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His claim was that instead of taking 25-30b per record, the Treo 650 was now taking 512b per record. This is a lie. The addresses book included on PalmOne devices does NOT create an individual DB for each entry. If this numbskull on the forums had actually transferred his addresses the way he claimed he had, his addressbook PDB would have been, at most, only 511b larger than it was on the Treo 600.

Sorry to disagree, but you're wrong! ;-)

You should know that indeed the PalmOS Address Book program doesn't create an individual DB for each entry, as you judiciously wrote, but what it does is create an individual record in the (unique) AddressDB.pdb database. And the problem is that EVERY RECORD in a database needs its own 512 bytes memory space. That's why a database with, say, 2000 contacts of each 140 bytes would require approximately 300KB of RAM on a device with volatile memory, and around 1 MB on a device with non-volatile memory... Of course, the smaller each individual record, the bigger the loss when transfering the file to NVFS. The DateBook database has smaller records (in the 10 to 30 bytes, I'd say) than the Address Book, so the impact will be greater on the DateBook than on the AddressBook.

On the other hand, the problem is less crucial for applications with resources, for which the typical "bloat" when switching to the NVFS is "only" around 35%.

Anyway, it's already been answered by PalmOne here: http://kb.palmone.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE?New, Kb=PalmSupportKB,ts=Palm_External2001,case=obj(352 22)

Dude, the internet is your friend. You can use it to look up all sorts of interesting information. The reason why you can't figure out how to get Graffiti to work on a Treo is because Treos don't support Graffiti. (Well, according to those official specifications they don't.)

Why would you want to write messages when you can simply speak them?

Dude, it's time to update the mascot. How about a new Treo 650 running Tcl/Tk, or if you really want to stick with Texas, a new Dell Axim X50? I'd recommend the 520 MHz ASUS MyPal A730 (apparently comes with "engineering calculator) running Tcl/Tk, for optimum number crunching and programing ability, but the Treo is doestic, which I imagine is important to Thomas Jefferson High. I think everyone in your metro area needs a break from Texas.

http://www.palmone.com/us/products/handhelds/zire2 1/

The version of VersaMail that came with my T3 -- 2.6.1 -- can be used with IMAP/s. In the account setup screens, it's in the 'additional options' section, underneath the port number settings: "Use secure connection (SSL)". Having accessed a couple of accounts that way, I can report that it's worked fine for me.

The new Treo seems to come with version 3.0 of VersaMail. I assume it has at least the same capabilities as the version I have, though the page about the Treo's version says only that it can "get and send mail from SSL mail providers like Comcast." Not the first time Palm's specs have been short on detail, unfortunately.

It seem that Sony-Ericsson's hybrid phone-pda (P900 / P910) is more powerfull than Treo 650. I don't know about SE's CPU capabilities but _AS_ hybrid-phone it's much more usefull because of touchscreen and pretty imporoved Symbian OS. You can compare by yourself..
SE P910
Treo 650

memory: 23MB user-available stored non-volatile memory (22MB multi-lingual)

the new Tungsten has over 150 megs of memory while the new treo only has 23? for all the web surifng, emailing, and pictures that people will take, 23 megs doesn't sounds like nearly enough for internal memory that is. Still a really cool product.

Now it can't compete on storage space, I admit, but my palmone treo 600 has been my exclusive portable music player for about 6 months now. Combined with the pocket-tunes software and a sd memory card, the treo 600 becomes a rather fancy mp3, wma, wav, and ogg player. In addition to that, it's also a cell phone, plays games, browses webs, etc. You can buy a 1gb sd card for about $80, and the pocket-tunes software is $30. The phone itself is only $350 with a contract from the evil phone company of your choice. If you get their unlimited data plans, then you can stream your favorite shoutcast streams straight to your phone.

Ever since I bought this phone, my archos jukebox 6000 has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

If you don't want the phone you could always get the tungsten t5. Also be sure to check out the yet unreleased treo 650.

Now it can't compete on storage space, I admit, but my palmone treo 600 has been my exclusive portable music player for about 6 months now. Combined with the pocket-tunes software and a sd memory card, the treo 600 becomes a rather fancy mp3, wma, wav, and ogg player. In addition to that, it's also a cell phone, plays games, browses webs, etc. You can buy a 1gb sd card for about $80, and the pocket-tunes software is $30. The phone itself is only $350 with a contract from the evil phone company of your choice. If you get their unlimited data plans, then you can stream your favorite shoutcast streams straight to your phone.

