Comments on: Review: Sony PEG-T665C

http://makeashorterlink.com/?R31952021

I especially like the silver-color cradle. Also, look for the mini keyboard listed on the right hand side for $49.88.

And note that the extra $100 is the difference now that Sony has dropped the price of the T615. You are essentially getting this for the same price of $400. The same as the "upgraded" M515. How is this a ripoff? The device might not be for everyone, but to say that it is overpriced is just ridiculous. Also note all those PIC readers who posted comments on the release of the NR70 about how they would buy a similar device if it was in the T615 form factor. Well here it is... and still complaints.

As far as target audience, Sony hits the nail on the head. Sony has never targeted business users. The Clie's are marketed as Personal Entertainment Organizers. Hence, MP3 players, cameras and hi-res screens fit right in. Want a more business like device? Get a M515.

Lastly my rant... This is an amazing device, not as amazing as my NR70V, but still amazing =) All of this cutting edge technology packed into a tiny form factor and people still find things to complain about. Note that not 6 months ago the same people were complaining about not having what the T665 is delivering now. People just like complaining I guess. Sony's next model could make coffee for you in the morning and I guarantee that there would be people here whining about how they don't drink coffee, so what are they supposed to do? Ack! I can't wait to read the review of the first OS5 handheld and see all of the complaints. Most, probably from those same people who are "holding out" for an OS5 device now. Now, as far as those complaining about battery life... Yes it could be better, but c'mon! Don't get a high-end device with all of the bells and whistles and expect the same battery performance. Do you buy a Hummer, then complain about the gas mileage? Or better yet, how about comparing the Hummer(palm) with a Focus(PPC) and then complain about the Hummer... Geez, if battery life is such an issue, get a PalmVx. I hear they last a long time, are cheap and doesn't have all that extra crap that no one uses =)

Rant: So when do I get a device that lets me record quick verbal notes without having to buy another addon that will not travel with me when I upgrade next. I got my Prism for $250 in Feb/2001 with the $200 rebate @ COMPUSA that I had found out about here. BTW, the prism is not over rated. Great unit, and with the super bright screen, it lets me walk through the house without a night light ;-D.

So I guess I am perched on the fence waiting to see the next unit in the parade before making my upgrade choice. I am sure that many are sitting on th fence with me.

-Mike-

I just bought the T-665C a couple days ago and can say I am quite impressed. My other palm pilot was a Palm Pilot Professional that my friend gave 8 months ago. I used it every day and thought it was awesome. So for me the jump between the two was huge. I have always liked SONY because the quality of their products. I paid 359 dollars with a warranty at best buy. I also downloaded the Kimoma player for it because the Gmovie software that comes with it sucks. With the kinoma player you can pretty much watch movie trailers and other mpeg files in pretty good resoultion. I think it looks great for such a small device. The sound on this thing is unbelievable that little speaker can really sound out. I have read about many people saying that they will hold out for OS 5 but the SONY T-665 is pretty awesome and its out NOW.

P.S.

If you can afford it buy the NR-70 with the camera on it. its costs about 200 dollars more but its pretty cool.

1. I, too, wish the AuidoPlayer had playlists, or at least sorting, but there is some primitive control over the display order, as Audioplayer lists tracks in the order they physically appear in the MSAUDIO directory. I prefer tracks to be sorted by artist and then song title, so I keep a batch file on my PC in the directory where the "source" copies of the MP3s destined for my Clie live, and reload the msaudio directory from scratch occasionally ("e:" being the drive where my Clie appears when MS Import is running):

e:
cd \PALM\PROGRAMS\MSAUDIO
del *.mp3
c:
copy Judith.mp3 e:
copy PlanetClaire.mp3 e:
copy DevilsHaircut.mp3 e:
...

Takes a couple minutes to run, but, well, one less annoying problem.

2. As long as MP3s are encoded as 44.1khz and Joint Stereo, bitrate can be almost anything -- I've had VBR MP3s as high as 225kbps on my 710c (upgraded to 760c) and never had any playback problems whatsoever, even in the background with extensive use of other (in-memory) apps. I've read that the external player thingy (used with the 610/etc) had trouble above 128kbps, but the internal DSP-based players clearly do not. On the other hand, if other programs are pounding on the memory stick at the same time (msmount/pidirect, anyone?), you're likely to have trouble.

YES - it includes an app called MP3mgr that allows you to create *albums* from the songs on your memory stick and play them back in that order. It also includes a sound creator app for your pc that lets you convert .wav and .mp3 samples into system sounds for alarms and system tones. WAY cool.

IMHO - the NR series is serious technology that is overlooked by the bloat. I don't think larger and heavier is the way to go. I was hoping and hoping that SONY would take all the goodies from the NR series and pack them into a T series form factor, which is less than 5oz and thin as anything I've ever seen in the PDA game. I also didn't know if it was possible. Apparently it is! Good for sony, and good for me, because I bought one on sale at Best Buy for $359 last night. It is blowing my mind. Fast as heck! The 66 mhz Dragonball is incredible.

For all you OS 5'rs out there: YES OS5 will be out soon. Do you really think that v5.0.0 is going to be ready for prime time? LOL Nosir... If you want a real OS5 device, without being a beta tester that paid $600 for the privilege of doing so, then you'll be waiting an additional 3-4 months for v 5.x to come out.

No thanks. I'll take my brilliant display, 310% FASTER speed, MP3's and unlimited expansion RIGHT NOW!! And the Bluetooth MS and GPS MS have already been released in Japan. Give it 4 months and we should see them here. Or give me a japanese translator and I'll buy one now (they work on US models, just are doc'd totally in jap.)

third.. i would check your first paragraph for a spelling error of saying the 615 and not the 665.

and on the conclusion... it says 651.

just a heads up.

