New Clie Handhelds from Sony

A Commentor writes: "Sony has release two new handhelds including a super slim high-res color model, which has 16M and "AV Remote Control feature". It is also covered at news.com." Looks like Sony will continue to hold the coolest Palm clone crown.

Comments

Remote Control

[Nick Number]

There's already shareware out there that allows you to use a Palm's IR port as a remote control. I only get a range of about 10 feet with my Visor Deluxe though. Hopefully these new ones will work from across the room.

Re:Remote Control

[Sc00ter]

the IR for data transfer and the IR for controlling your TV are in different parts of the spectrum, that's why you Visor and most Palms for that matter don't do a good job at controlling your TV. You can get an IR transmitter for a Visor that fits into the springboard slot that's in the correct part of the spectrum.

Coolest Palm clone?

[Cutriss]

It's got great color, and it plays MP3s, but I hesitate to say that it's the coolest. I'm absolutely in love with my HandEra 330. This sucker has support for SD memory as well as CF+, meaning that it supports Ethernet connectivity, 802.11b, GSM cell modems, etc. etc., as well as huge honkin' memory cards and the Microdrive. I can run a shell on my HandEra to my uni's Unix server. Can yours do that?

Mine also has a high-resolution screen which makes many programs easier to use since they can fit more data on the screen. It also has a Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery pack available, it comes with a built-in microphone and voice-recording software (Which can record straight to SD or CF if you want), it has that cool jog-dial button so that you can scroll text or start apps with it...and it has a virtual Graffiti area, so that I can reclaim the space it uses if I'm reading e-mail or PDFs. Also, using CardPro, you can install Palm apps directly from SD or CF without syncing. You could even get an FTP app or a web browser and download apps and install them that way.

If color is your thing, HandEra's already got a color model slated for release in a few months. But the flexibility and capability of my unit *far* outweighs the benefits of a measly MP3 player.

Re:HandEra!!!

[Gambit Thirty-Two]

I know how you feel. When i was tossing around ideas on what to upgrade to, i was jumping between the s320 clie and a handera 330. The old palm IIIe was a bit outdated, and i needed more than 2megs of space.

Handera's virtual graffiti was what almost won me over. That is DAMNED impressive, and i can say that in all the achievements that these new models have been coming out with, the retractable gf area is the most appealing.

I decided to go with the S320 though. The memory stick was very appealing to me, and with sony's promises for a memorystick camera and gps, i decided it was worth the investment. however, now those are only going to be available for the 600/700 models, i feel i may have made the wrong choice. too late now.

I wanted to get a handheld that was different than the typical palms and handsprings. To me, 2001 showed no vast improvements to the handhelds of those two product lines. More memory, and better color screens. Whoopie. Palm found it necessary to flood the market with very similar handhelds... m100, m105, m125, m500... only big difference is the memory and the availability of a memory slot. There was no single new improvement that REALLY made it worth upgrading this past year.

For the most part, unless you drop or sit on your handheld, theres no real need to upgrade. PalmOS based systems do the same stuff. OS changes arent significant enough to make it worth buying a handheld just for the upgrade. If you've got a memory expansion slot, then theres virtually no reason to upgrade. Need more memory? pop in a bigger memorystick or compact flash and sell the old one on ebay. There are numerous applications now that let you run your apps right off these expansion cards, so thats not even a drawback now.

I honestly feel that palm has to slow down and focus more on what they're putitng into their products to make them stand out and be different. Achievements that set them apart from the other PalmOS models, and from their own previous product line. Just adding more memory is not enough for me to dump my current unit and upgrade.

Weird Memory Stick stuff

[jvmatthe]

From the page on the N760C:

A standard 8 MB Memory Stick® media is included with your CLIÉ(TM) PEG-N760C handheld. This is adequate for storing a few, non-secure, music tracks at a time. To carry more than a few tracks at once, or to download and play secure music (ATRAC3(TM) audio content) requires a larger MagicGate(TM) Memory Stick® media (sold separately).

This makes me wonder a couple of things.

• With language like "non-secure", which probably sounds to the uninitiated like something bad, how serious is Sony about pushing secure content? After all, they do own the rights to a ton of music. Wording like this makes me think they're planning to lock it all up and make the general public think they're doing the right thing when they rent their "secure" music from Sony.
  
• Since they've clearly got "secure music" in mind, will we see a day when their stock MP3 player won't play "non-secure" music? If they did so, how open is the Sony hardware to creating third party players that would play "non-secure" music.
  

I mean, to me it looks like they want to (a) start sell^H^H^H^Hrenting their "secure" music while (b) tying the use of that music to increasing hardware sales (of MagicGate Memory Sticks) and then (c) use scary language and possibly locking up their hardware specs (Warning! Wild speculation!) to prevent the unsaavy from playing "non-secure" music.

Again, just wild speculation there.

Impressive

[image]

From the site:

Enhanced IR can reach AV products several feet away

So can my arm.