Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 Color Pocket PC (Slate Blue)

by Casio

Product Details

Product Manual [873kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 5 x 3.2 x 0.8 inches ; 7.8 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004VWM5
• Item model number: EM-500SlateBlue
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,557 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 4, 1999

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

The Cassiopeia EM-500, Casio's follow-up to its E-100 series of personal digital assistants, closely mirrors the E-115 but offers a few changes. The biggest change is the move to using MultiMediaCard (MMC) memory over the more standard CompactFlash memory slot. The postage stamp-size MMC cards offer needed memory expandability (as the EM-500 comes with only 16 MB of internal memory, compared to the 32 MB of the E-115), especially if you plan to use the EM-500 as a portable MP3 player--one of its many multimedia capabilities.

While MMC over CompactFlash limits the ability of the EM-500 to use many Pocket PC peripherals, we were willing to overlook that once we got a peek at the EM-500's gorgeous TFT screen. This very bright, very colorful (65,536 colors, to be exact) display shines beautifully when you're playing games or watching mobile video player clips, which run along at a respectable 15 to 20 frames per second with the EM-500's 150 MHz MIPS processor.

The thick EM-500 (about twice the thickness of the Palm Vx) offers standard Casio programmable buttons to bring up the menu, calendar, and contacts, as well as a navigational D-pad, which is great for gaming. In addition to functioning as a stereo MP3 player (when using the included headphones), the EM-500 also works as a voice recorder, allowing you to dictate reminders for yourself or voice messages to send with e-mail. Casio promises six hours of battery life, but we often were able to get seven or more as long as we left the backlight on medium brightness.

With its IrDA port, the EM-500 can communicate with wireless devices, and its USB connection provides speedy data transfer--even installing programs larger than a megabyte took only a few seconds.

Despite the limited memory and the lack of CompactFlash support, the powerful processor, excellent display, and long battery life make the EM-500 a competitive entry into the Pocket PC market. --J. Curtis

Pros:

• TFT color screen
• USB connection
• Good battery life
• Expandable using MultiMediaCard memory

Cons:

• Only 16 MB of internal memory
• No CompactFlash support

Amazon.com Product Description

The Casio EM-500 Color Pocket PC features a fast 150 MHz processor, convenient Microsoft software, and 16 MB of storage in a modern and durable body. It's also the first Pocket PC to feature the new MultiMediaCard with postage stamp-size memory cards with up to 64 MB of storage. The EM-500 comes with Microsoft Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Money, and Pocket Internet Explorer. You can synchronize the EM-500's Mobile Address Book with Microsoft Outlook on your desktop using the included Active Sync software (Outlook is also included on the CD-ROM). Download MP3 audio files from your PC using the fast USB connection and play them through the EM-500's built-in speaker using Windows Media Player. The 240 x 320 screen features 65,536 colors for multimedia viewing. The battery has a life of up to six hours.

What's in the box

• Cassiopeia EM-500
• Stylus
• USB Cradle
• AC Adapter
• Lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack
• CR2032 lithium battery
• Connector cable
• Pocket PC User's Guide
• Hardware Guide

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Palm-sized computing devices, December 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 Color Pocket PC (Slate Blue) (Office Product)

I rate this product with 4 stars. Nothing receives 5 stars, that would imply perfection, and no room for improvement.

It's hard to compare this with a Palm Pilot, because they're so fundementally different, but that is exactly what the target is. I have a Palm IIIxe, which may not be the top-of-the-line Palm, but is functional, and use this as a comparison to the Cassiopeia EM-500.

Cost: the Palm IIIxe is half the price of the Cassiopeia, but if you compare the Palm IIIc, then the price range narrows where it's no longer an arguement.

Size: the size is similar enough that any arguement of which is smaller/bigger is a lot of hot-air. The Cassiopeia is substationally heavier than the Palm.

Processor: people make a big fuss over processor speed. The Cassiopeia has a 150MHz MIPS processor. The Palm has an unknown speed 68k-based processor.

Screen: The screen is bigger than a Palm, and needless to say, it's color. It's very sharp and easy to read.

Sound: The Palm has no functional sound to speak of. It's capable of emitting beeps reminiscint of the Apple II.

Battery: The Palm here wins flatout. Lifetime on the Palm far exceeds the Cassiopeia. The Palm uses AAA batteries, and the Cassiopeia uses rechargable batteries.

