Manufacturer: Casio Model#: EM-500SlateBl Weight: .49lbs Height: .75"     Width: 3.25" Length: 5" Average Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars	Retail Price: $399.99 Online Sale Price:
Features: Color screen with 240 x 320 display in 65,536 colors Includes Microsoft Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Money, and Pocket Internet Explorer 16 MB of internal RAM, expands up to additional 64 MB with optional MultiMediaCards Play MP3 audio files with built-in speaker What's in the box: Cassiopeia EM-500, Stylus, USB Cradle, AC Adapter, Lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack, CR2032 lithium battery, Connector cable, Pocket PC User's Guide, Hardware Guide

User Submitted Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 Color Pocket PC (Slate Blue) Reviews (cont...)

There are so many reviews comparing palms and pocket PCs. Many of the reviews have missed, or are lack of two important factors: the color display ability and the screen display size. They are the major reason for me to pick EM -500.

The pocket PCs have color display ( Cassiopeia e-125 and em-500 have 65,000 colors, the ipaq has 4,096 colors). While all the palms are either black and white or grey scale, except the new visor color model. So if you want to see your photos taken by a digital camera, or movies, colorfull 2d or 3D games, then you would defiantly go for a Pocket PC. For the EM-500, the pictures are sharp, the colors are very rich, and the CPU speed is very fast

Pocket PCs have much bigger screen display and better screen resolution. The Palms use a hardware pat for letter input. This pat chops off almost 1/3 of the screen display. And the Pocket PCs have full screen display. It uses software for letter input so that you can turn the keyboard on and off. So with the Pocket PCs, they display bigger pictures, hold more lines for words, excel and books you're going to read.

Among the Pocket PCs, I tested the Cassiopeia EM-500, ipaq, and HP Jornada. The ipaq has 4,096 colors only. The more color, the better picture quality you can get.. So the ipaq is out of my choice. The Jornada seams running application slower. And the Cassiopeia runs much faster. And I personally like the look of EM-500. It looks sleek and sexy.

I pick EM-500 over E-125 because my digital camera uses MMC. I can just take out the MMC from my digital camera and put it to the EM-500 then watch the slide show. Otherwise I would recommend the E-125 which has more memory and uses CF card for storage, modem and network.

Date: 2001-02-08
waiting for warrantee service, and waiting, and waiting...
It has been in the shop for more than a month now. I guess that means that as of today, it has been away for service for more days than I got to use it in the first place.

I could not keep the screen aligned. When you tap the stylus on the screen, the machine should detect exactly where you tap. You can go through an "alignment" procedure to set the position of the stylus exactly. Unfortunately, the screen would go out of alignment (by one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch) five or six times per day. Every third or fourth day, the screen would go out of alignment by one-half to three-quarters inch.

It did not "drift" out of alignment; it would happen suddenly, in the middle of writing characters, for example. I could see the character being formed directly underneath the stylus, and the very next character would be a quarter-inch above or below the stylus.

So, does this happen to everyone (and everyone else just puts up with it)? I don't know, but I could not get any information from Casio whether this was expected behavior, unusual behavior, a common failure or an unusual failure.

So I shipped it back to Casio factory service in NJ, and cannot find out anything about when (if ever) they will send it back, or if they can fix it or if I'll have to live with it.

I sure wish I had bought an iPaq. Maybe I'll go ahead and order an iPaq; it will probably arrive from backorder before I get the Casio back.

Date: 2001-01-07
No Compact Flash a big let down.
I bought the EM-500 about four months ago. I love the Software that it came with (Microsoft Pocket PC) but since all pocket PCs come with the same software I'm not going to write about how cool the transcriber is and how nice it is to write notes down, and save them.

The things that I don't like about this model are that it doesn't support compact flash. It only supports the Casio micro memory cards which are hard to come by. This also means that you will miss out on all those cool accessories that are compact flash compatible. I also don't like the placement of the IR port (on the right side). If you want to send something, you have to turn it to the right for the IR ports to see each other.

Other than that I really like my EM-500 and I use it all the time for work and personal notes and reminders. I also love reading books on it - I can read a book in bed with all the lights out so my wife can sleep.

The one recommendation I would make to all pocket pc buyers is to invest in a screen cover - the screen can get scratched very easily and if you want to keep it for a while the scratches will start to add up.

Date: 2001-01-06
The Best!
I compared my EM-500 to a Palm and there was no comparison. Next I compared it to the Jornada and the Ipaq. With the Jornada, there was again no comparison. The Ipaq beat it out in one area only - speed - but barely. In a side by side test the Ipaq only opened programs a fraction of a second faster with the single exception of MS Reader where the Ipaq was much faster. Size? The Ipaq and EM-500 are comparible. Screen? The EM 500 wins hands down. I compared them side by side at Best Buy and everyone around me chose the EM 500. THe Ipaq just looked a little washed out. Memory? The EM 500 at Christmas was [$] with a free 28 meg card. That gives it 44 megs of total memory compared to Ipaq's 32 megs at [$100 more]. If I have to choose between the Ipaq or EM 500 at the same price, The EM 500 wins especially with its free memory card. In this case, the EM 500 is actually cheaper!

Date: 2001-01-01
THE BOMB
This Casio Pocket PC with Windows lets you do so much more than the Palm's. This you dont have to spend the extra money to buy a MP3 springboard or voice recorder and so on. This is all in one listen to MP3's with the windows media player. Dont just look at word documents, make them, edit them and more. The Palm you can only view, not edit or create. This is much more than an expensive organizer like the Palm's and this Casio has +65,000 colors. This is the best handheld in the world, better than Ipaq, HP Jornada, and more that dont have the convienent Casio menu. They also only have 4,096 colors. The good thing about the Windows CE base Casio handheld is that when you connect it to the docking cradle it automatically sends all the updated files to your comp without having to convert from PALM OS. Since it has Windows you dont need to learn how to write in "Graffiti", this has an on-screen keyboard which allows you to get things done faster. You can also buy tons of upgrades for this Casio, the EM-500 has the best memory type of card, the new MMC slot about the size of your thumb to your nuckle. The scrool button (the round silver thing) is great for games, you can also get a free fun pack at PocketPC.com the Microsoft website that is worth $75. If you need more than an organizer this is the best thing. If you want an ugly yellow looking expensive organizer then by the hard to learn PALM (with of course the crappy PALM OS). This is the way to go.