Sony Clie PEG-UX50 (retro review)
=================================

Disclaimer: I'm still being ill and unable to do anything useful, I
have some time to play but I can be too much negative in my opinions.

After some cleaning we have found the CLIE PEG-UX50 at home.

I got it for my wife several years ago as a replacement of her beloved
Palm T|X. The poor T|X has several issues accumulated which rendered it
beyond repair. So I decided to get a machine of similar class (color
screen, WiFi) but of a reportedly greater build quality: a device
build in Japan. This particular model I selected because of its QWERTY
keyboard: my wife never liked the Graffiti input. Unfortunately, my
wife found the device uncomfortable for her and abandoned it.

As the battery wasn't charged for a long time, it would be unfair to
discuss battery life here. By the way, the battery is "integrated" but
can be related by removing of several screws and pulling its cable for
the socket: no destructive operations nor soldering is needed (unlike
the Palm T|X, for example).

Hardware
========

Well, there are some strange features: the device has to be charged
via impractical dock. But the USB sync cable cannot be connected to
the dock: it has to be directly to the device.  There is no up-down
button (as in ANY normal Palm) but a small roller which is much less
comfortable. For a Palm-compatible device, it has a lot of strange
shapes, ports and buttons. There is a backlit keyboard: it looks great
but it's non-flat surface and unusual keys make it less useful (the
key top is in the level of keyboard surface - thus key press requires to
push the key inside keyboard, which is strange).

The device shape reminds me the clamshell Sharp Zauri - but they are
much more conservative. There is a lot of rounded surfaces, a rotating
camera (640x480 but with nice colors) or a telescopic stylus (but too
thin for my liking). On the other side, it lacks part of standard Palm
hardware buttons (there are only three: Web, Email and DateBook). In
theory, only one is lacking (DateBook, AddressBook, ToDo and Memo)
but in practice it makes some applications (read: games) useless as
the expected buttons are not in their places or even are not present.

The positive thing is that the screen (640x480), albeit smaller than
the one on clamshell Zauri, is very good (good colors, nice brightness
and so). But there is one issue: it's a PalmOS thing so rotation of
screen was probably hard to implement. Thus the screen is always used
in a landscape mode. It's not nice because the screen hardware can be
rotated in order to hide the keyboard. In this configuration it can
be expected that screen should work in portrait mode but it doesn't:
it's rotated for 180 degrees so it is still in landscape (the Sharp
Zaurus is better here: it can work in landscape mode). The Clie is
relatively small but writing Graffiti (2) strokes on the side of the
screen is not too comfortable.

Of course, do not expect that the device will accept standard cards
(SD/MMCs): it's using SONY's MemoryStick format (fortunately there are
adapters...).

Software
========

It's less or more normal PalmOS 5 device. There are some SONY-specific
pieces of code (an image viewer, a camera application,...) but not too
much. The camera application is nice, easy to use and the camera
itself is of relatively high quality (for it's time and for a PDA:
images are nice but they are only up to 640x480).

Some of programs can work with this resolution but some work only in
480x480 and they leave the rest for an emulated silkboard (even some
SONY-originated program do this!).

The integrated music player ignores files copied on the MemoryStick.
Probably more magic has to be done (I have an original CD but I use
Linux for data transfer so there is no use for the original programs).
After some searching I have found the DioPlayer [1]. Probably a basic
program but sufficient for the purpose.

I installed few of my favorite Palm programs: Plucker, KeyZ, Metro,
CSpotRun, EasyCalc. The SmallBasic works, too. So far, no problems. I
will probably try to install some games. I tried some but I noticed
the problem with HW keys.

My opinion:
===========

It's not a bad device. In it's time it was probably useful also for
Internet browsing and for e-mails (it has an integrated WiFi and
Bluetooth). For a clamshell thing it's pretty small (it's smaller than
the Palm III in any direction), it can run most of PalmOS software.

If you able to live with Palm-compatible desktop software (a
calendar/TODO app) then it is still an excellent pocket PIM device,
also useful for note taking and for music playback. There are also
specialized Palm-based applications which some people use. Also some
BASIC programming is quite easy there.

Actually, It's smaller than a comparable Sharp Zaurus but more limited
(being a Palm OS device while contemporary Zauri ran Linux-based OS).
For people who prefer Palm applications it is probably a good choice.


References:
[1] http://freeware.palmclub.nl/52/12-dioplayer.html

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