 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: Sony CLIE PEG-NR70 Handheld | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
User Submitted Sony CLIE PEG-NR70 Handheld ReviewsDate: 2003-10-29 Nice for multi-media, but that�s about it. I had come from the Diamond Mako or Psion Revo+ which I had bought for ~$100 a couple of years ago. The Mako had its short comings which was mainly the lack a hi-res color screen and lack of upgradeable memory. I loved the keyboard on the Mako and hardly ever used the stylus. The graffiti always seemed slow to enter data and you always had to pull out the pen so I like the keyboard. The NR70 had a keyboard, a nice screen, and expandable memory. I didn't really care about the MP3 player since it's too big too be conveniently used while on the go. The Apps: The applications have the following problems: 1. The applications that are provided with the NR70 are bear minimum. It seems like they stuck them on it just so they could list them in specs. The contact book only allows you to look at the bear minimum of contact information from outlook (the home addresses don't even show up!!!). The calendar does not let you look at all the data. The mail tool is pretty much only good for letting you look at messages in the inbox. The remote has a limited number of remotes and only allows for basic features (so you need to have the remote around anyway). The calculator is very basic, the documents to go does not translate accurately, the picture program does not ever read GIF files and does not have good pan/zoom features. 2. All of the Apps lack options. The preferences only let you do a couple of things leaving so that customization is minimal. 3. There is very little keyboard support. This is probably because it's palm OS, but I constantly have to switch from keyboard to stylus to even move from text field to text field. 4. The only really useful applications I have I had to buy. This includes a new picture viewer, a new remote too, and a decent database tool. The Screen: The color, clarity, and resolution of the screen is the best part of the NR70. My main grip is you can use it all. There are only a couple of applications that use the entire screen w/o the graffiti area. Even the OS app browser doesn't let you get ride of this area! The keyboard: very awkward to use. The NR70 is hard to hold while typing and the keys are located in a weird config. The control/alt/shift key has to be held while typing the character (instead of pressed once) which makes capitals a pain. The enter key and back space are in weird spots. Several times the keyboard has just stopped working and the device has to be reset to get it back. Some of the time, you have to use the palm arrows instead of keyboard arrows. I would not get this device if you are like me and like to use the keyboard for entry. Other: The battery life seems good. The screen can be seen in almost any light. The MP3 player app is nice if you don't mind a large player. Overall, I feel upset that I paid $300 for it. I would return it if I hadn't bought it from Sony on-line which I don't recommend. If I hadn't spent so much on it, I would go back to my old PDA. Date: 2003-02-18 warning! After owning 3 Palms and one Pocket PC (... I kept dropping them), I bought but deeply regret buying a Clie. If you are a heavy user of "tasks" as I am, Clie's performance is so bad the PDA is unusable. When one makes any change in the task (...change date to "tomorrow"), there is about a 5 second delay. For all the Palms this was instantaneous. Change "priority"... same thing. Etc. This renders the Clie unusable. I will not complain about the fact the machine just flat stopped working after a month of use because I sent it in and they fixed it for free and quickly. I pointed out the above problem but they did nothing. This really disappointed me as I had previously thought well of Sony. Date: 2003-01-11 Memory Stick Gets "lost" This is the slickest handheld to date. I fell in love with the PEG NX70V/U in a nano second when I first laid eyes on it, and I went ahead and got one. Looked cool when I used to take pictures and then stored them on the memory stick (MS). Thats when the trouble began. I did a not synch and connected to my PC. The Clie did its thing and suddenly there was a bar across the memory stick, so I waited till the synch stopped. Took the Clie out of the cradle and reset it. Still no memory stick on the icon tray, even though the 128 Meg stick was still in. SO I did a hard reset, wiped the handheld and the memory stick was found ! Did a hot synch again, and it could not be found. Sent it back to Sony for repair, they sent it back with a new MS. Case closed. Hmm, so is set it up and it found the memory stick. Now for the real test, I did a hot synch, and the memory stick disappeared, and the line went through the MS on the icon tray. I just