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They say when you play a Microsoft CD backward you can hear satanic messages...but that's nothing, if you play it forward it will install Windows
www.pratorian.net

I lived with it for about 4 months before I found the battery life and poor graffiti recognition were truly not worth the HiRes screen and switched back to my old m505. I wouldn't touch any PDA with less than 6 hours battery life now.

Yeah but there are other handheld with exact same capabilities that are smaller. The Toshiba e310, even trough it is a PPC it runs for 8 hours without a recharge and it is about as slim as a Clie. (this is incredible since it is running on a power hungry Stron ARM and PPC bloatware).

True for all palm os devices exept the clies. According to the gadgeteer the clie (T615) goes to 25% battery in just a few days of standby.

www.the-gadgeteer.com/ubb/Forum441/HTML/000001-3.html

The low battery life of the Clie is not just while in just it also affects its standby time.

But here's a funny thing I found: every night my human body requires me to rest (sleep)...so while I rest in my bed, my Clie recharges in its cradle. Of course, I need about 6 hours of sleep, the Clie only needs about 1.5 hours...so it's always ready.

If I go on a trip, I find that I have to bring stuff with me like clothes, toiletries, etc....simple enough to bring along a charger. I guess I never go on trips where I'm no where near an electrical outlet (even Europe, Asia, Africa have power) for days at a time where I also need my Clie.

Again: I sleep, it charges. *SIMPLE*

Sony, this is just not acceptable. When PPC products like iPaq, Toshiba and so on can get better battery life, this is a joke. 2 hours of useful battery life is absurd. Either battery technology has to catch up to all the extras that come with today's PDA or the PDA makers have to abide by some degree of care for the battery life. This is one thing I think Palm has tried to keep up is the battery life. I know it would have been very easy for Palm to include all the bells and whistles like Sony does but it seems that the people at Palm still prefer a decent battery life over all the extras. At least an m515 can go for six hours on a charge. That's 300%! more battery life than this new sony. Plus the fact that OS5 stuff is literally right around the corner. I think I'll wait for my next PDA.

You might be able to pull off way better battery results. At the moment I have a IIIc which i think is one of the few color devices with a real good batterlife.

This CLIÉ would definitely have been my Palm OS PDA of choice if it weren't for the short battery life. I would gladly switch over to this model if it would only provide as much uptime as my m505 on a single charge.

But, like some of you have voiced, I think I'm simply going to wait until a new model with similar funtionality, with better battery life, comes out. Hopefully, this will be a non-issue with OS5 ARM based Palm PDAs.

Oooh.. can't wait! Until then, I can deal with low resolution and no multimedia playback. :)


Jim

You can find "social interactions" for less than the price of a color pda. At least that's what I'm told...I wouldn't know anything about it personally, you undersatand :)

tuckermaclain@yahoo.com

This is a little late, but...

I agree with the first of your comments in that the T665c is a great device, and the battery life should not be a problem for those who charge regularly.

However, there are those who have full schedules, or work two jobs, or who take vacations. In those cases, the new Sony would be a paperweight before they got back to the charger that same day. For me, I do GPS mapping, relational databases, and spreadsheets all day long. I would not be able to use the MP3 player, the only benefit of the high res would be in spreadsheets, and no one make a serious GPS unit for the Sony. On top of all that, the battery would be dead in early afternoon. You can plug into a car adapter, but what about those times when I'm at a customer site and walking around on a project? And forget about having anything left when going out with family or friends after work, or late classes.

The M515 has a nice display, not beautiful like the T665c, but still adequate. For the job I do, the Palm can hack it, and still keeps coming back for more. To me, that's more important than entertainment.

http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/PEG/PEG-T650C/index.html

japnese site shows that it has a remote volumn control :P Probably Sony US messed up, and thought it got a remote

I disagree. It is a huge error. It's the biggest error I have ever seen, in fact. Ever!

Also, "spelt" was not an error. It's an accepted British spelling for "spelled".

I forbid anyone to respond to this.

...Come on MegaSoft!...

Your Vx battery needs to be replaced (not an easy task with the heat gun and all). You should be able to go for a few weeks between recharges. BUT, if you already are used to charging every night, like music on the go, and don't mind a wonderful screen, there's a t665c with your name on it!

To cover the part about the underclocking app, I was unable to find one that supports the T665C. Can you name one you are sure of?

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News Editor

Maybe I am just too picky but I do treasure quality than quantity....sometimes short is good too.

By the way I don't live in Japan so I really don't have a T665 handy, and I really don't mean to pick on this specific item, just thought I used it as an example.

Thanks for all the info!

//killah_fury

I am carriying several referance books on my palm and use palm basically all the time.
In your experince, does the CLie's 66mhz processor makes a difference in a speed of the information access?
THe other question: durability. the palms starting from V, have been pretty sturdy and resist the damage when dropped pretty well - how does Clie 7665c compare?
Thanks again,
Alex

1) make sure your MP3s are encoded at 44.1 KHz
2) the lowest bitrate I found acceptable is 112 kbps
3) Make sure that you have the MS import utility that came on the Clie CD installed on your computer.
4) Put your Clie in the cradle and start the MS Import utility on your Clie (it should say connected to PC on your Clie screen.)
5) Drag your MP3s to the MS Import icon on your desktop and your files will transfer to the memory stick

Note, the above assumes the use of Windows 98 or higher on your desktop/laptop.

Also, MS Import will put other files on your memory stick, such as video clips, documents, ebooks, etc.

On the Sony T665, the memory stick sticks out less than two millimeters. I have been keeping my stick in all the time and I have no problems with it. it has never fell out.