Review of Sony Clie TG-50

Anonymous Howard writes "Designtechnica has a review of the Sony Clie TG-50 (pictures of it are on their summary page.) Not only does this PDA look cool, but you can go into your local electronics store and hassle people by turning on and off the home electronics there. My favorite quote from the review: "A visit to a local consumer electronics store that shall remain nameless proved that the Clie TG50 is quite capable of controlling most electronics on the market, with some exceptions. I wandered the store turning devices on and off, frustrating a few customers who were shopping.""

Comments

That's a review?

[Doktor Memory]

While this actually looks like an interesting product, this "review" appears to have been mostly cribbed from Sony's product info pages and press releases, and provides pretty much zero useful information other than the screenshots and the base product specs.

A few questions, off the top of my head, that I'd love to see answered:

• What is the effective range of the remote-control functions?
• How does using the remote control affect the battery life of the unit?
• Is the remote limited to the control codes bundled by Sony, or can it learn?
• Presumably there is a PalmOS application being used to manage the remote functions. Is it...any good? Can you program macros? Does it even have a name?
• How does the battery life, weight and size of this unit compare to PDAs in a similar price range?
• Can this product use the 256mb memory sticks? (The reviewer even asks this question, but apparently couldn't be bothered to call Sony and ask.
• Does the foreshortened screen (compared to Sony's other clamshell Clies) make graffiti input difficult?

...nevermind that it verges on journalistic fraud to enthuse about how this thing can use 128MB Memory Stick cards without mentioning how insanely far behind CompactFlash and SD in both price and capacity this is.

This isn't a review, this is a puff piece.