Memory: The Palm again wins here. The IIIxe has 8mb of RAM, and the operating system is extremely efficent with memory allocation. The Cassiopeia has 16mb, and I've already started to run out of memory. I have a full KJV Bible installed on my Palm, as well as several other apps, and still have over 5mb of free memory. I installed a single 7mb MP3 on the Cassiopeia, and have no room left. Memory management for the Cassiopeia is bizzare - you select, via a slider, how much memory to allocate to storages vs. programs. I

Expansion: The only Palm-type product to offer reasonable expansion is the Handspring Visor. The Cassiopeia EM-500 does not use Compact Flash cards, but rather something called "MMC". The CF-style handhelds offer a wider range of expansion - such as modems, network cards, physical drives, and so forth. The MMC seems to limit me to multimedia storage expansion only.

Syncronization: Microsoft's ActiveSync is much better than HotSync. When you plug the Cassiopeia into the sync cable, the machine stays synced during the entire process. Also, the interface is nicer. If you want to install files/programs, you use an already familiar Explorer-like window to drag items into and out of the Cassiopeia. Updates occur async, so you can continue to use the Cassiopeia while syncs are happening.

Operating System: The Palm wins here. PocketPC Windows is very confusing, and the screen is incredibly cluttered. I would like if there were alternative OS's available for PocketPC, such as NetBSD.

Handwriting: this is hard to compare. Both products offer handwriting recognition systems, and also offer on-screen "soft" keyboards. The Cassiopeia was sometimes too fast to recognize my characters before I was done with them. I like the ability to see the on-screen results of my handwriting on the Cassiopeia. You can add several hacks to the Palm to do simiar, but it's not a base feature.

Third-party software: forget about it. The Palm has an enormous base of software applications.

Applications: The apps are similar across platforms, but I find the Palm versions of the apps easier to use. Everything is readily available at the touch of a single button. You may need to wrangle a few menus on the Cassiopeia to find what you really want.

Bottom line: this is a fine computer product. If you're interested in a personal organizer, I would stay towards the Palm Pilot. If you're interested in an alternative to laptops, with all the bells and whistles, the Cassiopeia is a good choice.

64 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great multimedia Pocket PC, September 15, 2000

By 

D. Verheul - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 Color Pocket PC (Slate Blue) (Office Product)

The Cassiopeia EM-500 looks like a pretty sweet deal. It can do almost anything the E-115 does, and it's smaller and faster. If you compare the EM-500 to the E-115, you'll notice that the E-115 has 32MB of memory, where the EM-500 has 16MB. Also, the EM-500 offers the multimedia card memory system, so memory can be easily expanded.

The EM-500 seems targeted at a younger market, with great multimedia capabilities (MP3, 240 x 320 TFT 65,536 color screen, excellent gamepad).

Its main competitor, the Compaq iPaq, offers more memory and speed, but less colors, and, most importantly perhaps, the keypad of the iPaq cannot register simultaneous clicks, which limits its gameplay capabilities.

If you want a good Pocket PC for both "serious stuff" and games and multimedia, the EM-500 seems the way to go. A fine product by Casio, with more memory I would have given it 5 stars.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best PDA, February 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 Color Pocket PC (Slate Blue) (Office Product)

I had done a lots of research and finally I bought the Cassiopeia EM-500. I love this unit and highly recommend the Cassiopeia EM-500 and Cassiopeia E-125.

There are so many reviews comparing palms and pocket PCs. Many of the reviews have missed, or are lack of two important factors: the color display ability and the screen display size. They are the major reason for me to pick EM -500.

The pocket PCs have color display ( Cassiopeia e-125 and em-500 have 65,000 colors, the ipaq has 4,096 colors). While all the palms are either black and white or grey scale, except the new visor color model. So if you want to see your photos taken by a digital camera, or movies, colorfull 2d or 3D games, then you would defiantly go for a Pocket PC. For the EM-500, the pictures are sharp, the colors are very rich, and the CPU speed is very fast

Pocket PCs have much bigger screen display and better screen resolution. The Palms use a hardware pat for letter input. This pat chops off almost 1/3 of the screen display. And the Pocket PCs have full screen display. It uses software for letter input so that you can turn the keyboard on and off. So with the Pocket PCs, they display bigger pictures, hold more lines for words, excel and books you're going to read.

Among the Pocket PCs, I tested the Cassiopeia EM-500, ipaq, and HP Jornada. The ipaq has 4,096 colors only. The more color, the better picture quality you can get.. So the ipaq is out of my choice. The Jornada seams running application slower. And the Cassiopeia runs much faster. And I personally like the look of EM-500. It looks sleek and sexy.

I pick EM-500 over E-125 because my digital camera uses MMC. I can just take out the MMC from my digital camera and put it to the EM-500 then watch the slide show. Otherwise I would recommend the E-125 which has more memory and uses CF card for storage, modem and network.