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Handhelds Hardware

Sony Launches 2 New "Video" Clie Models 201

Posted by timothy from the just-happy-to-see-you dept.
boss_ton writes "Sony is launching its newest Clie handhelds(NX80V, NX73V ), a combination personal video player and personal digital assistant, to the United States.Its already a huge hit in Japan. Amazon is reporting the launch date as July 11th. The NX80V is priced at $600. Here's the scoop on CNet. The official product page is here."
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Sony Launches 2 New "Video" Clie Models More

Sony Launches 2 New "Video" Clie Models

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  • A huge hit in japan? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 16, 2003 @11:17PM (#6219900)
    A little electrogadget popular in Japan? I am shocked.

  • Price Climbing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by semanticgap ( 468158 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @11:19PM (#6219915)
    It's interesting that they keep managing to up the price a notch with every new iteration of the device... Might we see $1000 PDA's in the near future?

    • Re:Price Climbing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dswensen ( 252552 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @11:32PM (#6219974) Homepage
      I think it's because of all the feature-piling. I bought a Visor Neo a year or so ago and have no need for a new PDA in and of itself. The Neo does its job well. But the newer PDAs have cameras, mp3 players, color displays, etc. etc. Of course, sooner or later I will convince myself I can't live without these features, and my old Neo won't cut the mustard anymore. Or, more accurately, will seem like it won't.

      Of course, piling on Bluetooth, video players, and other (IMHO, often superfluous) features jacks up the price. The barebones PDAs are still under $100. But there's no need to buy another one of those every year, so they have to drive the market somehow.

      That said, when I do get a new PDA, it will be the Zire 71 [palm.com]. All the features I need, and a couple I don't, for a (fairly) decent price. And no stupid built-in keyboard (I hate those things).
      • The solution is to have lots of little external things that can be added and double as other devices. The idea was bluetooth but you have to spend a lot of effort to keep everything charged. What would be great would be firewire but it's apparently so expensive to implement that it doesn't work out. Anyway then you could add things on and use as much stuff as you liked, or leave it home or in the car or whatever. Cameras, storage devices, multimedia devices, et cetera.

        This sony chingadera looks like it's

      • I just moved from a Handspring Visor Edge to a Sony Ericsson P800 a week ago, and I love it.

        I couldn't imagine getting another PDA without telecom capabilities. Having a phone that does "everything" is the way to go!

        I've also played a bit with the Treo, but the P800 is smaller and more "wearable" - I miss the polish of the Palm OS, but I'm pretty happy with my new phone.

        N.

    • Re:Price Climbing (Score:3, Informative)

      by A Commentor ( 459578 )
      WRONG! There hasn't been price climbing.. Their first set of Clies in this style was the NR70 and NR70V, for $499, and $599 respectively. I know, I bought one of the NR70s. Then they released the NX60 and NX70 and guess what their prices where again $499 and $599... And look, the NX73 and NX80 are $499 and $599.... There other model the NZ90 is at $799... but these mid-line ones have been very consistently priced.
    • You can almost get them already can't you? That's only about £600, I bet a top top of the range Toshiba is near that.

      At least the massive sales of the base level Zire have shown that the cheap and cheerful market is surprisingly strong for PDAs.

      For me, my next PDA looks likely to be the Tungsten C, whose technical specifications are purely marketing driven.

      You see, corporate purchasers assume that a 64Mb, 400MHz Toshiba must be so much better than a 16MB, 114MHz Palm, even though it isn't any
    • They're jamming them with all of the features of a laptop, except a good keyboard and a nice display.

      Frankly I'd find something like the Sony Picturebook or slightly smaller much more useful and about as portable.

