Compras Nikon Bluetooth |
PROS:
- Nice keyboard
- Love the fact that you can listen to music at the same time performing other functions like browsing, email etc (probably an OS5 feature not restricted to this model only)
- The wireless works like a charm right out of the box.
- Great resolution.
CONS:
- Had to soft boot at least 3-4 times already.
- Most apps require portrait mode which the UX50 does not natively support.
- Battery life - 3hrs max if you use the wireless.
- Need an additional memory stick (128MB - 40$)
- Crappy camera - 0.3MP!!! cmon Sony!
- Native doc support restricted to read only.
- Need the docking station to charge, no direct connection to PDA.
Must have software:
- you can enable the landscape mode for most apps using Code Diver. This is a MUST if you want to use the UX50.
(shareware + 10$. Remember to use the latest beta and not the handango version)
- Also I strongly recommend buying Documents to Go and Contacts to Go (add another 75$ to the tag)
Overall, you can end up spending about 1000$ to make this thing really usable, not worth it. But if you dont mind getting a used one cheap off eBay, this is definitely a nice toy.
I waited two months until I was back in the USA and ordered two units from separate vendors. This is my usual custom when buying pdas, as I want to be sure one item isn't experiencing anomalies. I was so excited the day that they arrived. That excitement quickly dissipated.
The battery life is absolutely horrible. I was reading an ebook, and the battery barely lasted for 3 hours. When surfing the web, it lasts for about 90 minutes. The 3-D launcher interface did not appeal to me, so I switched to the classic palm launcher, which made things better. The stylus is too small and too thin to be of any practical use. By the time you get it out and get it extended, you could have tapped what you wanted with your fingernail several times over.
Additionally, the ergonomics are very poor. Maybe it's made for someone with wider hands than mine. It's too wide to sit comfortably in my hand in landscape mode, and there is no portrait mode. After reading my ebook for the three hours that the battery held a charge, my hand was cramped. Also, the buttons are not placed in the most convenient of locations. It's too easy to press the email, internet, or back button while you are just trying to hold the unit. And what's with the jog dial on the left? Probably a wonderful feature if you're left-handed like my little brother. Unfortunately, I'm right-handed.
The vast majority of the palm applications I downloaded did not take advantage of the UX50's wide screen. Who wants a pda window that only covers part of the screen? Certainly not me. In the end, I returned both units. One to Best Buy, where I was not charged the 15% restocking fee, and the other to MPSuperstore.com, where the restocking fee was waived because the IR port was defective.
I tried really hard for two weeks to like the UX50. I left my tungstenC and home and used the UX50 exclusively for that period. The only reason I gave the PEG-UX50 two stars is because the keyboard is excellent. I prefer typing on it than on my tungsten C keyboard. I was prepared to trade in my tungstenC for the PEG-UX50. It's little wonder Sony has withdrawn from the US pda market for a while. Maybe they'll dream up better products while they take this much-needed hiatus.
They both run Palm OS 5 but I foung the Clie's interface not as user friendly as my Tungsten, it took me almost a week to get used to it and work with it without stopping to look up something in the users manual.
For the size and looks it is a very nice gadget, it's capabilities are close to that of a laptop unfortunately the price tag doesn't justify the purchase. For such a high price it should at least have Documents to Go installed.
The battery life is horrible! I got an extended battery which attaches to the bottom and makes the unit thicker and I'm still not able to use it as much as I use Tungsten during the day without worrying about the battery running out. I need to get a car charger before I can get more use out of it during the day.
The stylus is too thin to hold comfortably and it collapses in mid-use. It also tends to slide out very easily and I've almost lost it that way. Same with the memory stick, it sticks out from the unit just enough for it to come out easily.
The screen is very nice although I would appreciate it if you could occassionaly swtich to portrait mode. The swivel screen is one of my favorite features.
Not a big issue but I would like to be able to delete someapplications like "Clie Demo" that I don't use and are taking up space in the memory and in the icons.
The shortcut buttons are a nice feature but I immediately had to reassign them to features I use more than internet and e-mail. Their location makes it easy to press accidentally.
The built-in camera is better than that found in most cell-phones but not excellent. It comes in handy for quick snapshots but don't expect more from it.
The browser is lame and could use some improvement. It's nice to have a keyboard although it's not good for serious typing.
Bluetooth works great but the infrared interface was difficult to use when working with my cell phone.
