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61 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best Palm OS PDA, December 22, 2001
I spent months deciding which PDA to get. I wanted to see the second-gen Pocket PCs before I did anything. Ultimately it came down to reliability, bells & whistles, and cost. I'm the first to admit I love gadgets. So I was mightily tempted by the current crop of PocketPCs, particularly for their gaming ability. Face it: this generation of Palm PDAs--even the ones with the Dragonball 33 mhz processor like the Clie--can't compare to the 206 mhz 32-bit StrongARM-powered PocketPCs when it comes to animated gaming. The Clie's 33 mhz 16-bit CPU simply lacks the horsepower for realistic animation. The same goes for video. So if it's important to you to be able to play action games on your handheld or watch movies on a tiny screen, by all means get a Pocket PC. If you want to use your PDA for business, understand that Pocket PCs are still toys for adults. Business users should get a Palm OS PDA. And if you're going to get a Palm OS PDA, the Clie 610c (or 760c) is the way to go. This may sound like blasphemy to Clie fans--Sony is trying to position the Clie 6-and 7-series PDAs as multimedia machines to compete with Pocket PC. But they really can't compare in that regard for the reason I noted above. (You can listen to music on your 760c, though.) So why the Clie, with its Palm OS, instead of Pocket PC for business? After all, Pocket PCs will sync with your Windows apps, right? Pocket Outlook, Pocket Word, etc must be a more seamless match than Palm's 3rd party apps, right? Wrong. Pocket Outlook is a brain-damaged version of the real thing. Just try sync-ing subfolders. It's not gonna happen. Same with Pocket Word. You lose all your formatting. Meanwhile Palm OS has 3-4 different 3d party apps that sync with each program, and allow you to retain your subfolders and formatting. And these are just examples. The Palm business apps really are better--for now. Then there's reliability. The dreaded Blue Screen of Death should be all-too familiar to all Windows users. Guess what? Now you can have the Blue Screen of Death right in your Pocket. Imagine how much fun you'll have when you're on the road and your Pocket PC requires a hard reset and you lose ALL YOUR DATA and you can't restore it from your desktop because you're, as I said, ON THE ROAD. Pocket PC's are as unstable as their pre-Windows XP big brothers. In my view, they are not stable enough for serious business use. Palm OS, by contrast, is rock-solid. Cost is also a factor. Personally I can easily afford the [the price] of a 2nd-gen Pocket PC, but for what purpose? I would have a very expensive Gameboy Advance, and I would still need a REAL PDA for work. What really sets the Sonys apart from the crowd of Palm OS PDAs is their incomparable screens. The Clie 610c and 760c use the same screen technology as the Compaq Ipaqs--universally cited as the best in the Pocket PC world. And the Sonys posess even higher resolution than PocketPCs (320 x 320 vs 320 x 240). All the other Palm PDAs are still stuck with relatively dim 160 x 160 displays (OK, the Handspring Prism isn't dim, but it is still low-res). But the numbers don't begin to tell the real story. The 610c's display is bright with 64K colors, readable in daylight, and razor-sharp . You will never go back to a monochrome unit once you've used the Clie. Clie also has a jog-dial. It sounded handy before I tried it, but after using it: big deal. A non-issue. Clie also looks cooler than other Palm PDAs, but that's just my opinion. As for support, I confess to being among the very first PEG 415 users, as I ordered one direct from Sony the day it came out. The 415 has a 320 x 320 16-shade grayscale screen in a beautiful brushed aluminum body that is a bit over 1/2 as thick as a 6- or 7-series Clie. Unfortunately, the 415's screen is so dim it is almost unreadable in ordinary light, even with the (weak) blue-green backlight on. (...) As for expandability: you're pretty much limited to the memory stick. There is an MP3 player add-on for the 610c, but if you wanted MP3 you would have bought a 760c in the first place. The memory stick itself is excellent, and cost is now comparable to other flash memory. But if you want a GPS unit or some other specialized add-on, you'd better go with a Handspring. Battery life on the Clie 610c is excellent, particularly compared to Pocket PCs. I routinely use it for 2-3 days without charging it, and the battery life has always remained above 3/4. It would probably last over a week with a single charge. Construction is very sturdy. I haven't had a problem with dust under the screen as reported by some Ipaq users. The bottom line is, the Clie PEG 610c's multimedia abilities are oversold, but its beautiful display, Palm OS and apps, and compact size make it the best choice for a business user. Pocket PCs are undeniably better at multimedia, but they still aren't reliable enough for business use. My suggestion: give Microsoft a pass this time and check back in a year or two. By then Pocket PCs may be ready for prime time, or Palm may well have overburdened its simple, stable OS with a plethora of features in an effort to match Microsoft, making Palm OS just as unstable as Pocket PC. Either way, you'll be ready for a new machine by then, anyway. For now, though, Palm OS is the only real choice for business, and the Clie 610c is the best Palm OS PDA out there.
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