  • Yah, but (Score:4, Funny)

    by tcd004 ( 134130 ) * on Monday June 16, 2003 @11:22PM (#6219935) Homepage
    These don't compare with the DA Jesus built for me. [lostbrain.com]

    tcd004
  • i'm trying out the panasonic sv-av30, i saw one in japan last year, but the latest model is here now. it's an "okay" video recorder, digital camera with flash, mp3 player, voice recorder and you can plug it into a tv to record whatever. i recorded the animatrix on it and it's actually really good. i think the s-video in option for these devices and lots of storage is a where it's heading. the new rca lyra looks good too, i had thought a small screen wouldn't be good for watching video, but it turns out it's

    • Re:panasonic sv-av30 (Score:2, Informative)

      by lcorc79 ( 549464 )
      Actually the built-in video recording's a joke, not meant to be a pocket camcorder or anything like that. That being said, you can get decent video if you encode it on a pc and use the Kinoma player ... But for recording from the Clie, that wonderful 1.3 MP camera is taken down to 160 x 112 resolution - not anything you'd want to record your son's graduation with :)
    • If you want a lightweight, solid-state video recorder, you have much better options than the Panasonic or Clie. Several of the Sony digital cameras offer real-time 640x480 MPEG recording up to the capacity of the memory stick (40 minutes on a 1G memory stick). A few other digital cameras have similar capabilities.
    • SonyStyle says the Clié has a"High Performance CPU (200 MHz);" Is that really enough for video?

      I very recently got a Tungsten T - it's great, and I love the fact it can play MP3s; even with a 128MB SD card, though, and using RealOne (transfer rates to the TT suck donk otherwise), it's still a little tweaky: That is, I can't use it to, e.g., read AvantGo offline (a 'core PDA function,' IMO) and listen to tunes seamlessly. Page scrolling slows. Music drops out. Timeouts shut the thing off complete
      • I have a Sharp Zaurus 5500 and I've learned its all about formatting the video correctly. I wrote a little script that lets me quickly convert/scale/re-encode TV captures to play nicely on my Zaurus. I step down the video bitrate and sound quality, scale it down to 320x240 (or if its 352x240 I just crop 16px of each side). Having it the correct resolution really speeds things up since the software doesn't have to scale it. I transcode everything to divx5, so it all plays smoothly on the Z. I watched a 2 hou
        • Yeah, I know it's going off-topic a bit...

          I've been playing with the same thing for my iPAQ for a while - effectively the same hardware... Any chance of posting your script (or at least your settings) here, or directly to me by e-mail? Much appreciated :-)

          • I use 2 pass divx encoding (just because its faster than 3 pass). I couldn't get the entire script through the lameness filter so this will have todo.

            mencoder NAME_OF_INPUT_FILE -ovc lavc -vop scale=320:240 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=BITRATE_GOES_HERE:vpass=1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts br=10 -srate 22050 -o NAME_OF_OUTPUT_FILE.avi

            Then run mencoder again for the 2nd pass:

            mencoder NAME_OF_INPUT_FILE -ovc lavc -vop scale=320:240 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=BITRATE_GOES_HERE:vpass=2 -oac mp3lame -lameop
    • I'm sorry but my drool is reserved for the Archos av320. It has a 20GB hard drive, so it can hold 40 hours of mpeg4 movies.

  • Head over to cliesource.com (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lcorc79 ( 549464 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @11:27PM (#6219957) Homepage
    Us Clie-heads are less than impressed with this device. It's merely a generational refinement of the existing NX70 series; by no means a dramatic upgrade.

    The 'video' features touted in the headline have been in the last several models. The new 'features' include additional hardware buttons for when the device is in tablet mode; a collapsable CF slot (which can only be collapsed when not in use), a backlit keyboard, and an improvement over the NX series' cameras (1.3 MP on the NX80 - still not as good as the 2 MP camera on the NZ90).

    Other inclusions are software based, including new Decuma handwriting recognition (supposedly nifty - especially for Asian character sets), and Sony's new CF driver allowing CF memory to be used - which isn't as powerful as Eruware's third party driver, since it doesn't support the built-in applications like playing audio off a CF card.

    I'm obsessed with Clie's, and spend way too much time every day at www.cliesource.com ... but hey :)

    All in all, the NX73/80 are better than their predecessors but by no means exciting for those already owning a NX or NZ. I certainly don't think it deserves the fanfare the articles & slashdot headline etc are giving it - but hey thats PR for you.

  • Big-Hit life cycle (Score:2, Insightful)

    by maliabu ( 665176 )
    Its already a huge hit in Japan

    Did they mention what the life cycle is for these kind big-hit gadgets in Japan, and what their target market is? it's easy to accidentally compare Apple to Sushi. Japanese youngster can adopt and dumb new things pretty quickly, Americans might be different.

    Ohh, for instance, sales of PS2 or XBOX in Japan vs the world.
    • Japanese youngster can adopt and dumb new things pretty quickly, Americans might be different.

