Sony's CLIE PEG-SJ20 and PEG-SJ30 address the budget side of the PDA equation. Do budget colour and monochrome PDAs offer enough for your spending dollar?
Sony's CLIE offerings in Australia have been interesting, to say the least. There's the CLIE PEG-NR70VG, a twistable high-end unit with a price that makes most Pocket PC PDAs seem cheap. There's the midrange PEG-T665CG and the launch PEG-T615CG, although Sony doesn't sell that locally any more. Sony's launched a number of other CLIEs to the overseas market, but its local offerings have been more selective. The two newest Australian CLIEs are also Sony's cheapest CLIEs to date, the budget PEG-SJ20 and PEG-SJ30.
Unlike its other two models on the Australian market, the cheaper SJ20 and SJ30 have the more mundane 33MHz Dragonball processor taking care of number crunching duties. The primary difference between the SJ20 and SJ30 units is that the SJ30 has a colour screen where the SJ20 is strictly monochrome. The colour screen on the SJ30 is pleasant to use, and the monochrome screen of the SJ20 is decent as long as the backlight is powered up. Both screens run at a resolution of 320x320.
Both units ship with exactly the same installed software, which is a little odd in the SJ20's case; is there anyone out there who desperately wants to watch movie files in grainy monochrome? Of particular note on the hardware side, both units come with a generous 16MB of internal RAM. At the budget side of the equation, most PDAs come with only 8. Upgrading the memory is as simple as pushing a memory stick into the slot at the top of the PDA. Being Sony, we're not surprised that memory stick is the only option for storage; we can but dream of a day when every portable device uses truly interoperable and open formats.
At 71.8x104x16.8mm the SJ20 and SJ30 are squat fat little PDAs. That's almost the opposite of the way everyone else is designs new PDAs, where slim rules the roost. At 128g, they're both fairly light. We only had two complaints about the physical construction of the SJ20/SJ30. At the back of the unit is a locking arrangement for placing optional leather cases on either unit, and the clasp for this is a touch fiddly to use; our cover fell off a number of times while testing. The units offer a jog dial on the side and a rocker switch on the facing for page selection/scrolling. The rocker switch is nice and responsive, but we found the jog dial tricky to operate, especially when clicking in with it.
Sony's selection of bundled software is very familiar to us; it's the same selection of utilities that their other CLIE models have sported. Of most immediate use is a full version of Documents To Go 4.0 which enables users to sync Word and Excel files with a minimum of fuss. There's also software that's not too bad on the colour SJ30 but a little pointless on the monochrome SJ20. We've already mentioned gmovie, but the SJ20 also ships with CLIE Paint, which lets you draw in 16 exciting shades of grey. All we can say is "whoopee".
Unlike many other budget PDAs, both the SJ20 and SJ30 come with rechargeable lithium ion batteries. We were pleasantly surprised with the battery life of both. Sony's specifications reckon on 15 days of battery life with usage of 30 minutes a day, or around 7.5 hours. We managed eight, and it's not often that we see something that exceeds manufacturer specifications when it comes to battery life.
One area where you can see the budget side of the SJ20 and SJ30 is in connectivity. Search inside the system box for a cradle and you'll find only a connecting cable that serves for both recharging and USB connectivity. Only Windows support is offered out of the box, so Macintosh and Linux users will have to try some kind of third party workaround with the SJ20 and SJ30; we were unable to test anything but Windows functionality. The cable option makes both PDAs extremely portable, although as with all custom connectors, if you break or lose anything, you've got big problems. Not having a cradle also means there's nowhere obvious on your desk to leave the PDA while it syncs and charges.
One other consideration for anyone licking their chops at the SJ20/30 is that Palm is expected to launch OS 5 at some point this year, although quite when seems to still be a matter of some mystery. The SJ30 and SJ30 are both OS 4.1 devices, so whether it's worth waiting for the newer OS-based devices is another decision to make. It's unlikely, though, that the initial run of Palm OS 5 devices will be budget systems.
Palm-based devices have maintained a strong position against the Microsoft Windows CE/Pocket PC assault for two basic reasons. Firstly, the initial releases of Windows CE were just plain awful compared to Palm's slick little OS. Secondly, they've always been notably cheaper. The SJ20 and SJ30 continue the budget schtick of other Palms with a number of good features thrown in. As long as you're happy with Palm OS 4.1, they're a good choice for the price-conscious PDA shopper.
Sony CLIE PEG-20/PEG-SJ30
Company: Sony Australia
Price: PEG-SJ30 AU$749 PEG-SJ20 AU$549
Phone: 1300 13 7669