This PDA has great potential but Sony has to first make some improvements before it becomes a "must-have". For 3 times the price, I thought this PDA would make my Tungsten E obsolete but I find myself still using it just as much because the Clie hasn't been too reliable to me. So I'll continue using 2 separate PDA's in the meantime.
sO PLEASE BE WARE ALL BUYERS AND ESPECIALLY DELL BUYERS
My only gripe about this device (actually, PalmOS in general) is that it doesn't support Unicode/CJK. Granted, not many people take notes in Chinese on their handheld, but it is a Internet-enabled device, and it would be nice if the device can view non-English sites (say, if you need to pull some anime lyrics down in Kana format while online with it). Sure, there are solutions abound for that, but they either cost a serious amount of money or need a serious amount of hacking that would mean voiding the warranty of the product. Word has it that both Symbian OS and Windows PocketPC edition supports Unicode. Why not PalmOS?
In a nutshell, it's a nice device, but don't expect to use it for reading anime lyrics in Kana format online.
You are unable to delete applications such as the "clie demo" and others which prevents you from using that portion of memory and clutters the screen with an icon you don't want.
The included mail client is not able to display most message types and forget about attachments they are all called file.bin so you can't save and view them.
Pro: Size and Memory Cons: Expanding Stylus and Quality
Some of those listed are PocketPC (WinCE) and the rest are PalmOS. I have no quarrel with either camp, because they both have their pros and cons. Let it suffice to say that I simply WON'T compare PalmOS to PocketPC, because that's the Mac-vs-PC arguement all over.
The keyboard is most useful. As for other reviewers who've claimed that the keyboard must have been designed for babies, it seems that these people have not run into the world of thumb-keyboards yet. I do have a full-size foldout keyboard for my IPAQ 5550, and while nothing can beat that, it also means that I have yet another accessory to carry with. But with the UX-50, I don't need to worry about that.
The screen size is debatable, as I doubt you'll see many applications utilize the full-sized screen.
Being left-handed, stylus usage has always been an issue with me. The default configuration is for righties, with the soft-silk area on the right side. That was easily fixed, as you can move the soft-silk area to the left, and now it's even easier to use.
This is probably the best PalmOS available on the market, if you can deal with a few short-comings.
#1 - the memory stick slot is designed in such a way that the inserted stick juts out from the rest of the case. While the device is in my pocket, I've jostled it to the point of ejecting the stick.
#2 - the stylus is a joke. It's extremely thin, and that makes it uncomfortable to hold for a period of time. It's collapsable, which means sometimes it folds back on itself. Originally, the stylus itself had some friction to keep it collapsed or extended, but after some wear, that friction is gone. Same for the insertion slot, after some wear, it's too easy to slip out.
#3 - I love the screen orientation, but I do wish Sony had considered a way to turn it to portrait mode, like the NZ/NX series.
#4 - if you have 802.11b wireless, use that over the USB cable. The USB sync cable is also a joke, and inserting it can be tedious. You need to flip open a little flap which will get in the way, and peer closely at the mini-USB connection to make sure it's oriented properly.
#5 - the charging base is also fruitless. All the other PDA's combine their sync function with charging. You put the PDA in the cradle, and it'll charge, and you can also sync. Not so on the UX-50. All it does is serve to charge the battery. If they could have designed it with an additional USB port on the base, that would have been an improvement.
#6 - the battery life with wireless is shabby, so I simply use wireless for sync'ing.
#7 - the hard buttons on the bottom are awkwardly placed. It's easy to press them when you don't need to press them.
#8 - bluetooth is a joke. Has been for years. Why do they persist on shoving this on us? If "they" ever develop a home-theater remote control which works on bluetooth, that would be the only realistic application I can ever concieve of.
You might think that with all these negative points, I don't like the unit. However, that's not the case, as I've rated it four stars (nothing deserves five stars, as that would imply perfection with no improvement).
It bundles a lot of nice progams making the Palm OS more usable. There is a web browser, NetFront, but that browser isn't up to primetime yet, sporting less functionality than Netscape 4. The Japanese version is the ONLY palm that supports Japanese character recognition, including Kanji characters.
Nevertheless, the Palm OS, though a great hackers dream, it is primitive by far. One cannot easily develop programs for it (especially Unicode versions). There's more support for PocketPC OSes (including free compilers) and better synchronization to MS products. For non-Windows OSes, perhaps this shouldn't matter as much. The Mac OS has pretty good sychronization abilities, including sync'ing photos taken from the camera with iPhoto , and music files with iTunes using the third-party software MissingSync.
One thing that always bugs me for all PDAs is that when the battery runs out, all your data is gone. There are other PDAs that will not lose contact information.