      American youngsters are no different in that they adopt dumb new things, they are simply different in the kind of dumb new things they adopt :-)

  • experience with Sony PalmOS handhelds (Score:5, Interesting)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @11:38PM (#6219991)
    I have owned some Sony handhelds. Sony hardware is great, and PalmOS has going for it that there is a lot of software for it. But there are some real problems with the use of PalmOS on these devices.

    For example, the Sony uses a different audio API from the Palm handhelds (because Palm didn't use to have an audio API) and Sony doesn't document it, so Palm audio players won't work on the Sony devices.

    Also, many of the applications for Palm are specifically written for 160x160 pixels and will look absolutely horrible on a 320x320 screen. TopGun SSH is one of many examples.

    Memory and memory management on these devices is also a problem. It is an enormous amount of work porting UNIX or Windows-based libraries to these devices, so a lot of software has to be written from scratch. And, in fact, a lot of pretty basic networking software just does not exist.

    Applications also tend to crash with some frequency, which ends up rebooting the handheld (just like DOS).

    PalmOS is designed with an "everything is a database" philosophy. Unfortunately, that runs into a brick wall when you stick in an SD or MS card, which, in fact, has a file system on it, and PalmOS doesn't deal well with it. Applications expect their data in particular subdirectories or ignore it. I have yet to figure out how to get the Sony movie player to play an MPEG file--I simply don't know where to put it on the memory stick and what to call it so that it will see it. And the lack of a file system inside the handheld means that installing and uninstalling applications is a complete mess: everything is just dumped into what amounts to a single top-level directory.

    Sony does the right thing with these devices: they treat them as consumer gadgets. That is, they preload them with all the software you might ever want (including an MP3 player). The fact that they run PalmOS is almost incidental.

    I think I can guardedly recommend the Sony handhelds since the hardware is nifty and the built-in applications are good (when they work). Just be aware of what you are getting and the limitations you have to live with.
    • Also, many of the applications for Palm are specifically written for 160x160 pixels and will look absolutely horrible on a 320x320 screen. TopGun SSH is one of many examples.

      I don't know about in PalmOS 5 but in my OS4 based N610C you can turn off HiRes Assist for specific applications and it looks just like it would on a 160x160 (color in my case) display. I too was bugged by this "problem" until I found out how to fix it. I'm assuming that the OS5 based Clie's have a similar feature.

      -Sokie

    • Re:experience with Sony PalmOS handhelds (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @01:26AM (#6220411)
      You need to try a Pocket PC. Standard graphic API for games, everything's always hi-res, a real FS and a real filebrowser, multitasking, standard screen resolution, extensible input area (just look at the number of input options).

      Pocket PCs have their problems, but they overcame many of the incompatibility problems taht now plague Palm OS long ago. Palm can't seem to decide if they want to kill Grafitti or not. Sony and Palm have different screen resolutions on their devices (what a mess for trying to program a game). There's a whole legacy architecture to support, so we may not see many native applications for a long time. There's no standardized expansion format (Sony = Memory Stick, Palm = SD).

      All Pocket PCs on the market for the past year have had an ARM based processor. They all have 240x320 16K color displays. They all have SD expansion (with a few exceptions). They all have 32M of flash. They all have audio input and output capabilities. They all have a 5-way directional pad and 4 front buttons.
      • You need to try a Pocket PC.

        I have. Sorry, it's not an alternative as far as I'm concerned. Ultimately, no matter how badly PalmOS sucks as an operating system, its applications are much better than PocketPC, and that's what counts in a PDA.

        If I wanted something that was technically well-designed, then a Zaurus would be a better choice than either Palm/Clie or PocketPC.

        • Re:experience with Sony PalmOS handhelds (Score:5, Informative)

          by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @03:45AM (#6220751)
          I have. Sorry, it's not an alternative as far as I'm concerned. Ultimately, no matter how badly PalmOS sucks as an operating system, its applications are much better than PocketPC, and that's what counts in a PDA.

          I'm assuming you're talking either about additional Palm applications or you come from an environment that doesn't mandate the use of Outlook?

          In my experience, the built in PPC applications are far superior to the Palm ones. This is somewhat of a downer for the entire Palm line. The hardware is getting significantly better and cooler yet the software hasn't seen a radical change for the past 5 years (if not longer).

