Cool PDA with extras~
Written: Feb 26 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: size, pixel, back light, rechargeable, battery life
Cons: 8mb, fragile, light and thin fonts.
The Bottom Line: Good unit with very high cool factor but can be better...
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| samimpl's Full Review: Sony CLIE® PEG-T415 Handheld |
I bought Sony Clie after doing some research on PDAs. I was first going for a PocketPC since they have much more features than palm os did but changed my mind after some research and thinking. I was going to buy older model ipaq from ebay since I was on a budget and didn't want to spend much money on an organizer. I soon found out that there was no end to how far I can take this portable pc thing. I liked the Pocket MS Office and faster cpus on the PocketPCs to run movies and gameboy games with an emulator. The older model on eBays cost about same as the color palms but I was getting a faster cpu, more memory, and more powerful tools(although lacks in number compared to Palm OS). I was about to get a PocketPC but then there was inner prompting... I was getting this for "organizer" purposes. Hmmmm... the movies and games are nice but they are extras. So what was important? Ease of use, battery life, and cost. Palm won on all the factors...
Well, after some research and looking around, I narrowed my choices to Palm Vx, Palm IIIex, Palm 505, Palm 515, Sony Clie SL10, SJ20, T415, and T615C. (not very narrow...) Well, I narrowed farther to Clie because of the Pixels, size, and the "look". I liked classy Palm 505, 515 but the cost were higher for what seemed like similar machines. I didn't like the fact that SL10 didn't have rechargeable feature built in like SJ20, so I passed on that since I didn't want to keep on replacing AAA batteries. T615C was more expensive and color. It had same design as T415 but with more memory and color screen, and of course higher price tag of about $50 on ebay. Preferred long battery life over color and thought 8mb memory should be more than enough. I mean even more expensive Palm models had 8mb. Well, now between SJ20 and T415... I chose T415 because of the look and cheaper price tag. So I got T415 as my PDA.
So how do I feel about my choice? Well, I regret slightly because of the memory size... 8mb seems bit small for me. I thought the memory stick expension would take care of that but I soon found out that I doesn't let me run applications with DB files. These DB files needed to be on the machine itself. So I can't run my dictionary or bible from memory stick. Pretty useless I thought... Only pictures, movies, and small apps can be stored on the memory stick. Still, let me be fair and mention this. You can store the apps in the memory stick and move them back to Clie to run and then move them to memory stick if you won't use them for long. This will save you some space on the machine regarding applications that you rarely use. The fonts people complain about is half true. I can see fine especially it I set the preference to bigger fonts. Still, it is not as good as the SJ20 model that my friend has... Well, now for what I do like. I really like the pixels. I like the fact that I can carry around picture on my clie. Even though it is black and white, it looks great! It actually looks like a photo rather than bunch of dots.(Now if it was color...) Well, the speed of apps are very good. The search on my bible is very fast and that is lot of text to go through... Shifts between applications well and I had no problems of the unit "freezing". The remote and movie features were fun to "play" with for awhile but "play" was all I did with them... What can I say about the organizer features of the T415. It's palm. It's great and easy to use. I also installed Pocket Quicken and it's a complete organizer! The look of the clie T415 gets attention from other PDA users especially with the aluminum casing that I got.(side note about the aluminum casing: Don't get it! Looks very cool but the unit moves around and it's HEAVY!) Needs a case since metal casing and the fact that it is very very thin makes it very fragile not like Palm IIIxe which is solid as a brick!
Now for my conclusion. I like T415 with many cool features and the "look", but I can't help "looking" at other models. I am still considering to change it for a SJ20 or T615C. Well, I guess I'll wait a year or two for the prices to be "just right".
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
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Epinions.com ID:
samimpl
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Reviews written: 12
Trusted by: 0 members
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