Having used it for about a week I am convinced that I prefer my UX50 over my P800. The main reasons:
- User interface for Palm is more intuitive than Symbian
- Synchronisation (With Outlook 2000) is better: Symbian sync was very bugy, lost middlenames during conversion, conflicted with Yahoo Intellisync and someimes just did not work for unclear reason
- MP3 is of good quality, with in-ear headphones the sound is good and (in contrast with the P800) the MP3 player works with the lid closed. Also, the MP3 player seems not suffer when you use other applications.
- The UX50 is very well equipped for video playback. The conversion softare allows you to convert AVI and MPEG files to a playable file. The quality and above all the landscape orientation of the screen make this the first PDA to really watch a video on. It is also very convenient that you can watch the screen without holding it in you hand!
- Integration with SMS (mostly for Europeans) is excellent. The keyboard allows you to send SMS as if they are emails.
My biggest complaint is that the Bluetooth-GPRS connection seems to destabilise the system sometimes requiring you to *hard* reset the UX50 (losing all you data untill you synch again). And the battery life is not good: about a day of intesive usage.
Overall I believe that the UX50 is rather expesive for the functionality it provides. The form factor is undeniably very attractive and should be one of your main arguments for buying it.
The Sony attracted me by its original design and multimedia features. It certainly is a revelation in terms of connectivity and web browsing. I also like the keyboard. However, let me tell you why I am returning it (despite the 15% open-box return charge) and going for a more traditionally designed HP. It is not a bad unit, I just feel that the high price suggests it is more special than it actually is:
The swivel screen concept should allow for a larger screen but this one is disappointingly about standard size for a PDA. The unit is slightly smaller but somewhat thicker than a standard PDA. Battery life is poor. My main issue, however, is the included software which does not contain the basics I would expect. No word processor, no spreadsheet and no outlook equivalent email program other than something which pops email. All these are available but, at this price, I would expect these included. I liked the sketchpad but, for some reason, it only operates on a reduced screen size. The camera is nice and I liked the zoom feature but it would be better with a higher resolution.
Looking at the prices of comparable units I feel that the $650 tag consumes about $350 for the vogue value of the undeniably neat mini-tablet design. It depends how much this means to you.
Anyway other than that the WiFi rocks.
Pros:
* Small size. Without a doubt, this is a great unit that fits nicely in my shirt pocket.
* Beautiful screen. It is clear and bright. It is a bit smaller than the older unit, but it is perfectly legible.
* Lots of internal memory. This means I can record a bunch of voice memo's or quick low-res pics from the built in camera w/o using a memory stick.
* Toolbar. There is a little toolbar along the side next to the silk to pull up commonly used features quickly. (like clock, speaker and memory stick media info)
* Built in Keyboard. I love it. It even has a backlight. Not too difficult to use, unlike smaller kbds on other units. The keys are slightly raised.
* Landscape working environment. The "silk" is along the side, and when not being used, the silk can be hidden giving an expanded screen to show text or other items in the silk area. This widescreen mode is a much more efficient use of screen real-estate.
* New handwriting recognition. Decuma is very natural, and has a very good recognition rate. But... see below...
* Rotate/Swivel screen. Use the unit as a micro-laptop, or as a micro-tablet.
* Bluetooth and WiFi. Very easy to setup and use.
Cons:
* This unit only works in landscape mode. I prefer holding the unit in my hand in portrait mode. There doesn't appear to be any setting in software to change this.
* The design favors wireless hotsync, since USB cable is very awkward to plug into side of unit. The cradle should provide the USB connection, and when inserted in the cradle, the USB connection is passed through the cradle (one less wire to insert)
* The battery life is terrible on the UX50 (even compared to the three year old unit I replaced). Perhaps the keyboard light uses up much more energy.
* The memory stick and stylus can come out too easily. I have nearly lost my stylus twice. The end of the memory stick protrudes just a bit too far, and can be easily unlocked.
* New Graffiti is difficult to get used to after a few years of proficiency with the old Graffiti. Some of the strokes are not as easy to use. Perhaps I'll get used to it, but my entry rate is significantly slower.
* Decuma takes up a large amount of screen space when used. There doesn't appear to be any way to shrink it. Also when in wide screen mode, decuma still only uses 2/3 of the screen (the rest of the screen is unusable)
* Decuma should be used in Portrait mode (replacing the Silk). This would free up more screen space, and would still be natural.
* The speaker mute feature should have a timeout, so I can mute for only 1/2 hour or so while in a meeting, but then get my audible alarms afterward.
* Cannot "type" special symbols from the keyboard. I use the bullet symbols all the time, but must enter them using graffiti.
I like the unit. Everybody I show it to is very impressed. The hardware is well designed. If they come out with software that fixes some of my above issues, then I would wholeheartedly recommend this above any thing else presently available.
