Going to Sony?

[Legodude522]

Hello chaps! I got a deal going on here. I could trade my Zire 72 that I don't want... for a TH55.

I know the TH55 is only 123mhz, how much can it be overclocked to?

Also, I know it got some video acceleration hardware in it like the Zodiac. I was very pleased with the Zodiac it's 200mhz, which is faster.

Also, if I do go with this deal,[unlikely because I can get a Zodiac 2 for $125]. I have invested a lot in SD cards and wouldn't want to loose that. I got 1gb, 512mb, 256mb, and 128mb SD cards. So anyone here possibly willing to trade MS for SD cards?

[mike p]

the th55 kicks butt in batt life man! but id get the zodiac if i was u, maybe u coul d get both ;)

[Burns]

Just FYI, the TH55 cannot be overclocked, only underclocked. I think there might be an app out there that tries to trick the processor into staying at the max speed instead of slowing down the way it is designed to for certain apps.

[Legodude522]

Just FYI, the TH55 cannot be overclocked, only underclocked. I think there might be an app out there that tries to trick the processor into staying at the max speed instead of slowing down the way it is designed to for certain apps.
Not good enough :( I think I will stick with the Sharp Zaurus plan.

[JAmerican]

Was it a TH55/U or TH55/E ? Yea also, no video acceleration, only DSP for audio which saves a lot of battery life when playing audio compared to PTunes.

BTW, how are you going to manage with the Zaurus' little third party support. I've used a Sidekick and I must say that it sucks not being able to add apps to your device.

JAmerican

[dragonsgames]

The TH55 has a TCPMP HHE plugin, which runs video at 30fps. What are you expecting to be doing? It is much better than a Zire, BTW :D

[SonyStyle]

go for it. zire 72 for a th55. good deal!

[dragonsgames]

Zire 72 ~$100
TH55 ~$300 ;)
You better hope the person doing the trade is here.... ;)

[CroCo]

I´d get the zodiak if you want speed. get the TH55 if you want batterylife. I am very happy with my TH55 and the speed-issue never really occurd to me. 123Mhz is enough for most apps. Shattered worlds:planet assault runs ok and Zanes EDGE also (except for sound glitch) - just as a benchmarking estimate:-)
Zaurus sounds compelling! I look with envy on the page of linux for PDAs ( http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/SupportedHandheldSummary ) and the many palm and ppc projects- sonyPDAs have no support there :-(

[Cyker]

The TH55 is a PDA first and media device second - Out of all the OS5 PalmOS PDA's it's definitely the weakest for multimedia stuff - The one thing it can do better than anyone else is play 44.1kHz MP3s - It can play them back longer than any other device I know of, including dedicated players like iPods! :D - But it's not very good for video unless you pre-convert it to something like MQV using the Sony Image Convertor or use low-bit rate MPG or DivX AVI. Don't even bother trying an advanced codec like AVC+AAC - It'll just lock up.

For general purpose multimedia, the LD is the best thing available - It sucks for everything else (Disclaimer: IMHO), but for multimedia it can't be beat. That ludicrously over-kill CPU just munches it way through any video codec TCPMP can throw at it ;)

The Zodiac 2 is fairly good at video - It's the fastest MPEG4 decoder despite only being 200MHz because it's the only PalmOS device with a dedicated ATI MPEG4 video decoder built into it (Oh how I wish my TH55 had such a thing!), and is *sweet*.
The Zod2 is worse than the LD as a PDA 'tho, but it nukes every other Palm as a games machine (ScummVM, Transport Tycoon, LJP... yummy :D)

Given a trade with the Zire 'tho, I'd go for it - The TH55 is the only PDA I've ever seen who's second-hand value has exceeded it's new value so even if you decide you don't want it you could probably eBay the thing and buy a load of Zires :D


Before you buy a Zaurus, I'd try and demo one... maybe if you know a friend who's got on, try it out.
Like PPCs, it looks good on paper, but also like PPC's it's a bit of a dog to use, espescially if you're used to PalmOS (And I'm saying this as a rabid Linux fanboi :eek:)

You could probably adapt to it, but I tried one out and I found it quite irritating to use. My biggest annoyance is I couldn't customise it how I wanted (This defeating the whole point of the Linux part for me :().
You can do some cool pointless PPC-style showoff stuff with it (e.g. running an Apache web & FTP server on it :p :D), and videos are impressive (when they work), but it just ain't great as a PDA...

[Legodude522]

I never used a Zaurus but I did a lot of research on it. As long as I can do videos, mp3/ogg, PIM, and wireless, I am happy. I mean VGA and thumboard is pretty sweet.

I am not going with the TH55 deal. From what I read, the TH55 was good for videos because of graphics chip in it. Or is it locked down by Sony or something? Zodiac is a better value with a wifi card IMO. Battery life is not much of a concern for me. I charge everyday.

[dragonsgames]

Why not get a TH55 and Zodiac 2? You can keep the SD cards and buy a small MS card that you can use every now and then for music, and use it mostly for PIM :D

[JAmerican]

I never used a Zaurus but I did a lot of research on it. As long as I can do videos, mp3/ogg, PIM, and wireless, I am happy. I mean VGA and thumboard is pretty sweet.

I am not going with the TH55 deal. From what I read, the TH55 was good for videos because of graphics chip in it. Or is it locked down by Sony or something? Zodiac is a better value with a wifi card IMO. Battery life is not much of a concern for me. I charge everyday.

The Zaurus don't have Wireless, you have to add it. One thing I disliked about it. Other than that and lack third-party support, they are sick.

JAmerican

[Cyker]

Slight tangent: This whole thing about TH55's having a video accelerator is not true - They have a graphics accelerator, which is something different.

If you are playing a straight 320x240 video, most Palms will do it better than a TH55.

If you are playing a 320x240 video rotated and scaled up to 480x320, other Palms will take a CPU hit because of the extra processing they need to do to rotate and scale the video, but the TH55 can do it for free because of it's GE2D accelerator chip and will play back at more or less the same speed it did with a straight 320x240.

The only PalmOS device with a real video accelerator is a Zodiac 2 and it'll kill anything, even the fastest Palms, for MPEG4 video playback (MP4, DivX, XviD, but sadly not H.264 or AVC :().

[Legodude522]

Some of the Zaurus models have wifi. And the one I want to get doesn't have wifi but has CF slot. Many of the ones on ebay come with CF wifi card.

Oh, and I just sold my Zire 72 for $125 + $9 shipping. So thats umm a profit of $74! w00t :D

[dragonsgames]

If you would have traded for a TH55, you could have sold that and gotten more $$$$ :p

[Legodude522]

Nah. That would be too complicated. And don't forget that I would have to pay shipping for the trade.

I think $74 profit is good enough :D

[dragonsgames]

You might want to update your sig, lol ;)

[Legodude522]

Yeah, I got room for my other crap :-)

[SonyStyle]

is the th55 all beat up or something or is it in mint coindition