My little helper
Written: Dec 30 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: small, lots of storage, lots of accessories, great screen
Cons: I have not come into any yet
The Bottom Line: memory, rechargeable battery, screen resolution, optional equipment and programs... all of these things make this model heads above the competition!
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| bassoongod's Full Review: Sony CLIE® PEG-SJ20 Handheld |
I bought this PDA about a month and a half ago -after winning a sales contest at work for a $50 gift cert. to Best Buy. I had been tinkering with the idea of getting one of these after my mom got a 'Palm' brand PDA about a year ago as a gift. I never thought she could use one, but have not heard the end of how useful it was, so I decided it was time to acquire one for myself, especially since I had nearly a third of it covered with the g/c.
I looked at the available brands. I settled on clie for a few reasons. First off, I really liked the size and feel of the clie. The palm is a bit bigger (especially width-wise). The Clie is also thinner, which is nice because I can keep this model easily within my left front pocket (with my cell phone as well!). Another plus of the Clie over the Palm is the stylus. I like how thin and easy to grip it is, and one of my mom's biggest complaints about the Palm is how easily the large stylus comes out of the PDA and gets lots in her purse. Another great feature one the Clie that is absent on the Palm version is a side scroll device. With the Clie you can scroll though all the menus and select or go back without ever touching your stylus. A big plus for quick checks on the calendar or when looking at the address book for directions when driving.
Finally, and most importantly, is screen resolution. The Clie PDA by Sony has a screen resolution 3x better than their Palm competitor. THREE TIMES! With the Clie you can view photos and even small movies (very small) on your PDA. Paint is therefore more fun, and the screen is A LOT easier to read! The backlight is another major factor that aids your use of a Clie. The light behind the display is white. On a Palm it is bluish. That blue is hard to read in night, and makes it all but impossible to read in the day. With the Clie if you don't need the light, fine, and if you do you can read it day or night with no problems at all. The battery strength in the Clie is better as well... allowing you to use the light more often for the same charge as that you could with the almost worthless light on the Palm.
When deciding between the three basic models of the Clie (I didn't want to spend $400-500 before I knew if I was even going to use it) I decided on this mid-level model for a few reasons. For $50 less I could have gotten a model with 8 megs less memory (still 6 more than the basic Palm model) and non-rechargeable batteries. For $50 more I could have gotten a color screen. I decided I didn't want to burn my batteries as fast as they would with the color screen... and I didn't think I would be playing too many games on the PDA to make the $50 and the constant recharging worth it. I also decided that I wanted to be able to recharge the unit so I didn't spend a fortune on batteries because I still wanted to be able to use the light most of the time. The few extra megs of memory didn't really become a selling point to me right away because you can buy memory stick additions for $90 (128 megs in fact, so 8 for $50 seemed ridiculous as a selling point [though in fact it is worth it because of all that you can potential load onto the unit that a memory stick would be worthless for]).
So I decided to go for the SJ-20.
Man, I am happy I did. This unit is great! It comes with just about the same amount of stuff that the Palm does... though it has more graphics programs and fewer games.
What it does have in addition is a lot of extras you can't get on Palm. You can buy a digital camera for your PDA that can store photos either on the PDA itself or on a memory stick. The memory stick is another product not made for Palm brand PDAs.
It also had other options like full-sized keyboards (which I am going to use to take notes in class), mounts, chargers (car and home) and hotsync cables (just to name a few) which are also available on the Palm models.
All software available for Palm can work on the Clie. And the Clie is just as easy to use to beam info from PDA to PDA and to hotsync into any computer that has a USB port (and is running Clie software).
The unit has special quick keys to get to the address book, calendar, to do list, and memo pad (all of which you can change to other functions if you so desire)... and there is a ton of room to add other features like a FULL PDA FRIENDLY VERSION OF MICROSOFT WORD!!!! I don't believe this comes with the Palm brand. I could be wrong.
I am totally satisfied with my new organizer. Battery life is a joy, I have been at home in MN for two weeks, showing the PDA off to friends and family, and using it like usual, and I still have 37% of the battery left to last me another half week before I go home. Memory is no problem. As my mom has to get rid of stuff so she doesn't run out of space I still have over 11 megs of free space to go!
I also like the leather-like screen protector... much more flexible and durable than the Palm... the only thing I like about the Palm over the Clie is that palm has a window on its protective screen which allows you to see the time if you push a button... big whoop!
I would highly recommend this model to anyone - especially to students!
Clie is the way, and Palm is cliche!
p.s. if you buy it in the next month (Jan 2003) they will even send you a free leather case to carry it in! That is a $30 value!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 179.99
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Epinions.com ID:
bassoongod
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Member: Brian Chelberg
Location: Iowa City, IA & Minneapolis, MN
Reviews written: 106
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
Political Science Major at the University of Iowa
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