Torn Between Two... Well... PDAs, Part 127 May 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? Okay, I admit it, I'm feelin' like a fool. There's two really interesting PDAs on the shelves at my local CompUSA, and I have to buy one of them. I just can't decide which one to get. My budget is around $600, and I have to buy retail. And yes, I know I'll kick myself later for not waiting to see the new iPAQ models and PalmOS 5 devices later this year, but the gadget-lust has become overwhelming. I have to buy either the Toshiba e310 or the Sony NR-70V. The first thing you notice about the Toshiba e310 is how slim it is. It's exactly the same width and thickness as the Palm m515, although it is a bit taller. I can still remember my sleeved-and-cased-iPAQ days, when I walked around the office with what looked like a painful tumor in my thigh. The idea of a really pocketable PDA has considerable appeal for me. I'm pretty happy with my Jornada, but the e310 is even smaller, and thus, more comfortable. The next thing you notice is that it's a full-function Pocket PC, the only Pocket PC thus far to challenge Palm and Sony on form factor. It's got the standard Pocket PC 2002 operating system, complete with Pocket Outlook, Pocket Word, Pocket Excel... You get the idea. 206MHz StrongARM CPU-- where have we seen that before?-- and 32MB of RAM. Like other Toshiba and Audiovox Pocket PCs, the entire 32MB of FlashRAM is set aside for the operating system, so goodbye hp safe store. Early reports indicate that the Toshiba e310 has very good battery life, especially for a device that small. I've seen reports of more than seven hours of on time with the sidelight on, which rivals my Jornada and puts the iPAQ and Audiovox devices to shame. The battery life is even more impressive when you consider that the screen on the Toshiba e310 is one of the brightest, most vibrant Pocket PC screens available. Color quality and saturation are very good, and the sidelight rivals the iPAQ in intensity. For normal text, the e310 has one of the most readable screens of any Pocket PC. Unfortunately, that distinction goes down the tubes if you enable ClearType. The e310 has bone stupid ClearType rendering, with the top third of each letter rendered in a pale steel blue, and the remainder of each letter a washed out charcoal gray rather than black. Theoretically, this could be fixed via a software patch from Toshiba, but it's taken Compaq-- er, HP, now-- two years to patch the ClearType woes on the iPAQ, and such a patch still won't be out until June, if then. Still... I know this will sound like heresy coming from me, but I'm starting to question my stance on ClearType. A Usenet poster I know and respect brought up the point that he finds his Jornada more readable without ClearType enabled, and I decided to investigate that observation for myself. I turned off ClearType system-wide on my Jornada, including in Internet Explorer and Palm Reader Pro. I've been working with my Jornada completely "un-anti-aliased" for a few days now, and I'm starting to like it. Yes, the text is "lighter" in weight, but it's also much better in terms of contrast. The Jornada has one of the best ClearType implementations, with nearly black text, but without ClearType enabled, the text is black.Period. No "nearly." Italics don't look as good, but I could get used to using the e310 without ClearType and not compromise too much. Then again, maybe I'm just rationalizing. Toshiba is making a big accessory push for the e310-- and presumably, the e740, a thicker device with SD, CF, wireless and god knows what else, but a similar form factor. Quite unlike the dearth of accessory options for the Toshiba e570/Audiovox Maestro, Toshiba's website is filled with accessories for the e310, and I'm sure more are on the way. If I want styli or cases for this beast, I'll be able to find them. I'm not sure about keyboards, though. There's no word on a ThinkOutside Stowaway for the e310/e740, but since it uses a different sync port than the e570, any keyboard that hits the market would have to be unique to the e310. With one notable exception. The PockeTop IR keyboard-- sold in CompUSA as the Micro Innovations Wireless Link keyboard-- uses IR to communicate with the PDA instead of a physical connection through the sync port. This keyboard will theoretically work with any PalmOS device or any Pocket PC, and since the IR port on the e310 is along the top edge, the reflector stand included with the keyboard should work fine with the e310. It's worth noting that the e310 and the IR keyboard together are about the size of my Jornada alone. I could carry those two and completely save myself the bulk and 10oz weight of the Jornada Stowaway I carry now. UPDATE:Testers on Brighthand have discovered that the PockeTop keyboard does not work with the e310 after all. It gets as far as handshaking with the device before popping up a "Manufacturer Not Recognized" message. While the keyboard does work-- sort of-- with other Toshiba devices like the e570 and Audiovox Maestro, we'll have to wait for either Toshiba or PockeTop to issue a fix before using it with the e310, and presumably, the forthcoming XScale e740. All Pocket PCs must include some form of card expansion, but obviously no one's going to pack a Type II Compact Flash card into a device the size of a Palm m515. Like the m515, the Toshiba 310 sports a Secure Digital card slot along the top edge of the device. SD card prices are coming down, finally, and the format is supported in enough devices that I won't feel to bad ditching my trusty 128MB CF card for the same capacity in SD. One of my favorite features of the Toshiba e310 is something I also loved about the Toshiba e570 and the now-discontinued 3600/3700 series iPAQs. The power jack on the bottom of the unit is a standard round connector, meaning you don't have to get rooked on charger accessories. You can get a cheap universal charger anywhere, and as long as it can be set to provide the voltage and polarity that the e310 expects, you're good to go. I would have no problem keeping my e310 charged. That covers hardware. What about software? A German company called Softmaker is working on a product called Softmaker Office for Handheld PCs like the HP Jornada 720. Softmaker Office includes a word processor called TextMaker that rivals the desktop version of Word for features and formatting. Company officials have indicated that it would not be difficult to port Softmaker Office to the Pocket PC, if there's sufficient demand. If the Pocket PC community can convince them to do this, we'll have the word processor for which we've thirsted lo these many years. For now, though, I find that Pocket Word with the addition of WordCommands does a pretty good job for word processing on the go with my keyboard. For planning, Agenda Fusion and Pocket Mindmap are a potent combination. Pocket Mindmap contains most of the features I miss from ShadowPlan on the Palm, including the ability to synchronize action items with my tasklist and drill down to finer levels of detail. Agenda Fusion remains my preferred PIM on the Pocket PC, and the new version 4.25 has much improved task handling over previous versions. You can now group your tasks by priority, due date, pretty much anything, in addition to the powerful filtering options. The ability to break down my goals in Pocket Mindmap into manageable tasks, then use Agenda Fusion to block out time to do those tasks, makes my Pocket PC an indispensible planning tool. Bottom line on the Toshiba e310? It's only real flaw is ClearType implementation, and I've convinced myself I can live without ClearType until Toshiba fixes it. The device is $399, the IR keyboard another $100-- after a $20 rebate-- plus whatever I can afford for an SD card. The base system, minus the cost of expansion media, comes out to $499. That gives me a Benjamin to spend on and SD card. I didn't see any 128MB cards at CompUSA, but I could find those online. Sounds good, right? You betcha. But wait until next week, when we look at the Sony Clié NR-70V. Jeff Kirvin
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