Ever since I bought this phone, my archos jukebox 6000 has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

If you don't want the phone you could always get the tungsten t5. Also be sure to check out the yet unreleased treo 650.

Now it can't compete on storage space, I admit, but my palmone treo 600 has been my exclusive portable music player for about 6 months now. Combined with the pocket-tunes software and a sd memory card, the treo 600 becomes a rather fancy mp3, wma, wav, and ogg player. In addition to that, it's also a cell phone, plays games, browses webs, etc. You can buy a 1gb sd card for about $80, and the pocket-tunes software is $30. The phone itself is only $350 with a contract from the evil phone company of your choice. If you get their unlimited data plans, then you can stream your favorite shoutcast streams straight to your phone.

Ever since I bought this phone, my archos jukebox 6000 has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

If you don't want the phone you could always get the tungsten t5. Also be sure to check out the yet unreleased treo 650.

looking at Palm, iPAQ, and iPod sizes

• SL-C3000: ? (screen: 3.7), 10.5oz, $lots
• Zire 31: 4.4 x 2.9 x 0.6, 4.1oz, $149
• Zire 72: 4.6 x 2.95 x 0.67, 4.8oz, $299
• Tungston E: 4.5 x 3.1 x 0.5, 4.6oz, $199
• Tungston T5: 4.8 x 3.1 x 0.6, 5.1oz, $399
• Tungston C: 4.8. x 3.1 x 0.7, 6.3oz, $399
• iPAQ rz1715: 4.48 x 2.75 x 0.5, 4.23oz, $280
• iPod 20GB: 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.6, 5.6oz, $299
• iPod mini 4GB: 3.6 x 2.0 x 0.5, 3.6oz, $249
• 1GB SD (for palms): $75

The picture makes it look like it is quite thick ... I wonder how it will compare to the above.

SD memory for palms is rapidly improving; soon, larger capacities will be cheaper, making a $250 1GB+ palm smaller and better than this toy.

(note, I have posted on this before)

How you might ask? Something is portable when I can:

1. Take it with me-Because of all these features, the devices are getting bigger and not necessarily smaller. Do we need two expansion slots? My laptop has 2 expansion slots (PC Card), couldn't a palmtop get buy with one?
2. Use it after I take it with me-The original Palms could run weeks without a battery replacement and these new palmtops are proud of the number of HOURS the allow you to use the device. How portable is it if you feel you have to take an AC Adapter with you if you plan on being somewhere doing something, God forbid, all day long.
3. Replace it after I drop it from when I took it with me-It is a PALMtop. Things fall out of palms. What is with the price of these things. I have seen people putting a $800-$900USD (depreciated value) laptop carefully into a padded laptop case while they are less careful than these new palmtops that cost $300-$600USD. The prices are getting closer and closer together. Portable to mean means that I can whip the thing out of a shirt pocket, use it and toss it into whatever gym bag I have next to me or wear it on my belt (given the width of doors in the US and my girth this must be very frightening for my Zire) which I would never do with even a very small laptop.

I consider my Zire 31 the better of the devices. I have an expansion slot, it is as small or smaller than the first palmtop I owned, I can go up to a week without needing a charge given normal usage and if (when) I break it, I need to spend only another $149USD to replace it. These new palmtops are just smaller laptops, not more advanced palmtops.

It would be interesting to see some companies who are not video game makers or not console game makers get together and do a DS for adults marketing campaign. Perhaps go as far as for Palm (or I'll say it again) or a reborn Visor to license the DS from Nintendo and just change the case and the box and bundle PalmOS cart with it rather than Metroid. Maybe incluse a thicker stylus for larger adult ahands and a nice leatherish case or something too. Sell applications for it via their website to wireless load onto your DS, and get other companies in on it to make some "Rated: M" games. :P

True, although how often do you replace a battery?

2. Sometimes the palm OS will crash and there will be a reset button on the touch screen but it's so locked up you can't hit it, and the phone's power button won't work either so you have to leave the screen open until the battery completely dies.

Unscrew the tip of your stylus and stick it in the hole in the back of the PDA marked reset. This will give you a soft reset. In order to get a hard reset hold down the power button by the antenna while doing this for about 20 seconds and then release it. A dialog box will appear which will allow you to clear all data on your PDA.

