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| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 Color Pocket PC (Slate Blue) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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User Submitted Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 Color Pocket PC (Slate Blue) Reviews (cont...)Date: 2001-11-19 compare to other ppcs I got this ppc spring of 2001, it played (...) audio books just fine, when the price of mmc card dropped, the extra 64 mg of memory made it a superb music player. the ppc comes with 16 mg of memory, but ROM and RAM split it. so there's not a 16 mg storage afterall. but the mmc fix it. I have a 28 mg mmc for storage of programs, and a 64 for media. i keep the ppc itself free of junk, and give it more mem for RAM so i can run more applications. The voice recorder is the easiest to use and very useful. It records at 1 kb/sec rate, not hungry on memory but big in sound. it picks up little sounds quite wonderfully. and the build in speaker is louder and clearer than my solo 9300 laptop. (the build in speaker is vital when you want to share the movie clips with your friends). this has been called THE media ppc. it has a 65000 screen (be careful, the new compaq has 4000, and it stillc cost 500+). the MMC card is half the size of a smarmedia, very very chic. the front bottons are vitually useless because i can't get around without the stylus pen. but this not a problem for me. infrared works within 10 inches, speed is slower than usb, but there's the option, it's helpful when you forgot the cable. speed is amazing for this em 500, 150 mhz is enough. great battery life. the word and excel are useful and "note", "task", and "appointment" programs are very useful, especially pleasing with the brilliant color screen. one down side is that microsoft won't upgrade these "old" ppc to pocketpc 2002 platform. But after some research and looked at my friend's 2002, the only difference is wireless internet access. (and cooler wall paper). I thought about upgrading to a new one, but i am not willing to pay (too much) for a 4000 color compaq and spending (more) for the pc card expansion pak (for wireless). in all, it does more than you can ask for. if you have the right cell phone, go buy a connector (...), and you can dial up and go wireless. metallion game (...) works great and the sound adds more spice to the game. i would prefer the red to the slate blue color though. (...) i've heard that this is more durable than HP. SO far on the customer support side, i think Compaq and Casio has an edge over HP. Date: 2001-07-24 Great, but with Warnings I bought the EM-500 recently to replace my Handspring Visor. I was always more than happy with the Visor, but wanted to go with a device with a color screen and the Pocket PC operating system. My overall satisfaction has been great, but you really have to know what you're getting yourself into. Generally speaking, my computer skills are well above average. This has turned out to be a very good thing with the Pocket PC system. I've found it at times more versatile than Palm, at times more familiar (due to the Windowsesque interface), but also frequently frustrating. Because everything's a little more "tweakable" than Palm, you'll find more of a need to get into the details and settings a bit more. If you're comfortable with that, then Pocket PC is for you. If you're looking for simplicity and ease of use, then stick with Palm, even if you're a desktop Windows junkie. Palm is certainly expandable (though arguably not as much as Pocket PC), it's just easier to do so. A few other things to keep in mind: While the MMC slot allows you additional storage space, it's no help for program memory. Some programs require quite a bit of memory to run (PocketDOOM comes to mind), and if you've stored a lot of stuff on your RAM, then you're out of luck. A 32MB version would've been smart on Casio's part. This brings up another point ... Casio has discontinued the EM-500 line now that the PocketPC 2002 OS is out, so you may want to think about how that might affect you. The EM-500 is NOT upgradeable, and never will be. That said, my experience with the EM-500 has been great. It's got stereo MP3 playback out of the box, a beautifully rich color screen (though difficult to see out-of-doors), and outstanding expandability. It's given me just about everything the Visor did, and more. Its size (just a tiny bit larger than the Visor) and weight (probably at least twice the weight of the Visor) weren't an issue for me, though you might consider it if you plan to carry this in a pocket. Overall, a great purchase, and I believe the best tradeoff between price and quality on the Pocket PC devices. While I do believe the EM-500 is probably the best unit available, it does have a few draw-backs. The miserly 16mb of ram is hardly enough... if you buy this make sure to get a 32mb or 64mb memory card to go with it. My other complaints are minimal: lack of hardware volume control, location of IRDA port... but none of these minor issues really impact the usefulness of the unit. Definitely a great PDA, and well worth the money. The screen is clear, the processing is great, and the functioning plus controls are intuitive and well designed!!! Ok, the one drawback might be lack of software -- but it's slowly coming. You have the strength of Microsoft's R & D plust the fact that it's the same as, for better or for worse, the basic operating system used by 90% of the world. Applications are already coming and you will not have to worry about it. Plus, when you already have Word, Excel, Outlook, Microsoft Reader, and can get streets plus other great classic titles for it, I have not felt burdened by this "lack" of software. Plus, you can web browse if you buy a modem -- at 56.6 connected and a bit slower wireless but that will get faster as time progresses. Why this Casio? 