The rugged Casio Cassiopeia EG-800 makes good choice for light industrial application use--and for klutzy consumers. It does cost and weigh more than other Pocket PCs, however.
If not for its high price, Casio's rugged Cassiopeia EG-800 would be the perfect PDA for those of us who are too clumsy to be trusted with ordinary handhelds. But companies that need an adaptable portable computer for their mobile workers will find this Pocket PC well suited to their needs.
Underneath its purple rubberized exterior, the EG-800 is very similar to Casio's Cassiopeia E-125, with a 150-MHz processor and 32MB of RAM that provide reasonably speedy performance. It's still not as quick as Compaq's iPaq H3650, but at least it doesn't bog down often. The two Casio handhelds also share the same 65K colour display, although the EG-800 has a thinner antiglare coating, which makes this model appear a little brighter than its sibling. The iPaq is still the easiest one to read in bright sunlight, though.
In addition to the rubber shell, there are some significant hardware changes. The most important of which is the inclusion of a removable, rechargeable battery that is available in three sizes. By replacing the bundled medium-sized battery with a larger one, Casio claims that its device will work for up to 15 hours on a single charge. While this is critical for mobile workers, it sure would be nice to add this feature to consumer Pocket PCs.
Each EG-800 also has a unique hardware identification number, which can be put to use in several ways. For example, a company rolling out a large number of devices could use the hardware ID number in conjunction with other security software to ensure that only one employee accesses the corporate network with a given device.
To connect to those networks, the EG-800 is equipped with a Type II CompactFlash slot. There are wired and wireless network cards, bar code scanners, and even digital cameras that will work in this slot to adapt the handheld to all sorts of tasks. We can imagine delivery drivers using the device with a bar code scanner to track packages and record recipients' signatures on the touch screen.
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