Customer Reviews

Sharp Wizard OZ-590A Electronic Organizer

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(29)

 

 

First and foremost, this product is NOT for people who are -
1. Looking for the 65K or more colorful display.
2. Looking for E-mail synchronization.
3. Looking for wireless connectivity or surfing the net.
4. And finally looking for MP3 playing or huge data storage etc.

That said, this product is VERY USEFUL for people, like me, who -
1. Do NOT want to spend a lot on features that we will rarely use.
2. Do NOT want to worry about charging their units every half a day so as to not lose data (this pda runs on 1 alkaline battery and hence, we just change it every month at the most).
3. Want to just get organized with their basic data such as contact numbers, addresses, emails, urls, memos, to-dos, anniversaries, reminders, expenses etc.
4. Want to use a very simple interface and yet have all the necessary stuff we need.
5. Do NOT care whether they input their data through graffiti or an on-screen keyboard (this PDA does not have graffiti or any hand-writing technology).

I like the touch sensitivity levels and the ease-of-use. It is very light-weight and very slim and small.

I am a busy pastor who constantly changes hats and needed a better system to stay organized. The Sharp OZ-590A did the job.

The calendar allows you to schedule appointments. By writing the appointment time for 15 mintues before the acutal appointment and setting the alarm beeper, it is a great reminder. It has a clock, and lets you write "to do" lists. The enclosed softward makes it easy to synchronize Sharp OZ-590A with Microsoft Outlook. You can write a list of addresses and phone numbers with the mini-keyboard on the Sharp OZ-590A or using your computer with Microsoft Outlook. By connecting the Sharp OZ with the enclosed cable to your computer, the two will synchronize one another. If you have a Mac, I do not think this would work.

The only drawback is that sometimes after synchronizing it freezes up; this is remedied by removing and then replacing the battery. It takes a second. Then you have to check to the clock. If you do not do this quickly, you might have to reset it.

This really does the job for me. It is smaller than palm pilots.
It's great to have all the addresses and phone numbers you want on your person, to be able to schedule appointments and set reminders. This is a good deal. The used, reconditioned version is even a better deal if they are still available.

I got the Sharp Wizard because I just wanted a simple way to organize my calendar and to-do list without spending tons of money on a bunch of functions I didn't need and won't use (aka a Palm Pilot or Blackberry).

In the beginning I was pleased with this product. But over time I noticed that it has some serious flaws in the way in synchs up to microsoft outlook. It duplicates tasks and meetings, erases some meetings and keeps others, and sometimes things you've added to the Wizard won't show up on Outlook after you've synched it.

It's a nice little product if you're not thinking of hooking it up to a computer - once you do that though it becomes more of a pain than anything. Not only that but recently I've found that a synch will succeed about once every five tries. Otherwise it just sits in "preparing schedule" mode for literally 20 minutes before the synch is terminated by the system.

Folks just spend the money and get something better. I give it 2 stars because it's easy to use and the layout of the functions is simple. However the task list slips out of "date due" order all the time and just lists them in seemingly random order. There's no way to sort tasks other than "done" or "pending". If you sort by date in outlook it rarely shows up that way on the Wizard. Also schedules on the wizard are listed by day - but each day doesn't show the date on it. So if you're looking at several days worth of meetings you can't tell what day of the week you're looking at.

Lastly - the memory just isn't enough. I've had the unit about 4 weeks and haven't put that much in it and already it's down to 75% free space. That's just not enough.

I would not recommend this product.

I was looking for a small, cheap electronic organizer that would sync with my Outlook calendar on my work computer. This fits the bill perfectly. I paid $11 for a refurbished Sharp 0Z-590A and am very pleased. It is very thin, lightweight, and fits in my smallest purse. I now have access to my calendar at all times, a necessity given I have to keep track of myself, my husband, and two children's schedules. It took me about 2 hours to set up the software and sync feature because the tech guy and I did not have the adaptor plug all the way snapped into the Sharp unit. It looked like it was all the way in, but needed to go another little bit before my computer detected the device. Without this problem it would have taken me about 30 minutes.

I highly recommend the Sharp organizer if all you want is to carry your electronic calendar with you, and a few phone numbers, e-mails, calculator, etc. But be warned I think it would be hard to have this device as your primary entry tool for an electronic calendar. The read-out for the daily schedule is small, and difficult to understand. It just lists times and description, without the date. You have to know what date you are looking at, and to do so you have to switch back and forth from calendar mode to schedule mode. It is fine if you just occasionally need to check a date, but I would go with something better if you will constantly be updating your calendar on the portable unit.

Also, I had no problem with storing e-mails on the portable unit, but decided not to since it used a lot of memory (I have a lot of e-mails, too).

I have been using this PDA organizer and hand-held electronic phone book for more than a year and have found it excellent in every way.

