Torn Between Two... Well... PDAs, Part 23 June 2002 My next PDA will likely be either the ultra-slim Toshiba e310 or the jaw-dropping, twistable Sony NR-70V. Which should I get? The Sony Clié NR-70V is a beautiful marvel of engineering and a device that really brings out the gadget-lust in my heart. While the Toshiba e310 might be the more conservative, practical choice, the Sony just looks like too much fun to pass up. The first thing I noticed about the NR-70 is that the screen is gorgeous. While all Pocket PC screens are 240x320, the NR-70 screen is 320x480, twice as many pixels as any Pocket PC (although, granted, crammed into the same space). Everything on the NR-70 screen is clean, crisp and beautiful. Even the Graffiti area is rendered via software, and icons there look just as sharp as if they'd been silk-screened on. That said, not all apps care about the high-resolution screen on the Clié. Several applications, notably WordSmith, have been updated to take advantage of the extra display area if the user wishes, but most PalmOS applications-- including, oddly, the Sony-modified built-in PIM apps-- do not give you the option to dismiss the Graffiti area, treating it like a physical part of the screen, as it is on most other PalmOS devices. Worse, the Graffiti area also becomes low-resolution and blocky on applications that require the NR-70 to display in pixel-quadrupled 160x160 emulation. The more I think about it, though, this might not necessarily be a bad thing. I'm not a "tap-counter" when it comes to usability; if you know what you're doing, it's just as easy and just as fast to work with a Pocket PC as a PalmOS device. But one of the few real usability features that PalmOS still has over the Pocket PC is the presence of command shortcuts. The mnemonic stylus strokes make most Palm apps completely controllable from the Graffiti area. I'm fast enough with them that I rarely actually drop down menus. When I tested out the HandEra 330 a while back, I found that on a PalmOS device, a dismissible Graffiti area was as often a pain in the rump as it was useful. The darn thing was hidden just when I needed it the most, requiring an extra tap to bring it back up. Sony's call to always show the Graffiti area unless you have a good reason not to-- coded into the app by the developer-- might be unpopular with the geek crowd, but the best choice for overall usability. As impressive as the screen resolution is on the NR-70, most onlookers are more impressed by the mechanics of the screen. The NR-70 opens up like a narrow laptop, with the screen in the "lid." It can be used like this, with a thumb keyboard in the lower half that I'll get to in a moment. This gives it a very different look than other PalmOS devices. While using it in this mode is fine for typing on the thumb keyboard and quick referencing-- and games, since the hard buttons are at the top of the bottom half-- it's a bit awkward for things that require extensive stylus use or for ebook reading. Fortunately, you have an option. The screen on the NR-70, in addition to opening like a laptop, can swivel on its hinge 180 degrees clockwise. As it does this, the screen flips orientation so that you can then close the lid with the screen right side up on the outside of the device. This gives you a standard, tablet-style PDA with the keyboard and hard buttons concealed within. This is why the Graffiti area on the NR series is rendered in software: it has to flip upside down with the rest of the screen when switching from clamshell to tablet mode and back. The NR-70 follows a trend in handheld devices started by the Blackberry and continued by the Handspring Treo, that of including a thumb keyboard for those users that don't want to learn that "weird" Graffiti handwriting. The keyboard on the NR-70 is pretty decent as thumbboards go, with nice tactile response and enough separation between the keys to make it pretty hard for even the stubby-thumbed-- like me-- to hit neighboring keys accidentally. Like the Treo, however, the keyboard lacks a few things. The reason the keyboard on the Blackberry is so successful is that the Blackberry OS is designed to be controlled entirely by the keyboard and the scroll wheel. Most PalmOS and Pocket PC thumbboards miss this distinction, and usability suffers for it. Using the NR-70 to make quick notes and date book entries, I found it difficult to control the device-- tapping OK, etc.