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New Clie Handhelds
Carthis writes "Sony has officially released their newest Clié handheld, the PEG-NR70, in the USA. This one has a clamshell design, a high resolution 480 x 320 screen (half VGA), Sony's MemoryStick slot, built in MP3 player, enhanced IR port (like the Sony 'T' series), and a REAL SPEAKER for once, instead of the typical piezo buzzer. I want this to have my children. PalmInfoCenter has this story about this tasty new handheld.
Following past trends of Sony, this handheld probably won't be available for at least 6 months for us Canadians *grumbles*."
It's cute, but I still like my Ipaq better.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Boo-hoo!
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
I like the sony design, they tend to keep things clean... very nice...
This is wonderful news! It'll give me another expensive product tiny enough to be lost in hours having not yet been in my possession long enough to me to get my full use (playing with it) out of it.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Why hasn't anyone developed a ROBUST syncronisation option for Linux and PalmOS? I'd be willing to pay for a **commercial** closed source ** implimentation! While this may seem to be a flame, its important to know there is financial incentive.
I want this to have my children.
I knew geeks had trouble getting girls, but god damn, you're pathetic!
Now if only they can add on a nuclear powered engine that way i wont have to carry around 283726 batteries so i can use it for a day straight without running out juice.
Make it idiot-proof and someone will build a better idiot.
Wow. That thing is sweet. It's unfortunate that I already have a decent functioning PDA otherwise I'd think about getting one. I wonder how many other people feel the same way? Upgrading your computer is one thing, but upgrading handhelds seems less of a priority for people. Most people who want PDAs have them, and most who don't probably aren't going to jump for a $600 one. Are they hoping that geeks and rich folk will find this too good to pass up? Are these killer new PDAs selling well? Just wondering.
640 * 480 = 307200
280 * 320 = 89600
How is that half VGA?
I'd rather have a monochrome Treo that is a phone/PDA than just a PDA, even if it's a really cool color Sony handheld.
Battery life is important, I'd rather be able to use a Treo for 3 days than 1 day with a Clie.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
This thing is crazy. It takes pictures, communicates wirelessly, stores information little gumstick-sized cards, has a remote control, recognizes handwriting...can you imagine seeing one of these things 5, 10, 20, maybe 50 years ago? Even just 5 years ago this would have been quite tremendous, but 10 or 20? It would have boggled the mind.
This is the kind of thing that Popular Science told us that we'd all have in The Year 2000[tm]. Turns out that they were just a couple of years ahead of things.
-Waldo Jaquith
Is 320*480
just thought someone might want to know the truth...
Now, put Linux on that thing with dosemu and you could play with your old VGA (320 x 200) 256 colors games !
After all...Everything else in Canada is 5 years behind America.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
All I want is 802.11 so I can put my clie on the home lan.
The resolution is better, but is the screen actually larger?
:( I wish they would lose these to make sharing between devices better. Sony being Sony I guess.
Memory Sticks
...Will it work with the new pda keyboards that are coming out? The cloth keyboard and the laser projected one may not be a true keyboard, but it sure beats the hell out of using the one attached to the PDA.
I don't think its fair to call that a PDA. It's definately more than an "assistant." It more like a "Personal Digital Take-Over-The-World Device." Hmm. I want one!
Palm Pilot
Quicken
Topo Maps
Following past trends of Sony, this handheld probably won't be available for at least 6 months for us Canadians *grumbles*.
Yeah, but just think of how organized your hockey equipment will be in six short months.
--saint
(Who has lots of family in Canada.)
sorry, I relly love the half-VGA but the zaurus better fit's my wants/needs.
and I can get a camera for it too.
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
I'm stunned! I like the swivel job they did with the screen. That's the type of feature this device needs. One thing I hate about my PocketPC is having to lug a seperate keyboard around. With this device, it nicely integrates the two and even gives the unit an extra usability mode. I wasn't expecting this from Sony, they usually put their money into marketing instead of research. Just look at the Playstation 2. *YuCk*
"Derp de derp."
It's like Osborne said, "Wait til you see the next version!"
The problem here is that Sony is developing and releasing these devices which are clearly stretching the OS capabilities to their maximum. Palm has already announced their next version of the OS and it looks to be more along the lines of WinCE than PalmOS (in terms of OS horsepower).