          Some simple examples that the Palm can't do: appointments split over two days that sync back to Outlook (the conduit breaks them up), tasks with alarms, contacts with multiple addresses and a syncing solution that means that I can pick out my PPC from the cradle at any time and know that it is completely synchronised with my diary.

          Sure the PPC has got its problems - attached word and excel documents in appointments don't sync to the PPC, the notes field is rather limited, battery life isn't as good and sometimes it has a tendency to lock up for no good reason. But I would severly dispute your assertation that Palm (built in) apps are better than PPC's.

          • I'm assuming you're talking either about additional Palm applications or you come from an environment that doesn't mandate the use of Outlook?

            Yes, both, in fact. Palm has good applications built-in, and Clies come with really excellent additional ones.

            If you are stuck with Outlook, of course the answer is to use another Microsoft product to talk to it; what do you expect? The converse is also true: PocketPC doesn't talk well to anything other than Microsoft products. That is another reason to avoid it
            • Yes, both, in fact. Palm has good applications built-in, and Clies come with really excellent additional ones.

              Even if you aren't stuck with Outlook, i would still dispute your assertion. Palm's built in applications haven't seen a major overhawl in over 5 years - anyone who considers them "good" is either an undemanding user, happy with mediocrity or hasn't seen any other PIM's on organisers.

              I wouldn't consider myself a power user but I find it pretty depressing in all this time Palm haven't figured out

              • Even if you aren't stuck with Outlook, i would still dispute your assertion. Palm's built in applications haven't seen a major overhawl in over 5 years - anyone who considers them "good" is either an undemanding user, happy with mediocrity or hasn't seen any other PIM's on organisers.

                Or Palm got it right the first time, and you're a sore loser.

                I wouldn't consider myself a power user but I find it pretty depressing in all this time Palm haven't figured out that people often have more than one address ass

                • Or Palm got it right the first time, and you're a sore loser.

                  Your comment makes no sense unless I was a rabid OS zealot - which, despite the fact I'm posting to Slashdot, I'm not :o)

                  Personally I'll happily purchase whatever PDA by whatever manufacturer that meets my needs. Whoever made it concerns me very little. Although I did purchase my Vx (full price when it first came out 3 years ago) I've had given to me (and used a fair amount) Symbian (P800) and PocketPC (iPAQ 3850). I'm not aligned to any one m

      • All Pocket PCs on the market for the past year have had an ARM based processor. They all have 240x320 16K color displays. They all have SD expansion (with a few exceptions). They all have 32M of flash. They all have audio input and output capabilities. They all have a 5-way directional pad and 4 front buttons.

        Sounds like my palm (except it's 320x320). Works pretty well with OS X, too.

        I'll stick with Palm for now.
        • Yes, but it's not EVERY palm. And competing Palm devices have different resolutions. Palm developers now have to support three different resolutions, many different audio and video standards, two processor families, and a lot more.

          That's why most Palm applications are still low-res and still written for the 68K and still do not support real sound.

    • Also, many of the applications for Palm are specifically written for 160x160 pixels and will look absolutely horrible on a 320x320 screen. TopGun SSH is one of many examples.

      That's a little unfair. The intention of Palm was to allow software properly written for 160x160 displays to run unchanged on 320x320 displays by making the default screen mode on PalmOS 5 one that maps a 160x160 coordinate system over the 320x320 display.

      There are differences between PalmOS3-4 and PalmOS5 that can show up bugs in

    • Install the image converter and it will convert your movie to the proper format and install it to the memorystick in the proper location. The location is /palm/mq_root/100mqv01/ . The extension will be *.mqv which seems to be a mpeg4 in a quicktime wrapper but not 100 percent certain on that. It really works best just to use the image converter app.

      Only old applications are written for 160x160 and of course you are going to run into problems running them on PalmOS5. One also runs into problems running

  • Jeez... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MoeMoe ( 659154 ) on Monday June 16, 2003 @11:48PM (#6220036)
    Because I don't have enough people watching me download pr0n...

    <old man rant=1>

    In my day you had to carry flash powder, a powder holder, a torch, and a 50lb. piece of luggage to get a 1.4" black and white picture... AND WEEE LIKED IT!!!!!!!!!