The good things:
Wi-Fi (and bluetooth)!!!! It is built in so I don't need to get a $200 component to take advantage of my wireless network at home, at work, and several other wireless enabled sites I frequently visit.
I like the wide-screen feature of this Palm. I haven't seen any software conflicts with this so far but it makes looking at movies a lot nicer.
As with all the other Clie's, the fantastic high-resolution screen. This is what sold me on the Clie's in the first place. My pictures look so good that I don't carry pictures in my wallet any more. I also love the fact you can read an eBook without any eye strain. Best of all, this screen looks great in ANY LIGHT!!! In Las Vegas, I can turn off the back-lite and read off of the sun's lights beautifully. It does not matter the lighting, I've never had a problem looking at this screen. The ability to swivel it around for use is pretty handy and has raised a few oh's and ah's among my friends. I like the fact that you just turn it around after using it to protect the screen. It feels better than one of those flimsy plastic covers on some other Clies and most other Palms.
The Internal memory on this is nice. It was especially annoying when I had to get a memory card to listen to music with my first Clie when I still had plenty of memory on the inside.
I love this keyboard. It is much easier to type on than earlier models. Warning: this is not a keyboard for taking extensive notes. Use your laptop or desktop for that. But jotting down a few notes or a quick meeting is quick and easy with this keyboard.
I love the more compact size. Yes, the screen is a bit smaller, but this is supposed to fit in your Palm afterall. I prefer the smaller size. When I need more real estate on my screen, I just turn on my laptop. The Palm computers were never meant to replace the laptop or desktop afterall.
Very light weight at just over 6 oz. Fanstastic!!!
I had a problem and called customer service. I had to send it in (that was bad, I missed it) but it came back quickly and in working order. Great job!!!
The Decent Things:
The .mp3 player. Why can't the volume be any louder. Yes, I know you just plug in some headphones or speakers to listen to it but sometimes I want to share a song or audio clip with a small group of people. Very annoying. I now turn to my laptop for that instead but the Palm would be more convenient. It is odd that the Palm has the quietest .mp3 volume but yet rocks the house with its midi and alarm sound files. Other than that, the portable .mp3 player is fantastic and very convenient and I would rather have this than any dedicated .mp3 player I've seen on the market. The only problem is that 128MB gets filled up fast. I would suggest a Memory Stick card reader... it is easier to get music on there than by using Clie's import program.
The buttons. I'll give them credit in that my first Clie, the NR70, had the buttons in the worst place. When you wanted to go to the address, notes, etc. you needed to lift the screen to reach them. It was very annoying. Now the quick-launch buttons are accessible even when the screen is swivelled. My complaint is that they are the wrong buttons!!! The four buttons on every Palm are Addresses (always use), Tasks (always use), DateBook (always use), and Notes (often use). Now we only have one of those, DateBook. The other two are nice... Internet and Email. And I know I can reprogram them to how I want them. But I use the other stuff more than the Internet and Email. If the DateBook button would at least toggle between the different applications.... oh, I don't know. I just wish they hadn't messed with that.
The camera. This was borderline descent and bad. The resolution is higher than my NR70 but it still isn't good enough to do anything good with it other than taking pictures of my contacts and including them in the address book. I would rather spend $100 less and use that $100 credit towards getting a decent camera. I bet you can get one at that amount at less than the extra $100 needed to get this one in the first place. Save the picture taking for a better device. Sony had a Clie with a 2MP camera built into it... what happened to that???
The Bad:
The price... OUCH!!! You can get a decent laptop for this amount.
But, I'll still give it the 5 stars because the Clie has always shown great and continuing innovation and because, overall, it truly is a great piece of (small) technology.
Let me first talk about the cons, so I can focus on the pros more.
The screen is quite small. It's 3.5 inches diagonal and packs a 320x480 resolution, (...) , which has a bigger screen. This reminds me of the slim VAIO notebooks: they feature 1280x1024 on a 10.4" screen. Ouch! If you are over age 50, forget this. You'll have a tough time making out the icons.
Battery life is also below average, when you have wi-fi or Bluetooth or both on. In fact if you use either one continuously, with backlight set to 3/4, you'll run out of juice in a little over an hour. Kinda scary. I wish Sony would give us a compact battery extender that uses NiMH batteries.
Price. Of course everybody thinks this is too expensive. It's expensive, but since it does everything you can imagine, it's cheap compared to notebook. So whether it's a good value comes down to whether you'll use it a lot. Of course, given the battery life problem... You see what I mean.
Now the pluses. There are tons of them.
