Can You See Me?
Written: Apr 25 '02 (Updated Apr 26 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Beautiful Industrial Design, HighRes 320x320 screen, JogDial
Cons: Terribly Dim Screen, Slow MemoryStick Slot, Slow Refreshing Screen
The Bottom Line: Unless you really like the industrial design of the PEG-T415, skip this PDA because of the terrible screen.
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| mookiekong's Full Review: Sony CLIE® PEG-T415 Handheld |
I’ll admit this: The Sony Clie PEG-T415 is a beauty when it comes to industrial design. This PDA is the thinnest PDA around (by a tiny bit) and it is just stunning to look at. When you hold it in your hand you'll wonder how Sony got all that goodness packed in such a thin box. I was truly in awe when I saw this machine, but this all ended the second I turned it on.
The display on the PEG-T415 is terrible. In most lighting conditions the display is very dim and sometimes completely unreadable – whereas when compared to an m125 or Palm V in the same lighting conditions they are readable. The display badness doesn’t stop there though, the refresh rate of the screen is slow, very slow – making a rather fast processor (a 33 MHz Dragonball VZ) seem like it is pokey. The one thing that the display has (but does not overrule the previous two drawbacks) is that it runs at 320x320. Fonts look crisp and pictures look great – too bad we cannot see them.
Technical specs on the machine include the 33 MHz Dragonball VZ processor, the 320x320 screen, the awesome JogDial, 8 MB of RAM, PalmOS 4.1, USB cradle, and an enhanced IR-port. All standard Palm apps (Datebook, Addressbook, Memo, and ToDo) are included. Also included in the package are Documents-To-Go for taking your Word and Excel files with you, Clie Remote Control for turning your Clie into a Universal Audio/Video Remote Control, gMovie for taking grainy movie clips with you, PictureGear for taking photos with you, and an assortment of shareware. Sony includes IntelliSync for synchronization of the T415 with Outlook, if you use Outlook.
It is nice that Sony included Documents-To-Go and the other software. I wish that Sony would include Chapura’s PocketMirror for syncing with Outlook instead of IntelliSync. PocketMirror does quite a better job than IntelliSync. The Clie Remote Control app takes complete advantage of the new higher powered IR-port on the T415. You can use it to control most any TV, receiver, VCR, and/or DVD player. It’s more of a gimmick app than a useful one for the Clie. I didn’t find too much use for it.
Hardware-wise the JogDial is always welcome on my PDAs. It is quite the useful feature on a PDA, allowing for nice one-handed use of the PDA. I love the JogDial and wish more PalmOS devices would put it on their machines. The new buttons on the T415 look like they were made more for aesthetics than they were for usage. The four application buttons are tiny little slivers – which in most cases are fine except that it is very difficult to distinguish between the four. The up/down toggle switch is another story in itself. It is hard to use and has this nub on it that digs into your finger. The toggle switch is also tiny, so the use of it is not really practical – using the JogDial on the T415 is better.
The T415, like all other Sony products nowadays, includes a MemoryStick slot (how did they get that thing built into this tiny little machine?). The only thing is that the MemoryStick interface on the T415 is slow. I use BackupBuddyVFS for backups and when I compared the speed of the T415 MS backup to backups done on my PEG-N610C (MemoryStick) and my m125 (SD Card) the T415 loses by a huge margin. Sometimes the T415 takes over 15 to 20 minutes to do a backup that the m125 will whip through in less than 2 minutes. The N610C is somewhere in the middle. I don’t have scientific testing on the speed of the MemoryStick slot on the T415, but it is definitely slower than the other two.
So, what’s my final verdict on the T415? Aesthetically this is one beautiful machine. Technically this is one terrible machine. If you buy a PDA so that you can whip it out of your purse or your pocket just to make people say “wow!”, this is your PDA. If you actually want to use your PDA, then skip this PDA. The screen on the T415 is too dim for most situations and if you can’t see what you’re doing, what good is the machine?
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 219.00
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Epinions.com ID:
mookiekong
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Location: San Jose, CA, USA
Reviews written: 68
Trusted by: 25 members
About Me:
Current Mookie Obsession: Apple iPhone 8GB and Fedora 8.
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