    <old man rant=0>
  • my cousin's nokia does all that too. It has video, blue tooth, camera, games. He has a doom port on there, a gameboy emulator and tons of rom files and he also has the ability to play tv shows and videos created off the phone. Bonus! It dials and calls people who have regular phones! neato. I don't think he has pocket excel and word though, so you can't get your spreadsheet on. Or the other palm apps. so it still sucks. but it's only 300 dollars.

  • Sony should just go ahead an buy Palm. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SensitiveMale ( 155605 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @12:24AM (#6220162)
    Is any other company developing Palm machines?

    Or even researching anything Palm hardware related?

    Well, other than handspring adding a keyboard and palm changing the design of the buttons and trackpad.
  • In looking at the specs for the NX80, it lists '32MB' and a footnote, which reads "Actual available space is 16 MB. (A portion is used for data management functions.)" The NX73 is not as bad but still 16M downto 11M usable. Seems like a waste.

  • Where are the mid-range models? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by X_Caffeine ( 451624 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @12:25AM (#6220167)
    I want the big screen and the virtual graffiti space. I don't want the freakin' camera. Drop the camera off one of those models and shave off $100 for crying out loud.

    Same problem with all these great new cellphones... the Sony Ericsson P800 [sonyericsson.com] looks like a pretty awesome device with a killer interface, but darnit, I have a $1000+ digital camera, I don't need a stinkin' webcam making the phone/pda bulkier.

  • Dell Axim (Score:2, Insightful)

    by anandcp ( 617121 )
    My Dell Axim X5 has MUCH, MUCH more. An MP3 player, 320x320 crisp TFT screen, 64 MB memory, 32MB SD Card, audio recorder, etc., Of course you need to buy a video camera and attach... but its just that. For the price Dell gives me $250/- its dirt cheap/

  • BFD (Score:3, Funny)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @12:36AM (#6220198)
    Now that Sony has slipped to #2 in so many markets, this product only serves to illustrate why.

    $600.00? plus tax, buddie...cough it up. You want those $300.00 worth of accessories, too, right?

    Wow..this thing is so trik! Watch this Newt!! Ok, I'll just remove my CF storage card and insert my CF wireless lan card and...wait...all my photos are on the CF storage card...oh man!!!!
    • For regular storage, use the Memory Stick. Everything is going to default to the memory stick anyways, and the regular memory sticks are pretty cheap now adays.

      The cf storage was because a lot of customers want that, primarily becuase a bunch of ebooks, dictionarys, and other programs for Palm OS come on cf cards.

  • Typo on Sony spec pages (Score:3, Informative)

    by KFury ( 19522 ) * on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @01:07AM (#6220331) Homepage
    For those confused by the NX spec page [sonystyle.com], there's a type. though the 73 and 80 seem identical aside from color (silver vs black) and price ($599 vs $499), the 73 has a 300,000 pixel camera, not the 1.3 megapixels stated on the page. It also has half the ram (16 vs 32) though others on this thread claim that the difference is more marginal (11 vs 16) due to 'overhead' and memory address issues.

  • Testing the Sony Clie NZ90 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by securitas ( 411694 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @01:16AM (#6220364) Homepage Journal


    We are testing the new Sony Clie NZ90 [sonystyle.com] which comes with a 2 Mega Pixel camera, built-in Bluetooth, Palm OS 5, wireless LAN slot, voice recorder and a 320 x 480 pixel display. We are testing it with the add-on 802.11b wireless LAN WiFi card. It records video in MPEG-4 and plays back MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 (among other formats) so I'm not exactly clear on what the fuss is about here.

  • 16mb usable??!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by snooo53 ( 663796 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @01:46AM (#6220460) Journal
    For $600? Are they nuts?! The thing I don't understand is why these companies are touting features like mp3 and now video playback... but have dismal amounts of memory!. I mean good grief, the visor I bought something like 4 years ago had 8mb of usable space!

    When I see a palmtop with a 2.5 or 1.5" hard drive inside it, then I might consider getting one with all those A/V features. Why is this so hard? I don't mind a palmtop as thick as an Ipod with similar battery life. In fact, it'd probably be better since many are pretty flimsy as it is. If 'real' mp3 players can incorporate a hard drive, why aren't we seeing this in palm devices?