3. This phone's SMS doesn't work with Sprint's network so the keypad is only really useful for managing the phone book.

The SMS or lack thereof sucks on the Treo 300. If you want to use SMS you're pretty much consigned to buying Treo300SMS ($19.95).

4. Treo 300 doesn't have built in modem software like my old Kyocera 6035 so I can't hook it up to my laptop and dial up to anything. I might be able to use Sprint's vision software but I'm not sure if there are additional charges for that.

True. You have to buy PDANet ($34.00) which will let you use Sprint's vision service and download all the data you want to your laptop/desktop.

5. It doesn't use the standard audio jack for the headset. I thought my phone was broken until I discovered there was a special headset for it. I'm not sure what the difference is. It's still mono with a mic. I can't imagine what different wiring patterns there would be.

It's a smaller form factor and the wiring allows for a button connected to your headset which does things like allow you to hang up the phone. It does kinda suck they didn't use standard size adaptors but headsets aren't too expensive these days.

6. Battery life isn't great.

Yeah this is definitely true. Especially when your battery starts to wear out after a year or so. I got a little gadget which plugs in and allows you to charge the PDA with 4 rechargable AA batteries. It comes in handy when I start running low on power after a lot of LCD/radio use.

7. No bluetooth! (I don't think the Treo 600 has it either.)

True

8. I can't sync it up with Mozilla Sunbird! (yet) but this is no fault of Palm's I suppose.

Hopefully the Mozilla people will add this feature soon.

9. It seems like I have to go into sprint and get PRC updates more often than I did with other phones. This might be a sprint thing I'm not sure.

AFAIK there is one ROM update for the Treo 300 if that's what you're referring to but I heard mixed reviews for it so I didn't install it although I'm not sure if there is any data to back up the claims I read on the internet. I heard data throughput was marginally improved at the cost of more battery use and decided on that basis not to fix what wasn't broken.

10. It's not a very bring screen.

Yes the screen is hard to read in direct sunlight. It's nowhere near as bright as the 600.

As a note, the Palm Tungsten T5 was released today. Since this is a Newton story, I won't go into details, except to say that the T5 has a lot of stuff and costs less than $600.

XDA Keyboard
PocketPuTTY
The XDA from O2.
The XDA is a PocketPC with a GPRS capable mobile phone built in. Not sure if it's available outside the UK but I'm sure something similar is. I think there may be an iPaq with similar functionality.

Zire 21 is pretty close to that.

Why don't they just make a screen that can change size.. so when you want a tiny pda you have it, and if you wanna look at big spread sheets or watch movies you just have to expand the screen..

You mean, like this??? The T3's been around for almost a year now, it's not like it's new technology!

You mean something like this?

This is a late reply, so maybe you won't read this, but still... How about the Socket Communications SDIO Scan Card?

You're right, it is absurd to directly compare a laptop to a PDA and vice versa.

I will say, however, that I can and do watch MPEG & AVI videos and even full DVD movies on my Tungsten|T3. I put the video (DVDs transcoded using dvd::rip to ~400MB XviD AVIs w/96kbps MP3 audio @ ~320x240 resolution) on my 512MB SD card and watch it using MMPlayer. Works pretty damn good actually, especially in widescreen. I stick a few on my 20GB Neuros and load 'em up whenever I want using a portable card reader and whatever PC I happen to be at.

Also, portable keyboards, like the Stowaway work well and allow quick entry and retaining maximum portability. I had one for my Prism and used it a lot during meetings. I have yet to need one for my T3 since I don't do a lot of data entry any more and the virtual qwerty keyboard is sufficient for what I do (though I long for the IBM ATOMIK layout I had on my Prism).

Many people can and do "pick up" grafiti quickly. I think it took me about 1 hour to get the general hang of it and maybe 2 days to be really comfortable and proficient... Grafiti2 is even easier! Of course, I still prefer tapping out letters on a virtual keyboard; or better yet, using my stowaway (when I had it) for a lot of typing, such as word processing with WordSmith.

Get a Power To Go and you can recharge while mobile. I frequently use it to keep my PDA fully charged, so that I can leave without worring that I have enough of a charge.

It's also great when traveling; you can watch a few full length movies or listen to MP3s all day on your PDA, without a cord.

