Sony Cuts S-Series Clie Prices

Oh quit your PPC slander. This is even cheaper than an Axim. The Axim is really $250 with a $50 rebate, which I'm not sure is even valid anymore. Rebates really don't count, either.

This is a great device for such a small amount of money. I think it's absolutely GREAT the TT is at $399, and all Sonys are dropping across the board. We have PPC fanatics running wild all over the place!

Year of the Palm.

-Bosco
Proud Member of the Top Non-Mods
Members: abosco and ImpReza M3

The SJ30 does have a Memory Stick slot for expansion, and it seems to have a replaceable battery.

I don't think you should choose one over the other simply because one can play nintendo. I've tried it, and it's cool, but...

If your son will use it for school, there are many FREE Palm OS programs out there that can help. I use a homework organizer (Due Yesterday), a period table, an english dictionary, a french dictionary, etc...

(Why do some people say you can kill two birds with one stone when it's hard enough killing one bird with two stones?)

Ska, you CAN'T test out the two, you just have to hold them next to each other and test out how they execute similar tasks. There's no honest way you can say the 400 MHz PPC feels faster than a 66 MHz Palm.

Now Gfunk, do you suggest we stick a 400 MHz processor into everything, no matter if it's optimized or not? If that's what you want, you're looking into the PPC spectrum. And if you haven't realized this, the only one that is being "embarassed" is ska, and it's nothing new, as he's got total drivel.

Listen, I think me and you (Gfunk) have such varying opinions because you discuss something that's worth the dollar a product that has a lot of multimedia for a small price. That's NOT what I consider, as I try to think in layman terms, not poweruser terms. If you always think as the poweruser, it may all make sense to you, but you're wrong in almost everything. Yeah, the Ferrari's a great car because it's got an awesome engine and a killer design... so who in God's name would want a Civic? Even Mercedes look like crap compared to this thing. Do you *finally* see what I mean?

-Bosco
Proud Member of the Top Non-Mods
Members: abosco and ImpReza M3

a) the PocketPC OS is not optimized for XScale
b) the PocketPC OS is a more modern OS, with all the baggage and overhead that comes with that territory

How do you test that? Take both in your hands and see how fast the calendar appears when you press the Calendar/Date book button. Simple as pie.

If "everything", ie all class of apps, is used as broad indicator of processor speed, then clearly from various title out there Dragonball is not as powerfull as ARM (PPC class).

I have no idea what obscure conversation you have with some other nut crackers regarding 200 mHz Xscale is faster than 400 mHz. But all current PPC benchmark indicates 400mHz Xscale runs faster than 200mHz.

regardless, there is currently no apps yet to compare whole system performance numerically between Palm OS and PPC. And the user impression someone brought up as an indicator only applies to very small class of apps. There are far larger type of apps that cannot even run on dragonball but breeze on ARM, which "common sense" dictates that ARM processor are more capable, hence by default faster overall.

Now on to OS part.

http://www.neutrio.com/wince/PiCalc/picalc.html

Understand now???

-Bosco
Proud Member of the Top Non-Mods
Members: abosco and ImpReza M3

Where my Jornada, and the new Axim, fall down is RAM.

A Pocket PC with 32M will have about 25-28M free after boot. Of that, it needs at least 16M for running programs. By default, it splits free memory between programs and storage, which gives you 16M on a bare machine, but once you start loading programs into it that goes down fast.

Once you start running low on memory, it gets really slow to open new files or start new applications. My Jornada 548 would go from a few seconds to 30 seconds or more (I generally gave up and hit reset beyond that point, and once I waited a minute before the spinner went away) if it was low on RAM. PalmOS doesn't have this problem, because it only gives the active application access to the heap... everything else has to be satisfied with what it can fit on the stack when an event comes in (timer, locate, what have you). so there's no ongoing memory leak as applications start up and then go to the background.

So in your Axim X5, you'll have about 10M of that 32M available for actually storing programs and files. You can use the dual slots to add files, but you don't want to add programs there. Again, because it's got conventional multitasking, any DLL or executable on that card is likely to be "live", and because the OS pages files in rather than loading them all at once, it may need to access that at any time.

If you've popped that memory card out to look at something else, and it tries to page something in, it's reset time. Hard-reset sometimes, as I found out on my Jornada.

So... if you're getting a Pocket PC, get one with 64M, and preferably one that gives you ALL of that 64M to play with... the Viewsonic and the iPaq h1910 have slow ROMs and copy 20-30M from ROM to RAM on boot, using up almost half the 64M available.

The high-end Axim with 64M looks pretty decent, but it's not the $250 usint.