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

Epedemic!

[lexcyber]

Why have lots and lots of PDA:s moved away from the graffit or similar type-in methods and moved onto the keyboard the size of two stamps overlapping?

I dont want to park the stylus when I want to write something, and then have to pick it out again to access menues or other programs. I want one consistent way of accessing the device. Keyboard for typing alot of things, if I want to type much on this digital device, I will use a laptop. And not this tiny keyboard anyway.

More inovative graffiti etc. then keyboards on pdas! - Good thing I bought a Tungsten T, it rules. I just hope for the wavelan-sd-card to be good and to come out sooooon! - Sandisk said it would be out this summer for palmOS5 atleast.

How much did Slashdot get paid to run this ad ?

[BigJim.fr]

Are the times so hard that the editors need to accept this kind of half digested press release as article ? No content whatsoever in the article. I believe Slashdot should have a 'products annoucements' section so I can filter out this kind of crap. Critical technical reviews are useful, but the laudatory prose of Sony fanboys is more than I can bear.

Screen of the TG50

[justinstreufert]

While otherwise a nice handheld, the #1 reason why I DID NOT buy a Clie TG50 is the screen - it is lit from the bottom by four or five LEDs (or similar) and there is a very noticable fringe of bright spots in this area in sort of a scalloped pattern. Very distracting.

I have a Palm Tungsten T.. My wife has a CLIE NX60 which does not exhibit this problem. We're both happy.

Justin

Re:That's a review?

[ctar]

I've used two different Palm apps to do this on my old Palm IIIe. One was called OmniRemote and I don't remember the name of the other one...I originally got it at Cnet/Download.com but don't see it anymore.

You could program it just by pointing the original remote at the IR sensor, and pressing 'record' and it would memorize the signal. You could adjust button sizes/placement etc. Very cool. The range was rather limited, but I would guess in the Sony and some later Palms its not as much of an issue.

Re:Clie and Linux

[laughing_badger]

I've been using pilot-link for a while and not found the timing of the sync to be too troublesome. I usually just click 'sync' on the clie and turn and click the button in jpilot and it works fine.

This really shouldn't be needed anyway. With a little helper daemon to monitor the state of the USB subsystem, the pilot-link sync could be kicked off automatically. If only I could just jam an extra 5 hours into the week to write this...

Re:That's a review?

[Cpt Kirk]

From what I remember about remote control using palm devices, I wrote a bit of software which could learn remote codes and its not very difficult to do, although it did involve some processor control instructions, which the palmOS wasnt very happy about you doing (to do with turning on Ir port instead of serial).

I think that was changed with palmOS 3.5 to allow a function call to open the IR port though.

As for existing software for doing this stuff... there was a program which used to exist, I'm sure its still about... OmniRemote, which was excellent, actually I spoke to the developer to find out how to enable the ir port for consumer infrared but he couldn't give me the technical info just a rough hint at how to do it :-)

Anyway, that might help ya

I still can't bring myself to buy a PDA.

[pecosdave]

I can't see much of a point. Phone number storage? I have that on my mobile phone anyways. Note taking? Pen and paper seem to have better input capabilities and work faster. Calendar? Again, a normal mobile phone seems to foot the bill on alarms anyways. Email, I'm still back to the phone. I suppose a Handspring Treo could make my life easier having more functionality than a normal phone, but I have a tendancy to break things that are on my body, glasses, bones, pagers, lesser phones (I carry a durable one) I couldn't imagine trying to keep something as expensive as a PDA with me all the time.

Does anyone else share this same view. I'll admit that I find the Sharp Zarus somewhat appealing, for one thing it has a mini keyboard, and for another it runs Linux (maybe I would install a palm emulator on it), but I still can't seem to justify that eaither. With notebooks becoming more PDA like, and PDAs becoming more notebook like, they're bound to meet in the middle. I would say something like a mini notebook, like the ones that have the Transmetta processors, or a Treo which would merge a device I already carry anyways are the only way I could justify adding computing power to my normal walk around aresonal. I'll leave PDAs in my mental CEO toys catagory.

Am I the only one that feels this way?

No Filesystem Abstraction

[fuzzybunny]

I really like PalmOS and its derivatives--I've looked at Zaurus, WindowsCEPocketPCTinyHPCompaqGizmo or whatever it's called, Psion, and a number of others. I bought a Clie 760, because I love the screen quality and the case worksmanship. However, I have three major gripes with Clies.

First, Sony's support is utterly abysmal. I mean it is worse than worst. A friend, who is one of their European product managers, was not surprised when I tried to tell him my tale of woe, trying to get them to replace the screen on my Clie (which I purchased in the US.) The screen scratches easily, which is mainly my fault for not putting a cover on it. Would they replace it (even if I paid for it) in Europe? Fat chance. Talk about helpdesk hell.

PalmOS doesn't, to my knowledge, have an IP stack. I would have thought that, by now, someone would come up with at least a rudimentary way to access network resources. Not too tragic.

The last, worst thing, is that the Clie does not have any concept of a 'filesystem' as I understand it. I can insert a 128MB memory stick, but I cannot run applications from it. I can move files used by applications to that memory stick, but unless they're memory stick-aware Sony Clie apps, they will not find the files.

And, my perennial gripe with the Clie, it's got this cool memory stick import tool, where I can use it as a storage device on a Windows PC (gave up trying to get it all working nicely on my FreeBSD boxes). I can copy files back and forth when the Clie is in its cradle, but I cannot then access those files with my generic applications. Lame.

I would be more than grateful if anyone can suggest a way around this. I know asking for a palmtop