Buy one of these and be left in the cold when every device maker moves on to PalmOS TNG.
Hello,
It certainly looks very polished, in the SONY style of doing things, but how well does it work in every day life?
The magnesium case is a plus, but how long do the pivot mechanisms last, and how solidly-built are they? Is the keyboard adequate for "thumb typing" or is it going to be limited to a "hunt-and-peck" style?
How compatible is it with existing peripherals and software? One of the things I that annoys me about my Palm III and Palm V is that the peripherals are not interchangeable. Separate cradles, chargers, external keyboards, stylii, and so forth. Does buying a PEG-NR70V mean having to re-purchase all the accessories? I noticed that SONY has separate Memory Sticks for music and data. Which does the PEG-NR70V require to play MP3s? And does it actually play MP3s or require them to be converted to SONY's own ATRAC3 format?
Also, I know it is hard to make comparisons between PalmOS and Windows CE devices, but does a 66MHz CPU have enough cycles to play MP3s and run an application in the foreground?
With my Compaq Ipaq, I at least know there is a decent amount of expandability available via PC Cards. This device, while intriguing, seems to be lacking in backwards-compatibility and expandability.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Hmm, it seems to have everything I want except for expansion opportunities (sniff, no CompactFlash, just proprietary Memory Stick...)
Does anyone know if Sony is planning to introduce a GPS add-on or a wireless Internet add-on? That would really make it worth the $600+!
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I'd buy this in an instant if it had an integrated cell phone.
"a REAL SPEAKER for once, instead of the typical piezo buzzer"
Given the dimensions of the PDA, it is just not possible to get good sound out from any speakers in it, whether real or not.
Although it would have been cool to see people walking in the streets with their PDAs against their ears listening to mp3s. Sort of like the good old transistor radio days...
But with current battery technology and my habits of listening to mp3, recording video, and running countless of background applications all at once, I wonder how many seconds I can unplug clie from the wall. They should make a wearable power generator an accessory.
Why didn't they opt for something more industry standard like compactflash instead of the crappy proprietary memorystick shit? Oh yea, I forgot, it's a sony. They are big enough that they can ignore standards.
Hmmm... Sure, Sony's sexy. But isn't the real woman less expensive ? Not to mention the lifespan slightly longer then Sony's PDAs ...
Clie? How do you say that? Is it like "clay" or is it like Paul Klee? Is it Klee-ay? Does it rhyme with Lie?
Why doesn't it have 802.11b network support? I can't spend my whole life beaming IR, that's way too inconvenient.
And assuming that they did build 802.11b support for this clee-thingie, is there a Citrix client for Palm OS? Because then it would really be useful. Otherwise I will stick with iPAQ Pocket PC's tiny little 320x240 screen. I hate that little screen but it's more of a business tool and less of a digital camera / mp3 player / way to impress your friends. Especially if you need to run your Windows application on wireless handheld devices using 128-bit SSL over MetaFrame.
I was looking at new PDA's and Handhelds yesterday after an embarassing incident of forgetfulness. I saw the new Sony's and I love them and want one, but as money is being budgeted for a new home computer (forbidden Athlon ... *drool*) I'll probably settle for the cheapest thing that does the job of keeping track of stuff and beeping when I need it. No color, no MP3, no geek coolness factor *sniff*
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
66mhz and 16megs. All I can say to that is "ugh". I cant beleive anyone would even consider this. They have 206mhz handhelds now, and 16megs? Seriously, this is slow, and has no memory. Sure it has the expansion slot but I want at least a little bit onboard. By a little bit I mean at least 32.
Unfortunately, the sony Memory Stick Vagina is about 6 months late to market.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'm seriously considering getting a Sony Clie as my next handheld. I bought a Palm IIIc a year ago, and it gave me nothing but problems. I've also been hearing bad things things about the new Palm 5xx series. If you have an option to buy something like a Visor or Clie, buy one of those instead of a Palm.
You can buy a gig of ram today for like a hundred bux. Why are they constantly sticking 16mb in these things? Just stuff 512mb in there and be done with it already. No one wants to buy those lame proprietary memory sticks. Cool product, but really.. It boggles the mind of the engineer who is living in the early 90s that still thinks memory costs a lot.
Sony is horrible for implementing proprietary standards. Once you have their mp3 player with the memory stick, then you need a Vaio (some of which have a slot for the memory stick), their digital camera and MP3 player.
