Wired.com: Sony Breaks Ground With New PDA

[BlueTooth]

Interesting read on wired.com (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59679,00.html)

[Gravity]

Interesting indeed!

[hausman]

Interesting to me how they harped on the cost. Sure, I'd love to pay less for my UX50 - wouldn't we all. But really...adding WiFi and Bluetooth to my Zaurus SL-5500 cost me well over $200 (actually about $250, but admittedly things are cheaper now). Furthermore, the Wifi card sticks out, so I can't use the Z in a case when I have that card in. The Wired article complains about the cost of the UX50, yet if you subtract $150 for the wireless components that are embedded in the unit, and (in my experience) subtract a further premium, I'll say $50, for having both protocols/hardware built in, easily switchable, and without having to carry anything else, you're looking at a $500 landscape palm with what looks like a great keyboard, a solid processor capable of 30fps, and a (cheap) camera. Having gone through the process of having to purchase and carry extra peripherals (and having to make those choices when I leave in the morning: "what will I carry today? Will I be near a Wifi AP?"), I don't see the UX50 price as being completely unreasonable. I think the UX50 is among the more impressively engineered/designed PDAs out there, and based on my experience in buying peripherals for PDAs that don't have them built in, quite possibly well worth every penny (provided everything "just works", of course). I will also pay more for a metal case, but that's just me. I dream of being able to simply drop the thing in my pocket and not worrying about it.

OT: Not sure if anyone noticed, but in one of the pics on one of the japanese sites it looked like the graffiti area was repositioned on the left, for us left-handers. ?

[lostether]

Originally posted by hausman

OT: Not sure if anyone noticed, but in one of the pics on one of the japanese sites it looked like the graffiti area was repositioned on the left, for us left-handers. ?

I saw that picture also, and read that it is switchable left and right, though I can't remember where I read it. The info came fast and furious last week.

[hausman]

Excellent; thanks. I didn't catch that anywhere in text. I had some fun putting the Sony Japan UX-50 site into babelfish last week. It took some creative interpretation, but I was able to become more familiar with the unit. I'm assuming they'll have more detailed info in English available soon.

[EdFrmBrighthand]

Originally posted by hausman
OT: Not sure if anyone noticed, but in one of the pics on one of the japanese sites it looked like the graffiti area was repositioned on the left, for us left-handers. ?
The pic is here:
www.clieclub.jp/review/rev_ux50/images/28_JPG.jpg

Originally posted by hausman
I had some fun putting the Sony Japan UX-50 site into babelfish last week. It took some creative interpretation, but I was able to become more familiar with the unit. I'm assuming they'll have more detailed info in English available soon.
You can read about the UX50 and UX40 in English at
www.brighthand.com/article/Sony_Announcing_Wireless_Handheld_on_Friday

The products are also listed on SonyStyle:
www.sonystyle.com/clie

[hausman]

Thanks - yep, I knew all about the brighthand articles, they were some of the first ones out, and really got me interested in the UX50. :) The Sony Japan sites (listed elsewhere in this forum) had a few pages that went into detail on some of the features.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?lp=ja_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sony.jp%2Fproducts%2FConsumer%2FPEG%2FPEG-UX50%2Ffeat4.html (scroll down to get past the images which babelfish can't translate)

For example, there's something here about the ux50 possibly being able to unzip zip files (if I'm interpreting this right). But you have to get used to reading things like: "The data compressed file, selected ahead thawing, with simple operation completion of thawing". Yeah.

I'm just an information freak at the moment - UX50 is a dream come true for this long-time Zaurus user...can't wait until September!

[EdFrmBrighthand]

Originally posted by hausman
For example, there's something here about the ux50 possibly being able to unzip zip files (if I'm interpreting this right). But you have to get used to reading things like: "The data compressed file, selected ahead thawing, with simple operation completion of thawing". Yeah.
I'll miss Bable Fish's garbled translations when Alta Vista finally gets it working right. As it is now they are an endless source of hilarity.

Anyway, all the OS 5 Clies can extract the contents of ZIP files.

But I understand that there's more info available in Japanese than English so if you want to know everything you have to mess around with Bable Fish.

[PDA Expert]

Thanks!

[hausman]

Yes, thanks...speaking of babelfish, I think the docs mistranslated (?) the name of a bluetooth camera as a "rhinoceros bar". Anyone else see that, or was I dreaming...made me laugh, though, on several levels...

Man, I can't wait for this PDA - August is going to be one slow month. *sigh*