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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
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."
this handheld probably won't be available for at least 6 months for us Canadians *grumbles*.
Or you Canuckers could just order it online and... receive it exactly when us Yanks do.
Casual Games/Downloads
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.
It's actually 320 * 480. Hooray for /. fact-checking!
I think there's a mistake.
In the specs in Sony's website
they say the resolution is 320x480.
That's half VGA. I am looking forward to try one of these toys, they look so sweet...
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...
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
No, mix that with MAME and you can play all the old classic Arcade games....
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
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."
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+!
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"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.
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
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.
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
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.
Are you trolling or just uninformed? If it was a Pocket PC device the stats would be unimpressive because Pocket PC is a hog. However, for a Palm OS device that's some seriouse power. Palm OS is designed to run on lower power hardware.
.technomancer
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
So, the moral of the story is, use the tool that fits the job. If you want a handhelt PC, then WinCE is the way to go. However, as was said in previous posts, PalmOS wasn't built for big PC style apps. It was made to be an organizer, and to run on less hardware. If the Palm isn't enough for your need, then go with what will fit what you need.
Jeremy Baumgartner
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.
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/. 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.
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!"
Absolutely! It looks like one. I'm NEVER going to use the digital camera that comes with it. They should have nixed the cam and put in a phone.
i can't seem to find any refences to this device supporting bluetooth which is just really, really suprising!
anyone know anything about this?
"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
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!
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
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.
By a Sharp Zaurus then.
Even comes with linux console mode
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