Here is a nice full review from PalmInfocenter. It goes into full details and testing of the new SDIO Wireless card from PalmOne.

Some have asked how is this different than the SanDisk SDIO Wireless card for Palm that was released a short time ago. This description from SanDisk explains that its card is only for the Palm Zire 71 and products using recent versions of MS PocketPC. The new PalmOne card supports the Zire 72 and Tungsten T3, which the SanDisk card does not (apparently due to driver compatibility issues).

I own a PalmOne Tungsten E, which is the business value model, and there is not wireless support via SDIO cards, and doesn't look to be one available due to the power constraints of the Tungsten E model. Apparently, there have been some tests run with the SanDisk card on the Tungsten E, and it will work, but long-term effects on the SDIO slot have not been studied, and there could be damaging effects on the unit. Tungsten E users that want some sort of wireless connection should check out the Enfora Wireless Portfolio Case which seems to be the only wireless connection available for the Tungsten E.

Personally, I don't need wireless via my PDA since I already have a laptop and wireless card, but I know it is a nice feature, and on a future PDA I would want wireless to be available.

XP, even the pro release, is designed for the home and small business user, at most. It's not a robust server solution, Billy G's bangers have other products for those uses. If you're 1337 enough to max out the SPI algorithm, changing the security settings won't be but a thang.

Aside from a hardlock issues (whose problems ultimately point to the authorization/security software, not the OS), I haven't seen anything more than a little grumbling for the small business types I've upgraded. The sense of security (pun intended) I get from a more real firewall being in place for them more than outweighs the costs.

If you're one of the 30 or so Tablet PC users out there, the Lonestar package in the upgrade (just for the T crowd) makes the upgrade a no brainer-- almost a Win 3.11 to Win 95 kind of experience, moving the look and feel away from a Palm experience and off into its own realm.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I own (and love) a Treo 600. Got it for $400 on eBay; the best $400 I've ever spent. I love being able to SSH, send and recevie email, and log onto AIM from my phone! However, online wireless content is severely lacking.

My worst pet peeve about the wireless world in general is that there just isn't enough content out there designed for mobile devices. Ever tried to load movies.yahoo.com on a Treo? Even at 144K speeds (twice as fast as a 56K modem), the movies.yahoo.com page takes forever to load because it's a 250K+ page. How about citysearch.com? Also horribly bloated.

I have Small Sites set up as my home page on my Treo, but most of the sites it links to are outdated, toast, or horribly broken. For instance, Yahoo! Movies is on there, but is often broken ("Page not found", anyone?) Citysearch or a comparable site doesn't even make the list.

Why can't I log on, type in my zip code, and get movies, restaurants, maps, and driving directions from my Treo? That's 90% of what I need WAP for. But the "portal" sites seem like an artifact of the dot-com boom -- missing or outdated information, or whole pages that just don't work.

Yahoo/other portal companies, are you listening? Please create a WAP or "wireless-web"-capable interface for me (and the thousands of others like me who know how frustrating it is to load a 200K page on a Treo or similar device.)

I have even transcoded entire DVDs down to ~400 MB using dvd::rip, put them on my 512 MB SD card and have watched the entire movie on my PDA in Landscape widescreen. The resolution is excellent for a PDA and the 400 MHz X-Scale CPU is very quick. Battery life is OK, but with the BoxWave miniSync (w/Car and Wall adapters) I never worry about it.

The best part is the price of my setup:
$300 PDA
$80 Ericsson T68m BlueTooth Phone
$99 512 MB SD Card
$40 BoxWave miniSync + Accessories
$40 Iambic Agendus Pro
$40 SnapperFish SnapperMail Standard
$50 SplashData SplashWallet
$35 Mapopolis 1-year North America w/o GPS Support
$30 BlueNomad WordSmith
$15 MMPlayer
$12 ZLauncher
$10 PDAMill Solitaire
$0 OliveTree BibleReader+
$0 BigClock
$0 MyCheckbook
$0 HandyShopper
$0 HandZipperLite
$0 IconMgr
$0 SeaTraffic
$0 TuSSH
$0 upIRC (limited shareware)
$0 Warfare, Inc. (shareware demo)
====
$751

I actually paid $611 total for all the above because I purchased many of the software items listed above long ago for my previous PDAs, but the above is what someone would pay to buy it now.