/. readers.
Some companies think it's slick marketing. But only Sony could get away with it. IBM couldn't with their Microchannel Architecture.
Open standards (like XML and other markup languages), like Open Source, should be high on the list for most
As with the original Slashdot announcement of exactly the same story, it's a shame to see the camera with a poor 320x240 resolution. Even the tiny Nokia 7650 phone can manage 640x480. Huge disappointment in something I would otherwise consider as a purchase.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
when are they going to stop messing around and realease a x86 based poket pc. it can't be too far away given the size of the small motherboards. a open based x86 poket pc I would definitly be into that :)
Yes, it may be 600 bucks, and yes, that is a little excessive for something you didn't realize you needed until five minutes ago.
However, Sony understands.
Just pay twice the price spread out over a couple years. You'll be thanking yourself when you're making that final $30 payment on a PDA that was useless two years ago.
Sony Financing services... I'll finance you!
Anything you can do, I can do meta.
It's not like the CLIE handheld is a export restricted item, you know?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Do remember that this is the same Sony that is an member of the MPIAA.
They would need to turn out a truly incredibly good product before I would either consider or recommend them. I don't think that this is good enough.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I never would have suspected PalmOS was this scalable. I have a Palm Vx, which runs at a humble 16Mhz. (No, I am not anal enough to overclock it.) I use it to do wordprocessing and gaming (Tetris anyone?) but not much else. (I have a Palm keyboard for the wordprocessing.) I guess I'm just surprized at the jump that Sony has made with this product. It is truely a breakthrough concept. On an unrelated note, Palm's strong point is their portability. I can take notes for 5 different classes and carry them aronud in my pocket. Bet you can't find any other way to do /that/ in an organized manner....
Memory
16 MB (DRAM)
8 MB (Flash)
With 8 megs of memory I guess can take one photo and play one mp3 without purchasing sony's propreitary memory stick(cough.. cough.. remember beta guys)? I would be much more excited about this device if it had a substantial amount of built in storage or had a CF reader.
"I knew geeks had trouble getting girls, but god damn, you're pathetic!"
But then, that would make you what?
Ya know, it's usually the first one to say others aren't gettin any to be wanting for it badly themselves.
You know, my problem with that page (the Nokia page), is that after little more than a cursory glance, you can see the picture is completely false.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Is there built in DRM on this?
sony recording studios is afterall part of the MPAA/RIAA group.
I love their internal conflict.
Probably my biggest concern with this thing is how long will the screen last? Being rotateable and flexible is cool and all, but that's just asking for something unexpected to happen. It looks pretty easy to snap off.
My Clie's screen has become scratched to HELL from everyday (very light) use, and the screen is not covered under the warranty.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Then I would only need to carry one thing and someone can figure out a new device that everybody must have.
I like things that are sweet and not things that are lame. --
Since this clie comes only with the usb cradle I'm curious how well it'll work with linux. Has anybody experimented the the usb support in pilot-link. Is it stable? What about getting mp3s on? Does anybody out there know?
from the article:
a high resolution 480 x 320 screen (half VGA)
so what's your point? the truth behind this big X-Files conspiracy is rotate the orientation 90 degrees.
I have a 760 and if you use it like me, you can use it for about 5 hours of Music + Games, which equals one trip to and from work for me. They say that you can get 10 hours of music out of it, but play any games and it burns the battery twice as fast. To answer a differnt post, the white memory sticks are only for the low end Clies to play music. I put regular MP3s on it and it plays them just fine, the remote is really a nice touch too. I even use it when I am driving (with a car adapter)
Amusingly, after following the palminfocenter link, you see a web page with a banner at the top saying, "Hello, Slashdot reader! You have been redirected to this low-bandwidth version of the story so as not to hose us." (Well, I'm paraphrasing.) Wonder when they set that up?
I just came back from tokyo and happened to visit the sony building where they had a ton of these to play with(aside new aibos and lot's of other cool stuff that they didn't even have in japanese electornics stores yet)... and it is SWEET!
It has everything you could possible want. You can use it as a regular looking pda or as a flip open communicator with a keyboard on the bottom. The screen looks amazing compared to regular palms.
