Got a question about PDA's

[Gordon Moore]

I'm looking for a pda for my wife and I've gotten it down to the Sony sj20 and the Palm130. Palm is offering a $100 CDN off to bring it to the Sony's realm.

Both use Palm's OS 4.1
(not interested in a pocket PC mostly because of price and intended use)

Now Sony's offering is 16Mb RAM and 4MB ROM and Palm is 8Mb Ram and 2Mb Rom

I always assumed the ROM would be used for housing the OS so is it all that critical to have more ROM than the competitor or is it a numbers game?

My feeling is that more initial RAM is more important than colour but this IS for my wife so she may appreciate colour more and you can always beef up RAM through add-on cards and memory sticks anyways right?

I guess my biggest question is why would 4MB internal ROM be more beneficial than 2 MB's?

Help me Obi-wan....you're my only hope!

[JonMarsh]

Gordon,

Take a close look at the software packages and functionality included. The only reason for the Sony to have 4MB of ROM compared with 2MB of ROM is because the built in software is larger, in terms of the physical space. Keep in mind that it only has to be a little bit larger for them to have to step up to 4MB of ROM- they don't make 2.5 MB ROM chips! :LOL:

All other things being the same, my suspicion is that your wife might like color better in the long run. They way the human eye works, it can distinguish readily between different colors at the same brightness level. One of the things I *don't* like about the standard PDA's is their monochrome displays. But then, can you expand the memory in the 8MB unit?

OTOH, I think the Windows CE devices suffer from code and function bloat, and just aren't as well designed. Personal opinion, mind you. I wish they were better, because on some levels I'd like to have something like a Jornada- but not at the price with such poor performance. I'd sooner go for an ultralight notebook that runs real software. (See, my problem is I need a PDA or CE comp with MathCAD built in, not "Pockt Excel" or "Pocket PowerPoint" on a low res display).

In that regard, I think Palm and it's licensees have a much better idea of what the market needs. Plus, they bought BeOS last year, and will have a really cool codebase for software development for next generation products. BeOS is probably the OS with the most interesting and modern technology developed in the last 10 years.

In a dream world, where technology does win out over commercialism, (i.e., M$), we'd be running BeOS on DEC Alpha 64 bit CPU's, or at least on AMD Hammers (BeOS did run on AMD as well as Intel boxes and chipsets). Oh well, don't get me going about BeOS.

Good luck with your PDA purchase.

-Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Gordon Moore]

Thanks Jon...a very informative post. The m130 is entry level colour but my wife is looking for a high tech day planner, contact list, calculator, time waster(the odd game)....basic pda stuff. My mission was to find her that and I think the m130 will fit the bill and colour to boot. Most things between the Sony and Palm are equal the Sony does have a higher res monochrome display but I think colour will be a better fit for her...from what I've been reading, the standard sized display isn't a detractor because colour seems to offset size differences (which fits your point nicely about perception and colour. The Pocket PC didn't interest me mostly because of:
1. the OS, IMO the Palm is rock solid and more established

2. the price (even with Dell's supposed entries in 2003). Thanks for you for your explanation and opinion.

Gord




"A RONSTER!"

[P-Dub]

Gordon,

I think your wife would be very happy with the m130. 8M is more than enough for most people and you can easily expand that by using the MMC/SD memory chips that are available. You might want to check out Costco to see if they have any m130's at a cheaper price, I recall seeing that unit available on the West Coast.

I personally purchased a M505, which is a colour version of the M500/V. It's only 8M but I've been quite happy with it. It's currently $379 at Costco.

I was very seriously considering the Toshiba e740, which is a PocketPC model with wireless Lan connection built in, but I just couldn't justify the cost for the cool geek factor. Plus all I really needed was a contact list and the calender.




Paul

There are three kinds of people in this world; those that can count, and those that can't.

[SiliGoose]

Choosing a PDA is a very personal choice. However, for my money I'd go with the Sony over the Palm.
Color is a nice feature only if the screen resolution is adequate. I don't like the m130's screen at all. I'd take a high-res B&W Sony over the m130 in a second.
The high-res B&W screen of the Sony will prove its worth in the number of applications you can fit on the launcher screen, the number of cells you can display in a spreadsheet, the number of lines you can fit in a document, etc.
Screen resolution was the biggest improvement I saw when upgrading from a Palm m505 to a Sony NR-70v.
There was a bit of controversy over the m130's screen. Palm advertised it as true 16-bit color. Turns out it's not nearly that good.




-Sili

[Lex]

A spreadsheet in a Palm? 8O 8O 8O

Oh, to hell with it, I can't see the thing anyways: :boozer:

Lex

[SiliGoose]

LOL!

I run excel files all the time on mine. I use an app called Tinysheet because it takes great advantage of my Sony's increased screen size. Here's a link if you're interested: http://www.iambic.com/english/palmos/tinysheet/

I've seen people running Powerpoint presentations off their Palm too...plugged directly to the projector. Very cool.




-Sili