Your Next PDA (Part II)

[Alexander Turcic]

A forum specifically on emulations? Sounds interesting. The way we do it with new forum sections right now is to first accumulate postings on that specific topic and then move those topics in a newly opened section. If there is general interest, I am happy to add another section!

Greets

[cbarnett]

I like this idea. I spend a lot of time mucking around with emulators, especially on my ipaq. I imagine you'll need to split PPC and Palm up as well...

Craig.

[ignatz]

I'm vaguely interested in emulation, but can't say that I've got the time to invest in pursuing it whole-heartedly. BUT I would love to watch the threads go by. Craig, looks like you'll need to drive some traffic here, and/or activate some latent emulators lurking around here.

[cbarnett]

I'm not sure how much I could contribute to the palm side of things, emulator-wise, these days. I just don't use the Clie for that sort of thing.

I can try, though!

Craig.

[ignatz]

I'm sure the PPC side of it would be enough to get it going. It only took a few chunky threads on sitescooper to get Alex interested enough to start a forum. It hasn't exactly been hopping, but I think that it's been useful for a lot of people...

[Brian]

My next PDA was going to be an OS6 Clie until Sony decided to make the Clie abandonware. I always considered the Tapwave Zodiac an interesting device, something that the Clie always wanted to be.

The timing of Sony announcing the discontinuation of the Clie line and Zodiacs showing up in CompUSA stores couldn't have come at a better time. I was hesitant to buy one sight unseen and made a few visits to check out the Zodiac. I was impressed with the device despite the locked demo units in the displays. The slim anodized aluminum body struck me instantly, other PDAs (especially the lower end PPCs) feel cheap and flimsy in comparison. I made the switch and bought a Zodiac 2 last week. You get a lot of device for the money, and I think the Zodiac has real potential as a "mobile entertainment console" in addition to its PDA/PIM functionality.

The main thing I find lacking is a Wifi solution, and that's more PalmSource's fault than Tapwave's.

As a former Clie NX70V owner, I would strongly urge those Clie owners looking to get a new Palm OS PDA to give the Zodiac some serious consideration.

[Bob Russell]

Originally Posted by ballistic

My next PDA was going to be an OS6 Clie until Sony decided to make the Clie abandonware. I always considered the Tapwave Zodiac an interesting device, something that the Clie always wanted to be.

The timing of Sony announcing the discontinuation of the Clie line and Zodiacs showing up in CompUSA stores couldn't have come at a better time. I was hesitant to buy one sight unseen and made a few visits to check out the Zodiac. I was impressed with the device despite the locked demo units in the displays. The slim anodized aluminum body struck me instantly, other PDAs (especially the lower end PPCs) feel cheap and flimsy in comparison. I made the switch and bought a Zodiac 2 last week. You get a lot of device for the money, and I think the Zodiac has real potential as a "mobile entertainment console" in addition to its PDA/PIM functionality.

The main thing I find lacking is a Wifi solution, and that's more PalmSource's fault than Tapwave's.

As a former Clie NX70V owner, I would strongly urge those Clie owners looking to get a new Palm OS PDA to give the Zodiac some serious consideration.

Hi Ballistic! Great to see you over here. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on a lot of subjects.

I've thought about the Zodiac route myself because I need to replace my SJ33 soon. But I'm hoping to hold out for OS6, and after the Sony thing, I'm hoping to stay mainstream.

But Zodiac has a lot going for it, and has a lot of potential for the future, especially for gamers. I'm really hoping it catches on. Would love to see Zodiac come out with an OS6 clamshell in the future.

At any rate, I'm expecting I'll have something or other by Christmas. But gee... it's hard to wait!

As an aside -- since I know you follow the industry talk about Sony pretty closely-- I read that the Toshiba/Sony LCD plant is ready to produce. But all that speculation about it being for the PSP seems to be off-mark because PSP won't be around for a while, and the plant (at least for now) is aimed at larger size screens.

BobR (aka Bobbert)

[Brian]

Originally Posted by BobR

Hi Ballistic! Great to see you over here. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on a lot of subjects.

Thanks BobR. There are a number of great discussions and interesting topics over here.

Another note about the Zodiac: It comes bundled with PalmReader for ebooks and I installed Handstory and Repligo (two of my favorite apps). All three of these apps support the Zodiac's portrait and landscape orientation in full screen. I haven't tried iSilo or Plucker yet or researched their Zodiac compatibility. Overall, the Zodiac makes an excellent platform for music, videos, games, audio books (the stereo speakers put out a lot of dbs and it has a true stereo headphone jack) and ebooks.

Hopefully there will be an OS6 device (the first most likely now a PalmOne, unlike OS5 ) by September and I'm hoping PalmOne offers a high end OS6 device without the TT's slider (one of the main reasons I chose Zodiac over the TT3).

Good luck in your quest. I look forward to future discussions.

Ballistic

[Brian]

Originally Posted by BobR

As an aside -- since I know you follow the industry talk about Sony pretty closely-- I read that the Toshiba/Sony LCD plant is ready to produce. But all that speculation about it being for the PSP seems to be off-mark because PSP won't be around for a while, and the plant (at least for now) is aimed at larger size screens.

BobR (aka Bobbert)

Maybe a Vaio U80??