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Fellow Mutants, the next X is upon us. We shall rise up and head forth to the theaters and throw money at the capitalist Hollywood industry (or in my case the Cinemark movie monopoly center).
Now, time for the toy report. Things have been slow for me on the toy line. I've picked up most of what I want from wave 2 Armada figs (previously reviewed) and I have yet to find good wave 3 toys yet. As such this month's review will be a TechnoToy review.
Earlier this semester I searched around for a laptop type device for typing reports on. Well for my budget range I looked around and decided that a PDA (Personal Data Assistant or some-such) would do the trick. After scouring the Internet, Best Buy, Circuit City, and Comp USA I had narrowed my search down to a Palm type device. I fell for the Graffiti input system and the on screen keyboard for the WinCE devices just wouldn't cut it for me. That left me with a choice between a Palm, Handspring, or Clie. The Palms were nice and small, but fairly expensive (good B&W for 200). The Handsprings were prices just under the Palms and since Handspring was a spinoff (of a sort anyway) from Palm, I knew that they'd be good. Alas there were few Handsprings here in town for me to try out. Last we have the Sony Clie with a model reasonably priced (on sale) at $150 for the high end B&W plus a 128 meg memory stick. I ended up going with the Clie SJ-20. Bonus points to those of you who've been reading my previous month's reviews and already knew that this was my toy for the month.
Where to start? Owning a PDA is like owning a cell phone, it'll change your life if you let it. Well, lets start with the basics. As with all the other PDA's, the Clie comes with an address book, calendar, notepad, a 'to do' list, and a calculator. All of those functions are available as pre set buttons on the case. Other included applications are the Clie Demo, Clie Paint, gMovie, PG Pocket, and PhotoStand. The demo is self-explanatory and Clie Paint is similar to MS Paint. gMovie is provided by Generic media and plays video and audio (but the audio is fairly useless for me until I get an MP3 player for it). PG Pocket is Picture Gear Pocket and is a generic photo viewer that displays high quality pictures and links with Clie Paint for editing. PhotoStand is a slide show viewer/generator and could be used for power point, but I'm sure there are better ways for that. Both PG Pocket and PhotoStand are provided by Sony. Next we have a long list of loaded programs: Acid solitaire (demo), Bejeweled! (demo, bastages!), Memory stick utilities, Documents to Go, Mail, Mobipocket, powerOne, and WA Clock. Other programs, such as a thesaurus and a regional touring guide, come with it, but I've left those unloaded at the moment.
- Bejeweled - one of the most addicting Tetris rip-offs I've played yet. They restrict the demo by lengthening how long you have to wait after selecting to program to when it starts. The time increases the more you play.
- Memory Stick utilities - Very useful for using the memory stick. They allow you to use your Clie as a MS reader for your computer (when synched). They also allow you to move material from your internal memory to the stick's memory and back again. Also since all the Sony memory sticks are formatted the same, you can view pictures from your Sony Camera on your Clie and other nifty things like that.
- Documents to Go - What I bought this PDA for in the first place. The generic version that comes with this unit includes Word to Go and Sheet to Go. These act as basic versions of MS Word and MS Excel respectively. On Hot Sync the PDA saves updated or new files to your computer in the appropriate MS format, then it downloads updated or new files to the PDA and converts them to Docs to Go format.
- Mail - An email reader/composer. Dunno much about it as it doesn't currently sync with Eudora and therefore I don't use it.
- Mobipocket - a sleeper program in my case. It's an eBook reader. It comes with a support program that can download current news and reports. I however have been downloading free and reduced price books from Baen books. A variety of font sizes are available for viewing, making it easy to optimize for reading. I predict that paper books will begin to fade over the next 30 years or so as this technology becomes more prevalent.
- PowerOne - Another calculator. It has scientific, business, and everyday calculations such as a tip calculator built in. I don't use it.
- WA Clock - World Alarm Clock. It ties in with the integrated alarm in the PDA. You can set three time zones and four alarms that have variable repeat times. IE my PDA goes off at 2:50pm every Monday to wake me up from my nap so I can get to work on time.
All these programs can be interacted with via either on screen buttons, the Graffiti handwriting recognition system, or a displayable onscreen keyboard. While the Graffiti system takes a while to learn it seems to be the fastest way to input text with the stylus. It uses a modification of the alphabet where each letter can be represented in a single distinct pen-stroke. The Clie has a dedicated entry field for this, where the larger left half is for letters and the right side is for numbers.
The computer side of this set up is dominated by the Palm Desktop for Clie. This program runs similar to outlook minus the email functions. It keeps a copy of your address book, calendar, notepad, and to do list on your computer for easy access. Updates here are transferred to the PDA on the next Hot Sync. This program also controls your installations to the Clie.
The hardware here includes a Hot Sync cable that connects to your computer via a USB port and a power brick for charging the Lithium Ion battery. Comes with a fairly nice aluminum shafted stylus and built in storage slot. There is a removable flip cover for the screen that is weighted where it sits over the buttons so it will stay closed without actually clasping or magnets. Other external buttons are a scroll wheel that can be depressed for various functions and a back button. Currently I have the main four buttons configured in the default mode, with the exception of the to do list. That button now directly links to the Mobipocket program.
Accessories are key to any new toy though, and the Clie is no exception. The most important one so far is the collapsible keyboard. Folded the keyboard measures a measly 5 x 3.5 x .9 inches. It unfolds into a full size, full function laptop style keyboard. There is a little fold out stand at the top of the keyboard for the Clie to link up with. This has made typing reports a breeze and much more portable and less costly than a laptop! While this is obviously made by a 3rd party (as all the palm OS PDA's have this exact keyboard sans the connector), it is provided by Sony at a fairly reasonable price of $90. Other minor accessories include a semi hard carrying case made Targus. It has a Velcro style connection to the back of the PDA, making it easily removable, and the other half has a few pockets for business cards and a pen (price of ~$15). I also found a four-function pen for my PDA. Depending on how you hold the pen as you click it, it extends one of the following: 0.5mm Mechanical Pencil, Black Pen, Red Pen, Stylus. It is made out of a nice aluminum tube giving the pen a good weight (price $7).
A direct link to Sony's listing of the SJ-20 can be found at Sony Style. Other models of this PDA include Color Screens, MP3 players, and Digital cameras.
NEXT MONTH!!
Possibly a fan pick month. If you have a toy that you want reviewed and I can afford it I just might review it for you!
Feedback!
Please email me with your thoughts, opinions, rants, raves. Hate me, love me, want to kill me? Let me know. I'm doing this all for you guys anyway.
Email: novaprime@cox.net
Till next week: Aim low and keep yourself tucked in.
VF-XX - your local Headmaster
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