    • Mulit-function: I have a zaurus, I have a mp3-cd player I used to use, now I use the zaurus. The Zaurus (one of the most expandable, and when it was released, nothing in the price range was as expandable with sd for memory and cf for any cf card) replaced the mp3-cd because the 128MB cf cards are easy to carry around. The cd player relatively is not, and it only does one thing. The CF cards while compared to the hard drives, are multi-function. Video, on the zaurus looks quite good, and using mplayer (which
    • For $600? Are they nuts?! The thing I don't understand is why these companies are touting features like mp3 and now video playback... but have dismal amounts of memory!

      Simple economics: because they want you to buy that $89.95 128 MB memory stick, sold separately.

  • I'm Quite Happy, Thank You (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aldurn ( 187315 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @02:01AM (#6220501)
    It's good to see the latest and greatest come out. It shows that the market's not dead. Granted, I don't ever see myself needing a 2MP camera on my PDA, nor do I even see the need for a color screen.

    So what?

    Someday, there may be a feature these contain that I just can't pass up. When that day comes, competition will have created the perfect PDA for me. For now, as odd as it is, I like the Newton.

    There's usually one post in every PDA stories about the Newton, and I figure I might as well be that post.

    Until I can get a PDA with handwriting recognition that WORKS WELL, and at least gives me some semblence of decent multitasking, I'll be sticking with my MP2100.

    PalmOS is nice: it does what it needs to do, and little more. It makes an excellent organizer, and it's even nice to have buttons on the device. And I'll agree, Sony's design is quite asthetically pleasing.

    But watching someone's Clié take its time drawing a single JPEG image is an amusing. And running programs like ICQ is still a futile endevor, because unless you want to manually poll the ICQ program, you can't use your PDA for anything but one task.

    The Zaurus is much nicer, except the current OpenZaurus/Sharp ROMs are about as stable as a deck of cards. Still, it's very refreshing when I've managed to break it to the point of Qtopia not starting to be able to pull up a console, use SSH, download the latest image to a flash card, and reflash my device.

    Windows CE, while multitasking, is the worst of the bunch. It's not fast like PalmOS or NewtonOS, it's not powerful like the Zaurus. It just... is. It's not intuitive (if you don't bring up the keyboard and type "Control-Q", you can't quit programs, and eventually the device will slow down,) handwriting recognition is the worst of the bunch (well, it's on par with the Zaurus, and no, the "Recognizer" in WinCE 3.5 doesn't work well at all,).

    As with the other platforms, I think that PDAs are in a state of transition. PalmOS 6 should be an excellent operating system, and the PDA companies know that. Right now, they're loading propriotary extensions into the operating system for their whiz-bang features, like the Clié's audio, the 320x320 resolution (which, IIRC PalmOS5 supports natively now,) and the camera.

    PalmOS 6 should be sweet, especially if they borrow liberally from the code they purchased from Be. The target system of BeOS was slower clock-wise than the top-end of the PDA market right now. The next PDA I buy, depending on how it turns out, may very well be a PalmOS 6-based device.

    For now, while these Cliés are nice, there's always something that's slightly better just hanging on the horizon, and the longer I hold out, the better it will be.
    • Windows CE, while multitasking, is the worst of the bunch. It's not fast like PalmOS or NewtonOS, it's not powerful like the Zaurus. It just... is. It's not intuitive (if you don't bring up the keyboard and type "Control-Q", you can't quit programs, and eventually the device will slow down,) handwriting recognition is the worst of the bunch (well, it's on par with the Zaurus, and no, the "Recognizer" in WinCE 3.5 doesn't work well at all,).

      You seem to be stuck in a bit of a timewarp w.r.t CE - when was C

  • Power requirements (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hussar ( 87373 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @02:45AM (#6220619) Homepage
    It is really interesting to me that neither the Sony product page nor the CNet article mention these device's power requirements or how long you can expect to use them before needing to recharge. When PDAs first hit the market, one of the selling points was how long you could go without changing the batteries. Then they became rechargeable, and for a little while the time between charges got some mention. Now, at least for these PDAs, it isn't mentioned at all.

    What brought me in mind of this was a Steward Alsop article [fortune.com] in Fortune magazine in which he notes that one of the hurdles to becoming truly wireless is the development of better mobile power sources. He neglects to mention the movement towards more efficient devices that is converging with efforts to find better power sources, but still he has a point.