I recently purchased a Treo 600 (combination Palm and cell phone) and love it. It actually takes up less pocket space than the Palm Vx I replaced it with, and I've come to use it almost as a wireless laptop replacement. I don't use the built-in camera too often, although it has occasionally been useful for taking and emailing photos to people while on the road.

Your mileage may vary, but integration has been quite good for me.

Clearly you haven't seen the Palm One Treo 600: http://www.palmone.com/us/

As I've owned a Zaurus 5500, Tungsten T3, and currently own a HP iPAQ 4155, I definately have to give the "coolness," "gadget," and "power" to the iPAQ hands down.

User replaceable battery (one of the issues with the Tungsten), 400 MHz XScale processor (whole lot more powerful than the 5500), integrated Bluetooth (more than the Zaurus has) and WiFi (more than the T3 has) and with a couple of third-party apps to "fix" the annoying things about the Pocket PC operating system I'm most definately in love with this iPAQ...

I'm sorry, the handwriting recognition on the Zaurus sucks (Decuma OnSpot for PocketPC, OTOH is able to decypher my hardly intelligable chicken-scratch) and my fingers are fat enough that trying to use the thumb keyboard is annoying at best. WiFi, while not essential in a PDA, is damn nice (access to the fileshares on the Windows network at work while doing things where a laptop isn't readily accessable but I'm in WiFi range is schweet) and gives me the ability to use Pocket Putty to ssh into my fileserver at home while sitting on the couch.

The Zaurus has a cool "geek" factor, but really, I got tired of the shitty quality of the PIM apps and fighting with the device to try and get it to sync got old after about 3 weeks.

You need to check out the Treo 600

Cheers
VikingBrad

Having the iTMS in my pocket is a groundbreaking concept.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but no, it's not a "groundbreaking concept". I've been doing nearly the same things for the last 8 months, using my Treo 600, a 512mb SD card, and Pocket Tunes. I can download mp3s from the web, play ~130 songs from the SD card, or stream shoutcast radio.

It's actually superior to Apple's "groundbreaking concept", because you're not locked into Apple's proprietary iTunes/AAC/DRM/Riaa-loving bullshit.

So, yeah. Looks like Apple's playing catch-up on this one; although I guess if they repeat "WE'RE FIRST@!!!!!!!11!1oneone" enough, everyone will believe it. Just like they did with the ipod.

There is a great deal of chatter about how Duke is so stupid as to fall for Apple's marketing and this thinly vailed disguise to get the students buying iTunes and so on.

Let me give a different perspective. The high school I went to (yeah it was private but I read /. every day so you tell me if you think I was in the 'in crowd') was the first in the US to distribute Palm PDAs to incoming Freshmen. The idea was that they would be able to keep organized, download class schedules, take quizes, etc. (read more). This was seen by some as just a way to get local media attention and promote the school.

But it really did help the students. Sure you can beam stuff and play games and otherwise goof off with the device, but it also helped the students stay organized and keep their digital documents with them when they need them.

Now I'm not saying the iPod is going to help Duke students graduate in 3 years, and there are huge differences between the iPod and a PDA, but for digital arts students who need to work on a project outside the studio, or the Comp Sci student who wants a backup of the source for their thesis, there are applications outside the music realm.

Not to mention, this huge roaming profile rumor that one will be able to keep their user profile on an iPod, and when connected to a Mac, at home or on campus, log into their user account with their background and preferences, desktop files, user directory files, iCal calendar, address book contacts, Safari browser bookmarks, etc.

Now THAT would make huge sense on a campus setting.

I'll turn this around and say "at least now I can justify the PalmOne Tungsten C. Why not use an OS actually designed for handhelds?

Love,
Letter

I think anyone that tried to convince a jury that I shouldn't be allowed to watch a movie I bought on a device I bought would be laughed out of court.

I see this current activity as damage control, public relations, and possibly a backdoor into monitoring/ratings. After all, if they can show that x people watched the movie on their portable player, and were forced to view the commercial attached to it, they can get revenue from that commercial.

320x240 is great if you're comparing it to a PalmPilot.

Half the resolution is "great"?

Here's a better link that goes straight to the download page: Here

I am trying to find a simple freeware/open-source todo list manager.

Even if you don't have a Palm Pilot, Palm Desktop under Windows isn't too bad. The price - FREE - is certainly right, too. It may not be the best out there, but it meets the basic requirements for a to-do list manager.