-- without reaching for the stylus. Thumbboards are a drag if you have to keep a stylus in one hand as you type. There are undocumented Control key chords that allow you to do most of what you'd need a stylus for-- Ctrl-Backspace is "Done"-- but Sony really should have written those down somewhere. The NR-70V, the only model I've actually seen retail, includes a digital camera in the hinge. (Sony offers a Clié NR-70 with no camera for $100 less, but I haven't seen anyone stock that model.) At a max resolution of 320x480, this camera isn't going to replace any megapixel digicams you might have. I look at it as the digital equivalent of those little disposable "weekender" cameras you see in drug stores. The resolution isn't great, but the fact that the camera goes everywhere you do makes it ideal for catching quick snapshots of things you wouldn't photograph otherwise. While walking through Manhattan a few years ago, I saw a knocked-over street sign lying on the sidewalk. The sign read, "No standing any time." I'd love to have got a shot of that. I had my Visor with me, but no camera. The camera lens is in the hinge of the NR-70, and it can swivel about 270 degrees, from a safe storage position facing the body of the Clié, around to face the user and then over to face away from the user. A single press of the "shutter" button on the side of the hinge runs the camera application, and then another press takes a picture. My favorite use of the camera is taking candid photographs of people who think I'm just using my PDA. I feel like James Bond using this thing. The camera app has three different "exposure" settings for outdoor and indoor pictures, so it's not hard to get pictures that, while they might not be art, are at least recognizable. Since one of the really cool features of the NR-70 is that since the Graffiti area is drawn in software, it was only a matter of time before some enterprising soul figured out how to make it skinnable. I've seen a couple of programs already that automate the process of changing Graffiti skins on the device, and some of the skins are pretty fantastic. There's a Spider-Man skin that runs the entire width of the screen, with the soft buttons super-imposed over it with an alpha transparency. Wow. I suppose that this was inevitable-- it is called "Graffiti" after all-- but I think this is a far better way to add a personal touch to your device than the Today themes on the Pocket PC. With this, you can see your personal touch whenever you have your input area up-- which again, is all the time by Sony's default-- instead of just on your "desktop." The NR-70 is the first device to use the 66MHz Motorola Dragonball SuperVZ processor, and it is noticeably snappier than other PalmOS devices. Of course, it's still a PalmOS device, and PalmOS 4.1 at that. Because of the CPU, the NR-70 will not be upgradeable to PalmOS 5 when it comes out later this year. Is this really a downside? I don't know. Recent reports have stated that PalmSource doesn't encourage developers to write applications specifically for PalmOS 5 and the ARM processors until the OS version after OS 5, stating that OS 5 machines will still run Dragonball code in emulation slightly better than Dragonball-based devices. If most apps are still going to be coded for OS 4, then the NR-70 already gives you high resolution and multimedia, two of the most-touted advantages of PalmOS 5. One thing I would be stuck with on the NR-70 is VFS, the "virtual file system" developed by Sony and assimilated by PalmSource. I've ranted about the inelegant kludge that is VFS before, so I'll just say this here. It would be jarring and frustrating to move from a Pocket PC to a device that can't make proper use of expansion cards at the OS level. My only saving grace would be that on a 16MB device I could afford to load all of my apps into RAM-- or into the NR-70's copious 8MB of Flash RAM via something like JackFlash-- and my two data-heavy applications-- Palm Reader Pro and WordSmith-- already support expansion cards in very intuitive, no-hassle fashions. While the NR-70 comes with a built-in thumbboard, that's not enough for the amount of writing I do on my PDA. Thus far, there is no Stowaway for the NR or T series Cliés, although one is rumored to surface in the third quarter of this year. However, given that I already own three Stowaway keyboards, I'd rather not spend another $100 on a keyboard that can only be used with one device. Unfortunately, the PockeTop keyboard is iffy too. The problem here is that the PockeTop's driver cannot rotate the NR-70's non-square screen. The IR port is on the top of the device, so if you just laid the device down in front of the keyboard in tablet mode, the screen would be