abosco

Anybody want to take a shot in the dark as to why Sony has been releasing piss-poor products as of late? Just take a look at Sony's lineup:

NZ90 - $800 - Is this thing still out or is it axed? Either way, Sony should pretend it never existed. Underpowered, overpriced, oversized.

UX50 - $650 - Oh man, where to start with this one. Slow processor, memory fragmentation, terrible screen (no portrait, dim, whines, 3.2"!), eye-sore design, dual wireless, but it only has one slot. For that price, you don't get a whole lot.

UX40 - $550 - All of the above but only single wireless. For the price, it's a wonder anybody bought it. (Maybe nobody did.. I rarely hear about it.)

NX80v - $550 - Again, slow processor, small amount of memory, good screen, keyboard, and camera, but zero wireless, and still no CFIO drivers. Could've been a great model, but Sony (again) crippled it.

NX73v - $450 - Repackaged NX70v with an extra four buttons in tablet mode. Please!

TG50 - $300 - Don't get me started on this one! Sony's engineers were hitting the bong when they decided a square screen with wavy shadows and hard-to-press keyboard was a better solution than HVGA. Sony has another "coulda-shoulda-woulda".

TJ35 - $300 - Well, this is the latest Clie, and while it's better than the others, it doesn't come without a flaw. Oops, your backlight is dead. Sorry! 32MB is fine for a mid-range model, but I want to see a faster processor. And Bluetooth. HP H1945 has this model beat in a lot of ways, and if Sony wants to compete like this, they might as well dig the grave themselves.

TJ25 - $200 - OS 5, no multimedia. Fan-freaking-tastic. What's the point again?

SJ22 - $150 - Get ARM and color in the sub-$150 price level, and you'll have a jewel. This is.. well.. not. I hope this is the last Dragonball model. Ever.

So there you have it. Why is every product so undesirable? Any theories? Could it have something to do with Sony's restructuring plan with new management and focus on the core electronics?

ClieKun

Since I am a been burned more then once by sony.I know whats your talking about. Sony only cares about what products they can produce with the resources they can get at the near future. Another is, they need to dump their wearhouses full of over stocked parts fast. hence the SJ 22.............
But in all fairness the TJ series was made for business users. There been no recall on the TJ series here. ( Only the TJ 25 is here not the TJ 35 ) Sony really screwed up with the not adding OS 6 to their newest line. I bet the UX series would have really been a better product if sony was not so stupid! Just a yen of though............................

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bighornsheep

I only own the nx73 in your list, so I will only commet on that.



Retracting CF slot, built in CF accessing drivers/patches, lighted keyboard, lighter weight, piscel viewer now comes free, supports ms pro natively, voice recording button.....

did I miss anything?
You're forgetting what a clie is, it's a PDA pretty much, 200mhz for storing numbers and text entries is more than enough,
even for the taking picture, voice recording, playing music/movie.

you still have more than enough power, what do you mean by underpowered?

take a look at the battery life.....than do your comparision.

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abosco

>>Retracting CF slot

At the expense of overall thickness. Look it up. I own an NX80v, and I immediately felt the difference in my pocket (NX70v + bulge was smaller than NX80v with CF retracted).

>>built in CF accessing drivers/patches

Which is very weak. This is a con.

>>lighted keyboard

Definitely a plus, but given six months, there HAD to be one or two improvements.

>>lighter weight

Nope, same weight. Both 8 oz.

>>piscel viewer now comes free

I had Picsel Viewer when I had my NX70v. The 70 came with D2G5, which is a much better bundle than Picsel (which was a free download - legality aside).

>>supports ms pro natively

That wasn't a huge deal. Overall, it gives you an extra 500KB because it has the updates in ROM. Otherwise, it's still got an inexcusable 11MB RAM. That's a pity.

>>voice recording button.....

This could be set as your capture button before. Where the new Voice Rec slider is placed is also very inconvenient. Not to mention that dreaded power slider.

>>You're forgetting what a clie is, it's a PDA pretty much, 200mhz for storing numbers and text entries is more than enough,
even for the taking picture, voice recording, playing music/movie.

>>you still have more than enough power, what do you mean by underpowered?