  • What, no telephone for $600? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Sony Ericson P800 [sonyericsson.com] is a pda, phone and camera, running Symian OS.

    Why on earth would anyone buy a Clie?

    P800 has Bluetooth built in, memory stick...why are Sony doing such an inferior AND superior product at the SAME TIME?
    • The p800 is lackluster in comparison. The 80v is one the best integrated gadgets you'll ever see (that is, if it's like NZ90) - While it does stink a little to have to buy a SD to Memory Stick or 6 in 1 reader so you can load programs - the Sony Clies are feature rich and finally got a lot of the AIO I/O right. The universal remote controls are very nice, just select the brands + there's good range. The wifi access and web browser is BEYOND any other offering on a PDA (albeit an addon) The camera is very hi
  • =major suckage, imho.

  • I don't want a $600 uber-gadget, I want simplicity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by enkidu ( 13673 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @03:05AM (#6220663) Homepage Journal
    I don't need a $600 Gameboy wanna be. I don't need a crippled ipod. I don't need a video player for munchkins. I don't need a uber machine that does 6 things badly (and that I need to upgrade all together). I want something that will store and process information for me. Not media, INFORMATION. Notes, meetings, phone numbers, addresses, ideas, sketches, references, URLS, passwords (encrypted natch). For me, this information is still B&W text and graphics. I want
    • long battery life (~1 month)
    • tack sharp 320x480 B&W screen, good for outdoor, indoor and in-dark use.
    • a compact size (Palm V)
    • CF or at least dual SD slots.
    • built in usb port.
    I'd like
    • flash/static ram backup (so running out of batteries won't lose me all of my data).
    • a thumb-keyboard (if it is removeable or doesn't add bulk) with vim.
    • cheap I-net access (cell, WiFi, GPRS, GSM, I don't care).
    • maybe txt2speech capabilities, that would be cool.
    I don't want
    • battery draining color
    • battery draining uber processors (my Mac IIsi had 20MHz and I ran Mathematica on it fer chrissake).
    • an over-sized complex to use phone.
    • a un-ergonomic crappy lens digital camera.
    • half-assed MP3 playback
    • half semi-assed audio recording (unless it has automatic transcription, but we ain't gonna see that for at least 5 years.)
    • half semi-demi-assed video playback.
    I don't care if it's running Palm, WinCE or Linux as long as it doesn't crash more than once a month and boots up in less than 3 seconds. The closest thing is STILL the Handera 330 [handera.com] and it came out 2 years ago. I don't see progress, I see bloated, mediocre products designed with the mantra of "features good, more features better".
    • Not media, INFORMATION. Notes, meetings, phone numbers, addresses, ideas, sketches, references, URLS, passwords (encrypted natch). For me, this information is still B&W text and graphics. I want

      There isn't much difference between high-res B&W and color, at least if Palm supported ClearType (which it doesn't, unfortunately): you might as well use the color screen.

      And with the processing power you need to do encryption and PDF display, video rendering comes in for free.

      Sorry, but these Clies are p

  • video player for Palm (Score:3, Informative)

    by datrus ( 265707 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @04:19AM (#6220864)
    Check out MMPlayer [mmplayer.com] for a DivX/MPEG-1,2,4 player that works on regular Palms.

    David

  • Bluetooth (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ralphclark ( 11346 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @05:01AM (#6220966) Journal
    They can pile on all the features they want, but if there's no built-in bluetooth support then I'm not interested. Anyone else agree/disagree?
  • Sony:

    If you still want to buy toys from them, at least now you can't say you didn't know.

  • I've tried the Sony machines, the Windows machines, the Zaurus machines and you know what?

    They are years behind in terms of software. They certainly have impressive hardware specifications but the intelligence to make the best use of the hardware just isn't there. It's like giving a 400HP V8 supercar to a learner driver, all over the place. I reckon in another 5 years they may have something as usable as a Psion.

    I've gone back to one of these:

    http://www.psion.com/revo/images/Open_page.gif

    It's a Psion

  • Video is useless on a palm device. The first thing I did when I got my clie was get rid of the stupid movie player (or is that damned thing embedded in the os? I forget) and all of the sample stuff.

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