Graffitti area could be turned into a click keyboard too (meaning that it was part of the screen) and the videos were actually worth watching. Sound was decent and of course it came with a sony style headphone plug(with the remote pins too) for when you actually want to listen to music.
I did not have too much time to stay there(how much can you do in a day and a half in tokyo) but the immediate impression (and for an aibo too) was that I want one! If only half of the programs on the display model hadn't been in japanese I might have been able to play with it a little more extensively..
.... can you take it down to CompUSA and download warez? Until then, forget it.
funny thought - you can use the 'V' model to take snappies of the clueless sales droids while you download M$ Offal X
are missing as far as I can tell. The camera resolution is a little low as well, but I probably wouldn't be playing games on it, so the CPU speed isn't important.
I wish for the day I don't need to lug my TiBook around except when I'm coding...
Winton
...the form factor and functions of this device, but with 802.11b instead of a camera, and SD/MMC instead of a gumstick. Palm, are you listening? This seems *just about* a prime functional contender for Palm's introduction of their OS 5. Only by the time OS5 is ready this will be old and will need something a little bit newer on it - maybe more multimedia apps.
And thank you Sony for taking back the lead in the over-$500-handheld market.
I won't buy until there's a color graphics version of Dope Wars.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
The Sony Clit. It's about 3/4 cm cubed, but it shrinks down even smaller than that when not being used. The best part is the built-in "hood" to protect its special touch-sensitive membrane from damage. I hear they're even planning on taking Apple's lead in releasing different "flavors" later on - rumor has it that the first group will include salmon, strawberry, and spring breeze (whatever that is). My loins quiver just thinking about it.
Welcome Slashdot visitor! You have been redirected to a ligher version of our article in order to conserve bandwidth and keep the site running smoothly.
/. effect intelligently. This is the first I've seen, although there probably have been plenty of others. I hope more sites catch on. It's a terrible shame when interesting pages are unavailable because they've been /.ed. Good Thing to get all the hits, Bad Thing not to be able to handle them. Well done Sony.
Hooray. Finally I see someone handling the
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these babies?
I agree that a key question is when Palm-based PDA:s will run on faster CPU:s, such as 200 MHz StrongARM:s.
I'm working on Speech Recognition on StrongARM, and there are some really neat things that can be done on StrongARM-based PDA:s, but the Dragonball is out of the question.
Personally, although I like PalmOS, I would rather go with something like the Linux-based Sharp Zaurus today, than buy a new PalmOS PDA with slow processors.
Damn I want a machine like these but with a CF slot! It would be so neat for previewing digicam images on the go, and I'm not going to give up my Compact Flash digicamera and buy one that uses Memory Sticks instead...
Yes I know HandEra 330 does it, and I'll probably get one if they ever release a version with a color screen (yes, color IS nice when previewing camera images!)
From Andrea Douglas:
Why even bother saying this?? If I have been living in a cave, I wouldn't be listening anyway!
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
i can't seem to find any refences to this device supporting bluetooth which is just really, really suprising!
anyone know anything about this?
I was pretty excited to finally see the thing at Yodobashi Camera, and... it is a pretty sexy thing. First, the good:
- 320x480 resolution is pretty amazing for something that small.
- The 'silkscreen' is incredibly sexy. When you flip the screen over, the screen rotates. It also looks... sexy.
- The keyboard is pretty effective. I haven't spent much time on it, but it's way faster than graffiti, if only because it's less error-prone.
- It's fast, but I didn't have a benchmark tool on me to test it. When I get back to Tokyo, I'll run Dokusha on it to see how much snappier it is.
- The screen is really, really sweet.
- Feels pretty good in your hand. Less good when it's open though - the base is really slim, not so fun to hold on to.
The bad:
- It's 5 man yen, which translates rougly to 400US, or 600CAD. Somehow in Yen, it doesn't seem so expensive to me... probably because everything else is so expensive here.
- Which isn't entirely true - I bought a Handspring Platinum a few weeks ago for about $120 US. In Osaka, the Edge is selling for only about $100 US. Incredible! None of the new Visors are out here, which sort of surprises me, since there's no shortage of modules to be had here.
- No Targus keyboard support, and somehow I doubt there ever will be. It is less of an issue, since it already has a keyboard, of sorts, but for some of us...