It has run on the same battery since August 2004. Having instant access to my schedule and phone list has proved a life saver.

Having said that, I do NOT use the sync function, which is not compatible with MAC or Linux computers. I did not need more than 8 megabytes of memory and did not want a unit that could connect to the internet.

I didn't want to spend a fortune on a fancy electronic gadget with multiple bells and whistles. Even this unit has far more features than I need to use--email, calculator, anniversaries, and a world clock.

For simple folks who do not need computer synchronization, this unit is tops, at the right price. Oh yeah, and it doesn't eat batteries.

Except for the fact that the bottom buttons on the screen stopped working, and I was no longer able to get to the menu without pressing the back button, I am very pleased with my SHARP OZ-590. I was able to send it to Romax because of the one year warranty that the PDA has and got a complete replacement for it, and I am very happy now, so if you have problems with it, just call SHARP and they'll tell you exactly what you need to know, because it seems a lot of people on here don't like it because it doesn't seem to work after a while. I've only had my new one for two days, but my last one lasted a month.

As for the PDA, it's a great little organizer. For me, I'm a high school student about to take on Senior, and I can easily forget school assignments and come to school empty handed because of forgotten homework. But if your a busy person, this one sure fits the needs. With the menu screen, it makes you feel as if you're using an expensive PDA with the well low price of $50.00. I was astonished, and immediately purchased it. A lot of us really don't have the money to be spending 300 to 400 dollars on a PDA with internet when you just need one that you can easily enter the assignment you need and even with an alarm that warns you when you need to do so.

I would suggest reading the handbook. When you have trouble understanding exactly what you're entering in, just look into that. And for the people who have already purchased it, I also noticed that a lot of people are complaining about the fact that it's hard to see the screen in any light. I used to think that too and just went under a dim light each day so I could see with the glow in the dark light which is very useful at night when you need to enter in something fast. Well here's the trick. Click menu twice on the screen, and go to Set Up. There, you'll find a writing on the screen that says "LCD Contrast". There, you can lower and dim the screen background anyway you like it. I learned by browsing around the neat little thing.

It may seem frustrating at first (for me it was too) but once you get the hang of using it, and typing in things with the pen that pops off the top of it, you'll be able to remember things a lot easier than before. Don't bother spending almost half a grand on an expensive PDA. Get something that's as simple as one of these. You won't regret it.

After missing an important meeting, I went out and bought this unit. It syncs perfectly with my Outlook Calendar which should help me remember meetings. It functions very well for what it is designed to be. I wasn't willing to spend $700 for what I need this unit to do. And this unit delivers!

I recently purchased the Sharp OZ-590A at a local office supply chain for $49.95 and it did exactley what I needed to do. I am a pool service and repair contractor and I needed an organizer to store all my customers contact info and addresses, along with some of my suppliers info as well. I set the date and clock on the unit, plugged it into the supplied USB cable and downloaded my Outlook contacts info. It worked flawlessly! It even downloaded the notes entered with each contact. All your Outlook info such as contacts, appointments etc. will download into it or you can upload from the unit to Outlook as well. It gives you home,office,fax and mobile phone numbers as well as email address too. It has a calender, appointment scheduler, anniversary & birthday reminders and evan a language phrase book and translater which you can choose not to download from the CD rom if you wish.You can even download your emails and read them on the go. If like me, you just need a basic organizer for contact info and schedule reminders, this unit can not be beat! Recommend highly.

I recently bought this PDA for 49.99 since my (paid $120 and less than one year old ) palm zire 31 screen started acting up. This is exactly what I was looking for since I only use a PDA for contacts and storing personal info.

I was a bit upset initially since the sharp did not come with a s/w, like palm, to do data entry on PC (other than outlook) before syncrhonizing - since I had a large amount of memo data that had to be entered into the PDA. But later, I found out that the outlook notes entries go in as memos into the OZ590A - which worked out great. I was able to enter all my memos as notes in outlook in addition to contacts and syncronize it with the PDA.

Also, unlike palm Zire 31 which I believe comes with a 90 day warranty, Sharp OZ590A comes with a 1 yr warranty.
Cons: The screen area could have been made a bit bigger by reducing the size of touch pad area.

I gave up a couple of times on trying to sync this with my PC, but in one review here (thank you so much) a person mentioned that the clock has to be set to the same time as the PC. After that it's simple:
*Set the time.
*Load the software on the PC.
*Plug in USB, then organizer; power on organizer.
*Auto detect serial port.
*Download database, sync with Outlook, etc.
I believe that was all I had to do and it works flawlessly. Hopefully this will help others, don't give up on this handy, inexpensive organizer until trying this.

My four star rating instead of five is only because I don't use Outlook Express and a couple of the organizer's features...