A guest editorial from Brighthand 's Ed Hardy:

More than two years after leaving the U.S. handheld market, Sony has released... a handheld. It isn't a Clie, but it still does much of what Clie users love about their devices.

As a long-time Clie user, I though I'd do a comparison between the new mylo and the now-classic Clie line.

Multimedia

Sony always emphasized the multimedia capabilities of its handhelds, and the same is true of its latest mobile device. The mylo can play audio in a variety of formats, for example, but so could all but the earliest Clies.

Both Clies and the mylo have memory card slots, allowing them to store large files, necessary for music and video .

However, there is an area where the mylo is definitely ahead. It includes a VGA screen, twice the resolution of any Clie, plus the ability to play MPEG-4 video. Clies can play video, but only offer HVGA displays.

An area where many Clies come out ahead is in video playback. This is because there are numerous Clies with HVGA screens, while the  mylo includes one with half that resolution. Even Clies with 320-by-320-pixel displays beat the mylo's QVGA screen.

Communication

As time went by, it gradually dawned on Sony that there needed to be a greater emphasis in communication in the Clie line. The email applications bundled with Sony handhelds became steadily more robust, and the inclusion of built-in keyboards made typing messages easier.

Still, the biggest change was the embrace of Wi-Fi, which didn't happen until near the end of the Clie line.

The mylo, on the other hand, is focused on communication from the beginning. It puts even more emphasis on this than it does on multimedia.

It has a built-in keyboard and Wi-Fi, and comes bundled with a couple of instant messaging apps and a web browser. This doesn't really give it an advantage over the Clie models, as they also came with a browser, and IM apps could be added.

Again, though, there's an area where the mylo is definitely superior. It comes bundled with Skype, which lets users make phone calls over the Internet. No Palm OS version of this application has been released, and the developers aren't showing much interest in making one.

As if to balance this put, many Clies have a feature the mylo doesn't: Bluetooth. This allows the older devices to use a cell phone as a modem, so users can exchange email or browse the Web pretty much anywhere they go. mylo users have to be in range of a Wi-Fi hotspot to do this.

There's another communications tool that Clies have that the mylo doesn't, but I'm not sure this definitely qualifies as an advantage. I'm talking about an email application. Because it doesn't have one, mylo users are forced to use web-based email, but its target audience is quite frequently already using this. And, you have to admit, putting in all the settings for a POP3 email account is a big hassle compared with just going to a web page to read your mail. On the other hand, if you don't have a connection to the network, then you don't have access to your web-based email. I'm going to call this a draw.

Flexibility

There is one significant area where every Clie is head and shoulders above the mylo: flexibility. There doesn't seem to be any way of adding third-party applications to Sony's latest device, which means that whatever functions it can do when you take it out of the box is all it will ever do.

And those functions are are very targeted at a specific audience: younger consumers. This makes the mylo all but useless for someone who needs a device for business.

A Clie, on the other hand, can run thousands of Palm OS applications, allowing it to be meet the needs of a very wide variety of people.

And the Winner Is...

... whichever of the two best fits your needs. There's no such thing as a handheld that is best for everyone.

There can be no doubt, the mylo is focused on a specific demographic group. If you're in that group, then this might be the best device you've ever had. The people I'm describing are almost always in range of a Wi-Fi hotspot, exchange a lot of IMs, and have no need to access Microsoft Office files while away from a desktop or laptop.

But if this doesn't describe you, then the mylo would probably be a disaster for you, and you should look into a regular handheld or smartphone.