upside down with the IR ports lined up. I've heard the NR-70 is too tall to use effectively with the stand, so the only way to use it would be to lay the Clié on the desk with the top towards the keyboard, so that the IR ports line up. Then open the screen to a comfortable viewing angle and rotate the screen about 160 degrees, not all the way. This would angle the screen towards you and the IR port, but would not be far enough to flip the orientation from clamshell to tablet mode. In this setup it looks like you have some modern art sculpture in front of you rather than a PDA, hardly the effect you're going for in a business meeting. If I got the Clié, I'd also have to shell out the dough for another Memory Stick. I've got a 64MB stick for my Clié N710C, but that doesn't cut it anymore. I've got 59.9MB of Palm Digital Media books alone on the CF card in my Jornada, and I'm adding more every day (using Palm eBook Studio to convert text, RTF and HTML ebooks I have lying around to Palm Reader format). Even if I never listen to any MP3s on the NR-70, I'll need more than 64MB for ebooks and backups. For word processing, I already own WordSmith, so I'm covered there. The newest version of WordSmith fully supports the screen on the NR-70, so I can make use of the entire length of the display if I'm using the thumbboard or an external keyboard. For planning on PalmOS, nothing beats DateBk5 and ShadowPlan. DateBk5 adds one feature I've been waiting years for, full task recurrence scheduling. From within DateBk5 itself, you can set to-do items to repeat on a calendar schedule or every x days, with all the flexibility you have in recurring appointments. No more need for ToDo+ or ReDo! Of course, not all the PalmOS software news is good. I still haven't seen a mail client for PalmOS that equals Inbox on the Pocket PC. iambicMail looks close, but I refuse to buy from them after the DateBk5 domain name fiasco. Anybody know a PalmOS mail client that syncs subfolders with Outlook? The final price of the NR-70V would come to about $700, the $599 for the device plus the cost of a 128MB Memory Stick. It's a bit over my budget, but I might be able to squeeze it in. Both the NR-70V and the Toshiba e310 support my favorite ebook reader, Palm Reader Pro, and word on the street is that the PalmOS version of Palm Reader will support the full screen of the NR series eventually. Other ebook readers like Deep Reader and WordSmith already do. I should mention that one of my previous sticking points for staying with the Pocket PC is that I'm-- yes, I admit it-- addicted to Audible books. I walk at least two hours a day, sometimes more, and I listen to digital audio books the whole way. Even though it has a digital signal processor and a headphone jack, the Clié can not play Audible books. This is odd, considering that a Visor can, with the help of the Audible Advisor springboard, so Audible does, in a sense support PalmOS. That said, this is not a factor in this decision. I've got a shiny new Audible Otis, a dedicated player designed for Audible books. Even if I stick with the Pocket PC, I'll listen to audio books on the Otis, as I've found that Audible player on my Jornada makes it cumbersome to record voice notes and perform other activities with my Pocket PC while I'm walking. I'm not entirely sure convergence really works in this case, but I'll have to play with the Otis for a while to be sure. So far, I'm impressed with the Otis; it's tiny, has a decent UI and good battery life. So, there it is. Audible isn't a factor, both PDAs are slim and sexy, and I'm looking at roughly the same price tag either way. Both support a high quality word processor, both make good ebook readers-- if you eschew ClearType-- and both have high-quality PIM and planning tools. Or, of course, I could hold off. Both are compelling, but my Jornada, Toshiba e570 and Clié N710C all still work. As nice as the Toshiba e310 is, the rumored HP iPAQ 2200 series is supposed to be just as slim and will likely have better battery life and ClearType support-- it is made by HP, after all. Or even better, ZDNet reported last week that HP is planning to release a new "iPAQ" this month that bears a striking resemblance to the "scrapped" Jornada 570 with an iPAQ label slapped on it. If I can get the Jornada form factor I love with a 400MHz XScale CPU and 128MB of RAM, maybe I should wait for that... Mobile writers, which would you buy? The Toshiba e310, the Sony NR-70V, or neither, waiting to see better devices down the road? Jeff Kirvin
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