First of all, this is a *very* stylish PDA. Pictures don't do it justice. You should go into a store (Staples, Circuit City, etc.) to check it out up close. The exterior design is excellent, with the right amount of curves and edges. It's also surprisingly lightweight. Not for your shirt pocket, of course, but jackets and pants should be ok, unless you wear jeans all the time. What really impresses me is how good the unit feels in my hands, even when I hold it with one hand and use the stylus with the other.
Performance is very good, too. You can play an MP3 in the background while doing other tasks and usually you won't notice any delays. Occasionally you do, but that hasn't happened to me often. Apps launch quickly. If you load JPEG files they display quickly, too, unlike on many Pocket PCs.
The keyboard is sweet. It has the usual Sony quirks, but it doesn't take long to get used to the keys. The dedicated numeric keys are at the top, where God intended them to be. Shift and Ctrl are sticky, so you need not hold them down to type. All in all the keyboard feels great and well spaced, and I can peck away in no time.
The wi-fi function works like a charm. I have Verizon DSL and they have installed lots of hotspots in Manhattan, free for customers. I instantly got wi-fi near a payphone near my office. I surfed for about 15 minutes sitting on the curbside and it never got dropped. Back at home, it works fine with my Microsoft AP. I'm very impressed. Bluetooth, on the other hand, is another matter. (...) The manual is very weak. (...)
I can't emphasize enough how great the keyboard is, and working in landscape mode (i.e., horizontal) is fabulous. You can browse the web and edit Office files with so much ease. You get multimedia as well. This is a very well put-together package.
Its high-resolution screen, unlike the NR/NX/NZ 60s & 70s, actually has a portrait aspect ration, making the device seem more like a micro-sized-pc than a Palm. Some prominent PDA vendors such as Mapopolis have released new versions of their software to support this latest form factor, but much of existing Palm OS software is unable to take advantage of the new unit, fortunately, Sony included a backwards compatibility mode! Its small QWERTY keyboard is much easier to use than the NR/NX/NZ units, but still is unsuitable for serious typing.
One area that the unit is really lacking is in the cradle department. It ships with a pad that it can be attached to for charging, unfortunately, it appears that the mini-USB cable must be plugged directly into the handheld to sync. Also, the pad is no where near as elegent as cradles for previous models. Also, as a result of switching to mini serial, Sony has rendered virtually all Clie accessories useless with it.
Overall, this unit is one of the best to come out of Sony. The camera (which can capture full-Clie-screen video) is incredible, the changes to the keyboard seem to be in the right direction. Now if they could only do something about the price tag ...
The Clie is exquisitely designed. Everything fits together very nicely. The keyboard is large enough to be useful, and you can hide it when you flip the screen to tablet mode. The one gripe I have about the physical ergonomics is the location of the scroll wheel -- I wish it had been placed on the left, where the power button is presently located. Its placement underneath the keyboard can be somewhat awkward. I thought the screen would be bigger, but it's high resolution and quality compensates for its size.
I'm relatively new to PalmOS, so I have no point of comparison other than the iPaq I'm also using, which is based on Windows Mobile 2003. For good or bad, you don't feel like you're using a regular computer on the Clie -- the interaction style is rather different. I'm guessing this is a feature of the PalmOS in general.
The web browser NetFront, which I'd read rave reviews of, is somewhat lame. You can't control the font size, and bookmark management is not especially flexible. As far as I can tell the only thing you can do is create a long linear list of bookmarks -- no user-defined folders or anything like that. It's also darn near impossible to control the web browser from the keyboard exclusively -- I found myself switching between keyboard and stylus quite frequently, which was somewhat annoying.
The "entertainment" functions such as the still/video camera capabilities are merely toys. By no means are they a replacement for a real digital camera. Still, very handy when you need to take a quick picture of something for a report and all you have is your PDA.
I have not yet tried syncing to my PC, so I can't comment on that aspect of it. The wireless networking capability (802.11) works well. I had it up and running with my Linksys wireless router in a matter of minutes with WEP enabled. Connection reliability was very good; I never lost a link to the router when within reasonable range (this has *not* been the case with the iPaq, I might add).
All in all, a pretty nice device. Would I have spent my own $700 on it? No way. I could never justify that kind of dough on something so frivolous. But it is a very slick gadget for those who must have the latest and greatest.
The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing,
the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its
own capacity. ... Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god
of the Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god
of the center. Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together
what they could do to repay his kindness. They had noticed that, whereas
everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and
so on, Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes
in him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died.
-- Chuang Tzu
Q: What do you say to a New Yorker with a job?
A: Big Mac, fries and a Coke, please!