shipped it back to Sony for repair AGAIN... If they can fix this minor problem I may even be able to use the wireless NIC I bought as well. First the plus side. This is the best looking handheld device I've seen. It's as much of a piece of art as a handheld gets these days. The case is a joy to hold, and the rotating screen doesn't get old after months of use - it's still a blast to spin it into position. The design also serves to protect the screen against scratches. Battery life is not too bad - better than I expected - and it recharges quickly. The 320x480 screen is outstanding when applications support the full resolution (unfortunately few do). With 320x320 apps, the virtual graffiti area and icons are extremely clear. Now for the negatives. I returned my first two. NR70 Clie #1 had a dead pixel. I swapped it for #2, and upgraded to the NR70V with a camera. Two problems. The camera is very poor quality and I lost interest in it after five minutes of playing with it. The second problem is that the screen brightness of my NR70V was less than that of the NR70. I could see this because my wife had also purchased a NR70 and in a side-by-side comparison, hers was brighter than the NR70V. In addition, when I went back to Circuit City, their NR70 on display was brighter than their NR70V. Not a big difference, but these are expensive machines and I like mine bright. So, I returned the NR70V and wound up with Clie #3. After 4 months of use, here are the downsides: 1) Reliability problems. My wife had to send her NR70 back to Sony for repair because it hosed her memory stick and the infrared wouldn't work. Sony told her these were "known problems" (well, why release the hardware if it has known problems?) She had a poor customer support experience - the packaging Sony mailed to return it for repair arrived several days after it was promised, and it took over two weeks to get her machine back. Sony doesn't really care that users depend on these machines for their jobs and has no program to rush a replacement unit to the user. It breaks, it's your tough luck. One piece of advice from Sony was, "why didn't you purchase an extended warranty from Circuit City." Well, why should I? These machines are expensive enough already! My own Clie has had intermittent problems reading the memory stick and now is unable to transmit wireless. It's not convenient for me to be without it for two weeks, however, so I'm going to try and live with it. 2) The "keyboard" is completely useless. I never have used it. The device should have been made smaller, or this space used for a more useful feature like wireless. 3) The up/down keys and the four buttons for the Palm OS applications are useless. The device feels unnatural in the hand when opened up clamshell style - you can't get a good balance holding it and using the buttons to play games. These buttons belong on the bottom of the screen. The problem is further compounded by the nonstandard configuration and ridiculously small sizes of the up/down buttons. 4) Not enough applications support 320x480. Only two applications that I use regularly do - AcidImage and Mobipocket reader. It is frustrating that more apps don't support this and that Sony did not rewrite the key Palm OS apps (datebook, etc) to support 320x480. 5) Not enough applications support the hires mode. Even the new release of Bejeweled 1.6 doesn't support hires. This is frustrating because once you see a hires app, you don't want to use anything that displays at 160x160. Ever. 6) Sony makes you install a Sony version of the Palm desktop on your PC. I expected that at least after having to uninstall my old Palm desktop and reinstall the Sony desktop, the new one would at least look better. But it is just as uninspired an interface as the standard Palm desktop - couldn't they have spiffed this up a bit?! 7) Too expensive. Price is coming down, but the original retail prices ...are greedily high for a Palm OS device. 8) Prepare to stock up on extra styluses because they don't stay in place too well and fall out of their slot on the side of the Clie. 9) Can't hear MP3's without headphones. Game sounds are loud, system sounds are loud, but MP3s are barely audible. 10) The hold button is easy to slide into the "on" position without knowing it. The first time I did this, it took me a few minutes of fiddling with the Clie to realize it wasn't broken after all. But it keeps happening. 11) The memory stick sometimes pops out of it's slot if the Clie is jostled around in a packpack or briefcase. 12) As noted, the camera in the NR70V is poor quality and not worth the extra price. All in all, I do enjoy my Clie, but I'd never buy another one of these and I'm staying away from Sony next time around.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ©2004 SimplyHandhelds, All rights reserved. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