- No stylus! At least, none that I could see. I should go back and have a second look, but at the time, I thought it made sense, since it already has a keyboard, and jog dial, etc... No, it must have a stylus, I probably just didn't look hard enough.
- The buttons are only accessable when you have it flipped open like a notebook. When flipped down, the buttons are not accessable. No big deal, maybe, but... lots of applications are set up for one-handed use using the buttons. You would have to carry the thing around opened up to do so. Also, the up and down buttons seem too small and too close together to me.
- The screen can only rotate one way. I wonder how much stress it can take before it breaks...
I have no real love for Sony, but they seem to really have it together here in Japan. By far, the best screen, but you're going to have to leave the backlight on all the time, methinks. (true for past models, haven't really looked at this without the backlight on)
Their last model, though really, really slim, failed in one crucial area for me: the buttons, and especially the up/down ones, were useless. The up/down buttons were replaced by a sub-Japanese size nub that you had to push up or down. None too easy. Oh, I get it, use the Jog Dial. Not quite.
I'll say this for sure - if you want to get laid, definitely get this pda.
I am still a big fan of Handspring. The common model design is nearly perfect, for us righties anyway - power button is right there, and the buttons are large and easy to hit... if only the screen were better. Probably more practical, but certainly not as sexy, which might explain why I'm not getting any. ++)
Yes, it's definitely my pda...
"Welcome Slashdot visitor! You have been redirected to a ligher version of our article in order to conserve bandwidth and keep the site running smoothly."
*snicker* Perhaps you guys could make a fortune selling referer-checking software to various popular sites.
If its not also a cell-phone, then screw it. Thats the one thing its missing. If i could flip it open and put it against my ear and talk to my friends, or use its built in cellphone-ness to access the internet remotely, now there's something to me worth $600. True convergence means only one device, i'm tired of my motorola startac.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Where is the supermario game ? ....
i think i'll stay with my GBA
Does anyone know if there's any work being done to put a 3d chip of some sort (even an "old" one like a voodoo or permedia2 or tnt) into a PDA?
I'm sure there's some power issues involved, but I know I'd shell out $600 for that!
This device looks cool but the display is tiny! One of the biggest problem with Palm-based systems is the Graffiti writing area. Check out the new Sharp SL-5500. It is less money, runs Linux, has compact mem slots, and you can utilize the whole screen. http://www.sharpusa.com/products/ModelLanding/0,10 58,698,00.html
Anyone have comments or thoughts?
Dominic
It includes a 320 by 480, 16-bit color screen that has virtual Graffiti.
Virtual Graffiti? As opposed to Physical Graffiti ?
Surely you can have children without it...
The thing looks just like a cellphone. It already has a speaker and a mic. I think it would take very little to squeeze one in there. That would reduce one more thing in my pocket!
when you bake this one... :)
--pi
maybe im a cynic, but as of late it seems that slashdot is being used to promote products uder the guise of reviews. if this continues it will became the classified pages instead of a forum.
At Circuit City, after $125 in rebates.
See www.circuitcity.com.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
At first. I really like the idea of a keyboard. Untill I realised that the only reason I would want it is because I find graffiti annoying. All that would be needed to solve that problem would be decent recognition software like on the Newton. It's not like I could ever type as fast on this small keyboard, as I can on a real keyboard anyway.
The MP3 play seems nice. But I'm never going to bother with an MP3 play that can't hold all my music. It's just too much hassle for me otherwise. I'm saving up for an iPod, or a might wait for a 10gig microdrive + CF MP3 player.
Camera. At first I thought this would be really neat. Since I don't carry my proper camera with me all the time. But then I discovered that it was only 320 x 240. Not even worth it IMHO. I was expecting at least 800x600. If I was going to get one, I'd save some $ and the cameraless model.
Clamshell design. That's reall neat, I really like how that works, esspecialy the swivel screen. Great stuff....But only reason that this whole design is needed, is because it has a keyboard. Which I'd rather not have for the reason above.
What would impress me, was if they could get that nice screen (maybe a monochrome one if colour won't fit) into a PDA the size of a Vx, and leave the camera/keboard etc out of it. And run a OS like Newton OS.
If I want something that has powerfull multimedia capabilities, but with the trade off of not quite being pocketable. I would rather have a PPC.
I'm sure these's plently of people for whom this PDA is perfect. But I'm just giving my opinion on it, and what suits me.