If you're willing to spend money, Agendus is a nice solution. Very contact orientated and takes care of the Palm side. There also Agendus for Windows which has the corrosponding functionality on the desktop. It's well worth the money if you're into these sort of things.

Someone else mentioned DateBk5, which is more task orientated.

If you just want desktop access to multiple addresses, try the latest version of Palm Desktop. But this won't solve the handheld-side problem...

Finally, why not Outlook? Yes, it costs money, and yeah, it's bollocks for e-mail, but if you install and ignore it makes a handle 'universal sync point'.

There is also the question of crunching more pixels into a smaller area. If display technology improves to the point where I can get megapixel resolution on a Palm Pilot then combined with advances in processor and memory, I won't need a laptop anymore. And while we are waiting on higher pixel density what would drive sales of a converged PDA/phone device? How about videophone? If the device had built-in 802.11 b, g, analog and digital cell service and could make the best, fastest, cheapest connection to another device or Polycom, Netmeeting that would be a pretty hot ticket.

Now what would be cool is a copper, brass, or bronze laptop. A skilled machinist could make such a case, modeled after one of the titanium or aluminum ones. Of course, you'd sacrifice weight, but it would at least look cool. Could be coated to maintain its rich lustre, or given a nice patina.

The main advantages of titanium and aluminum are durability, lightweightness, and ability to transfer heat well. Aluminum tends to be preferred due to lower cost and easier machinability. Another metal that would be interesting for a laptop case is magnesium, but there may some issue with that that I'm missing.
Platimum could be interesting, if you could afford it.

Other metals such as gold and silver tend to be too soft. Cast iron would not be good choices due to its weight, thermal mass, and magnetic properties. Osmium is just too dense.

Tungsten... if the Palm Tungsten were actually made out of Tungsten, that would be cool.

• processor
• High capacity battery
• Electrical or Computer Engineering or similar degree to hook all the various bits together

• processor
• High capacity battery
• Electrical or Computer Engineering or similar degree to hook all the various bits together

Ok.. reading the patent application is a tough one. Talking about a time interval between successive mouse clicks activating a 2nd application.. woooooo..

I see the application seems to be an extension of something started in 1999.. still I was double clicking before that..

Most interesting though is their choice of capitalization in the application. Look at this:

...One such palm-type computer is Microsoft's Palm-size PC. The Palm-size PC has a touch screen display... (exact quote)

When you see 'palm-type', fine.. an adjective modifying the word computer to define the type. But reading on you see '.. Microsoft's Palm-size PC'. That looks like a product name. But wait, isn't Palm a trademark of someone we all know and love

Pros: It's SO DAMN COOL
Cons: the 900mhz phone screws up my wireless. I solved this by getting rid of my land line and going all cellular,

I also use PalmVNC at work to manage a large variety of machine, although only mac, windows and RH9 (damn I'm gonna miss you RH9). It's quite convenient to haev my palm with me and be able to read logs while in the bathroom. Ok, I know that's a bad pun, but I really DO read the log files from my servers on PalmVNC when I'm in the crapper. And it's not as bad as going to the bathroom to play solitaire with your Palm.

You want to be away from a computer, but you want an electronic way to take notes? Does Not Compute.

Honestly, get yourself a Palm and the Palm UT Keyboard or even the wireless IR keyboard they sell. OK, so it's electronic. It's still the most convenient you'll find, and has a ton of other features as well. Like reading ebooks on the plane on the way to your vacation, then taking notes while on the vacation, then playing games on the way back from your vacation. It works out quite nicely. :-)

These guys can give you great advice on which model you want to get. They've reviewed just about every handheld in existence.

Disclaimer: I am one of "those guys". :-)

You mean like this one?

Let's see, 400MHz processor, 64 meg of RAM a 64K color screen, an SD/SDIO expansion socket and WiFi.

You should check the product line before dissing them. They're inexpensive and well built, with a considerable library of free/commercial software.

Then tack on a Palm Power To Go unit. It connects into the universal port on the palm and is essentially a second battery to the unit. And they've significantly lowered the price on them too... they're now $50 at the Palm Store.

Just pick up a palmOne Zire 21. Less than $100, B&W 160x160 screen, USB, 8 Mb storage. It'll handle all the formats asked for, and runs quite a long time on its rechargeable battery.