1. Well, it's the entry level and for students and young professionals, it's great. 2. The screen: It's active matrix (unlike Jornada's more passive screen) and can be seen well in the light or at angles. Plus, it has 65,000 or so colors. It's just so beautiful. If you are going to spend a lot of time looking at something -- let it be beautiful I say. 3. The controls -- This Cassiopeia lets you scroll a screen using a button on the side or the "jog" dial -- WHICH NO OTHER POCKET PC HAS. The "jog" dial is great because you can play a lot more games on it because it always 4 way movement and the other buttons can understand simultaneous and multiple clicks. Quite a few classic arcade games can be used on this device. 4. The MMC Card -- First, people are worried that this type of memory will limit expansion capabilities versus Flash memory. In the short term, that's slightly true, but you can get a lot of expansion utilities or what not for this Cassiopeia nonetheless. Serial modems are available, and, I think you can also get a serial expansion device that accepts Flash memory. I am not entirely sure on that point, but you can always get a Flash reader, Active Sync to your computer and read from Flash in that sense. Also, MMC memory seems to be very price competitive [with the] Flash memory. Please verify that for yourself, but in the initial term I feel it's true. Finally, the MMC are very small so it's not going to sacrifice design as much as Flash might. The industry sees the obvious benefits of MMC cards and will support them fully. You should really not be wary of this memory choice on this machine. 5. Casio has great multimedia support. They have their own video viewers but can also easily use all the regular WinMedia, .wav, mp3, or mpeg files. 6. The character recognizer seems very excellent. I have not had trouble with it and I have not even consulted the character guide all that much. It's intuitive. Plus, if you get the Pocket PC's for Dummies book..., you can get Microsoft Transcriber (plus a whole host of other utilities) which can understand connected, cursive handwriting! 7. The transfer of the files is real simple. Active Sync is easy to set up if you have USB and it's just essentially dragging then dropping the files. The Pocket PC comes up as a new disk on your computer is all. If I want to listen to a couple songs on the way to work or while outside, I just drag then drop the files to my Pocket PC. Since the memory can go up to a lot of megs (64, but you can substitute the cards!) -- you can get quite a few songs on it. 8. The reader plus web browsers are great! -- Even if you decide against buying the modem to surf the web with it -- you will still be able to get pages offline and read them later. Some news and entertainment sites are already set up for it. And, the navigation through them on the Pocket PC screen is very close to actual web browsing. I'll no longer have to fold the paper or whatever on the subway -- I'll just be able to get the day's news in the morning and look it at through the Pocket PC. 9. The Pocket PC is only going to get better and [less expensive]. Ok, I am not entirely sure about this one -- it's hard to predict in the future -- but with the strength of Microsoft and some high profile manufacturers behind it, I have already seen the technology improve and the prices drop in the year or so it's been introduced. I got this machine because it is one of the cheaper ones and it will allow me to get used to the Pocket PC until I can afford/understand a Pocket PC that has all the bells and whistles (wireless modem, printer outputs, scanning, etc., etc.!) later. 10. This machine really has no incredibly visible drawbacks. The battery life is decent it seems. The design is great. The weight is not too burdensome. [The money] is still a bit steep for a PDA, but the upside on this machine is amazing. If you are looking for a great entry level PC that will let you get familiar with all a great PDA is able to do, is incredibly cohesive with your desktop, and has strong potential -- this machine is for you. The price is steep but -- look at it this way -- if you are going to use a machine for two years or so it comes to near 50 cents a day -- that's not a bad price for so much at your fingertips! I really wish it be [less expensive], but we can't have everything. This machine comes close to getting you there however!
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