SONY CLIE PEG UX-50 -- What do you think of it?

Posted by Lokie on May 16, 2005, 5:12 pm

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Anyone have this?

SONY CLIE PEG UX-50

-- What do you think of it?

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Posted by Wendell on May 16, 2005, 8:36 pm

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Lokie wrote:
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yup!

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Great!

Posted by Erico Franco on May 31, 2005, 6:15 pm

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Lokie wrote:
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I don't have it,

but i hear about that is a very good model, I very good software package
and so

but...

the problem is that clie are not produced anymore. Clie gave up of pda
market.

Sony Clie support was terrible before that, imagine now.

Are you talking about a used one? Get it if it is cheap. take careful
that normally these clie devices need to replace the battery after
certain time of use... you will be in trouble to find one good battery
for you specific model and you will be in trouble to replace it by your
self.

Franco - Become a PalmOS Beta Tester:
http://www.micromagiclabs.com/beta.html
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Posted by Daniel Bacher on June 1, 2005, 8:32 pm

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Lokie wrote:
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After having used a PEG-UX50 for 4 months, these are my findings. YMMV

- The screen is not very bright. You will have difficulty using it
outside on a clear and sunny day.
- Bluetooth is not compatible with most mobile phones, but works with
Bluetooth access points and BT enabled PC's. I have used it for hotsync
and network hotsync.
- WLan B works on the slower 11Mbit speed. The included netfront
browser does a good job at rendering web pages. Some, like the ones of
the Zurich Airport it can't handle (http://www.flughafen-zuerich.ch).
The included Clie mail is also pretty good. It will also allow you to
open jpeg and other file formats.
- In order to save Batteries, you will want to disable WLAN/BT when
not in use. The UX 50 only allows one or the other to be enabled at
once, and you have to go into the preferences to disable it. Bluefang
can automatically turn BT on or off when you start or leave a user
selectable application.
- The camera is of very low quality.
- I have not been able to detect any shortcomings on the audio
playback. The Clie can be put in a "hold" mode that consumes less power.
Sound recording for conversations works pretty well.
- I have found that the Clie is less stable than the older Palms I
had used before (IIIxe). For example Beaming a contact won't work from
time to time. It requires a soft reset to restore IR functionality.
- What I personally like most, is the QWERTY keyboard. I ocasionally
use my wife's palm, and miss the feature every time. The scroll button
on the front is also very neat.

As mentioned elsewhere Sony has exited the Palm market. I once had an
issue with the Clie. It would not power on. It was not possible to do a
reset, or a hard reset or charge the batteries. I called the Sony
helpdesk in Europe, and they declined to offer support for it, arguing
that this was a Japanese unit (which it is not). Fortunately for me, the
unit must have consumed all the battery power after 5 days, after which
I could charge it again and bring it back to life.

The main reason why I chose to buy the Clie UX50 was because of the
wireless Lan capability. I am reluctant to move over to the LifeDrive,
because it does not have a keyboard.

Posted by Arthur Hagen on June 2, 2005, 6:07 pm

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There's an update that helps with that, in addition to a Mobile
Connection Wizard that you run on the PC that helps you set up one or
more profiles.

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That's not all that much of a problem, considering that you'll either
have small transfers to/from RAM, or large transfers to/from a
MemoryStick, which will be rather limited by the MS writing speed
anyhow.

More of a problem is that there's no WPA support, so you have to leave
your network open (or use WEP, which is about as useful as writing a
note stating "the doors are locked" and sticking it on your car).

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I've found that BtToggle does a much better job at it. I tried both,
but paid for and kept using BtToggle. YMMV.

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It can't play MP3pro files. Also, if transferring files through WiFi to
the device (or a card), there's an annoying quirk that you have to go
into the "Transfer" menu of the audioplayer and then start/stop a dummy
transfer before it will find the new files.

Also, ATRAC only works with the old WHITE non-pro memorysticks, which
are limited to 128 MB in size. This is a shame, since ATRAC gives
better quality than MP3 at the same file size.

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It's a common problem that the jog dial eventually stops working.
As for the keyboard, it lacks the vital | (vertical pipe) symbol, which
makes it much less useful for us that use it to connect to Unix boxes
where the | is a must.
There's also no CTRL/blue+key combination that gives you a "|". On the
other hand, it has two hyphens, which doesn't seem logical. Maybe the |
fell over.

Some people have a problem with a high-pitched whine from the screen of
the UX40/50, and others have a problem with the metal ring meant for
Japanese to fasten their colorful lanyards to (they do that to cell
phones too -- I think it's a cultural thing) -- it rusts.

Despite all this, it's a VERY nice device, and I'd only consider
replacing it with a Sharp Zaurus. Being able to configure a server
without getting out of bed is _nice_.

Also worth mentioning is PicselViewer, which displays office documents,
images and PDFs nicely rendered on zoomable pages. It takes up a LOT of
memory and isn't 100% stable, but it's *so* much better for viewing than
Acrobat Reader for PalmOS or DocumentsToGo.

Videos too are nice -- the screen is of course too small for reading
subtitled movies. But there's no stuttering or other problems, due to
the special video routines of the CPU Sony uses - it plays videos far
smoother than a much faster T3 or T5. Typically, movie files will take
up around 100 MB per hour after converting to "high quality" MQV format,
so an additional memory card is a must. You can also play some native
MPG movies (as long as they're not DivX or Xvid) by renaming them in a
special way and placing them in a special directory on a card, but it's
easier to convert the movies first.

Regards,
--
*Art