The first PDA I bought, which was a Windows CE driven Compaq, severely disappointed me. I have returned it to the store a week later. I have been using a $15 organizer since then. I have learned about Oregon Scientific (OSI) ECHO by a chance form a co-worker. The day after I have purchased the device.

It seems, that ECHO succeeded everywhere, where Xircom REX failed. It has a stylus. It is highly configurable and it is solid. And it is fast. Unlike REX, ECHO responds to your commands almost instantly. ECHO reacts instantly to every tap on it’s little screen.

The biggest negative so far is the quality of the software. It looks like OSI has outsourced some tiny company to develop PC software for echo. They did a pretty sloppy job. Synchronization is not extremely easy: although you can type in stuff directly into the software, uploading your Microsoft Outlook data to echo requires export and import of data from Outlook to ECHO’s application. Hopefully, this software will be updated soon.

Overall, ECHO is a great alternative to REX and even PALM platforms, unless you enjoy playing games on the latter. ECHO’s price/functionality ration is unbeatable. It has everything you might possibly need for $69.




Recommended: Yes