? Since when is WinCE the leader in handhelds?
In terms of popularity, Palm sells more than anybody [cnet.com]. In fact, Palm and Handspring together had 87 percent of the market in June 2000.
Technically, the PalmOS is limited, but definitely good enough. They're the ones that finally got the interface "right". They've got the right form factor, ease-of-use, battery life and necessary speed. They don't have a huge list of bells, whistles and gongs, but the essentials are there - and physically stripped down to exactly the size I want. It is exactly what you need as a PDA. More features (cameras, GPS, colour, music, phone, wireless are available as add-ons) are nice, but they aren't always essential, and shouldn't come at a permanent increase in size.
WinCE is attempting to be an all-singing, all-dancing embedded OS. The reality is that it's being handily beaten by Palm in the handheld market, by WindRiver (and other embedded OSes) in the realtime and embedded markets.
Handspring is finally producing the phone [handspring.com] that I've wanted ever since I tried to juggle my old Casio BOSS and a cellular brick-phone. Now if only it was available in Canada. (Oh, and by the way Nokia, I don't want to enter appointments into a phone, using a clumsy keypad and itty-bitty screen).
There are still way more apps for PalmOS than any of its competitors, and developers get the benefits of an open environment. WinCE is a real late-comer and doesn't offer enough improvements to be the front-runner.
The non-disclaimer: I own a Palm Vx, chosen specifically because of it's form factor, user-interface and applications. I write embedded telecommunications software (on realtime OSes) for a living. That's my basis for these opinions.
Re:Yet another reason NEVER to buy Sony (Score:2)
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Re:audio (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
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Almos there (Score:2)
- Size
- Battery life
The Sony puts up a good fight, but 11 hours is peanuts for people outsourcing major parts of their brain (like me).Battery life? (Score:3)
One of the reason I went for the Visor Deluxe instead of the color one was because of with the Deluxe model (b/w), two AAA batteries last almost 3 weeks, while the guy at the counter only thought one charge of the color version would last 6-8 hours (or something like that).
Re:audio (Score:3)
As for conversion software chances are they'll throw the software in for free. They already do with the music clip / memorystick walkman and some MiniDisc units that you can attach to a computer.