For writing a memo? BFD!! If that is your biggest need, you might want to consider picking up a Zire 21 at $99 with a 123 MHz processor and 8 MB. Should be fine. I'm talking about running powerful applications. I have to overclock for everything so it runs smoothly. NetFront, AcidImage, messenger, Flash, pVNC, GTS, Warfare Inc, DTG6, Picsel, Mapopolis, and more. I want a 400 MHz X-Scale with native ability to underclock or overclock when I want to. We're paying top dollar for a processor meant for a low-end product. For shame, Sony! For shame.

zzarg

I felt ripped off with my NR70V... the NXs came out soon after and where the machine I'd wished we'd got... but then Sony failed to provide any sort of patches / upgrades, just deserting us for the new machines.
I now have a UX50 (thanks to my daughter and a final drop of the NR !) and although I am please with performance/capability I do really hope there's an OS6 upgrade, or at least some other tweaks (netfront needs improvement as does some of the other apps, and can someone tell me what the heck picsel is for ?!)... the thing that would make my next Palm a PPC rather than a Clie (and so far I've had 3 Palms,1 PPC and 2 Clies in that order) is multi-tasking and a smoother experience (why do I have to buy thinks like BT Toggle or a replacement for the body launcher and mail apps to make it work properly ?!)

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mike p

u forgot sj33

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Palm TX with 4GB SD (Not SDHC) card, ThinkOutside Bluetooth keyboard

Clie NX70, 128MB MS, 2GB MS Pro Duo, Wl110 WiFi card

BillsClie

Let's face facts - Sony as a company used to be known for innovation. Now (see "massive layoffs", "restructuring") they are re-trenching and it shows in their products lagging.

ClieKun

Bills, sony was always been known for producing beta products. Its just know people are smarting up. I been abused by sony for many years.

BillsClie

I always felt that Sony was overpriced. But here I am in the Clie forum because I really do like my 615. It just flat out was a better buy than what Palm had out at the time (which was also struggline big time back then - not a whole lot better now). In retrospect, I would still make the same decision - many features on the 615 which Palm is still catching up on.

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ClieKun

Well price-wise sony is more friendly. PPC stuff is far to costly,Nice pieces of machines but forget about prices.

__________________
Palm&PPC can live side by side,
Fujitsu v70 Pocket PC Owner
Repect others views, even if they don`t repect yours.
Love Each Other And May Your God bless you.

BillsClie

Have talked to a number of folks who went from Palm to PPC because of features, bells, whistles, etc., but regretted it later. Too many freezes, crashes, lost data - and they found that even though the PPC was "windows", it didn't have anymore functionality for them than the Palm. But at the time Palm wasn't offering anything new, so they went to the PPC. Sony wasn't even on their radar screen.

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X Destruction

"TG50 - $300 - Don't get me started on this one! Sony's engineers were hitting the bong when they decided a square screen with wavy shadows and hard-to-press keyboard was a better solution than HVGA. Sony has another "coulda-shoulda-woulda"."

I've used the TG50 for about 7 months now, and it's smallest, most productive PDA I've really seen. This is for people who need a keyboard, and if you speak with anybody that has owned a tg50, they will also tell you that the keyboard is pretty nice. Also, it does have a great, bright and sharp screen that you conviently forgot to mention over smaller than fingernail sized spotlights. You also forgot to mention that sometimes a usable thumbboard is more productive than more screen space. How fast are you really at graffiti? It probably would never match what I get on the tg50's thumbboard. Not having 320x480 is NOT the end-all thing, it would be nice, but not by that much. This model is not like the NZ90, it did sell quite well, but obviously not as much as the NX's, which are at a higher price anyways. So, to sum it up, the tg50 is great screen, great keyboard. When the tg50 line just started, the wavy shadows were much more apparent, and the keyboard was much more stiff. If you talk to anyone from that tg50 board, they will tell you the exact same thing there are tiny little spotlights at the bottom apparent on light backgrounds, but they're not quite as apparent as you make them out to be. I'll show you another screenshot of mine, there are spotlights there, but they take up about 1/4 of the bottom bar on a light bg.

Oh, and mike, the SJ33 is discontinued buddy.

dduran@linux

Clies are too pricely! Compare it with palmone...

yr3698

Abosco, i dont understand. You claim you had the Nx70 but despite all your insight you went ahead and bought the nx80?? Come now, surely you didnt believe Sony would change its ways.

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