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| Product: Shocksuit for Palm
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Company: RhinoSkin |
| Web: www.rhinoskin.com |
Phone: 307-734-8833 |
| Platform: Palm Pilot, Pro or III |
SRP: US$35
Street Price: US$35 |
Cred Rating: | Special Award: |
Your brain comes in a great protective case. The skull is both rigid enough to protect your noggin from hard impacts and includes cushioning inside that stops your wetware from slamming too hard into the skull. PDA's, which some of us think of as brain prosthetics, come with no such protection. Each person has to decide how to protect their PDA, and often that choice results in trade-offs.
RhinoSkin offers several products, including the TiSlider, previously reviewed on Street Tech. There are, in my opinion, some problems with the Slider, price being the biggest one. At US$100, it's more than half the price of the freakin' Palm itself! It also doesn't provide much cushioning. Imagine if the skull just had an ultra tough exterior that you could run over with a car, but provided no cushion - you'd get a concussion every time you bumped your head!
So, after looking at the Slider, and its aluminum equivalent, the cheaper and lighter Pilot Armor, I set off on a quest for the ideal case. I needed something I could throw in my bag without a care, and that I could trust would survive the bumps and drops that a Palm suffers in the hands of someone like me. I found a fairly good solution in another product by RhinoSkin: the ShockSuit.
The ShockSuit is made of a very dense foam about a quarter-inch thick, with a smooth nylon fabric coating that comes in black, gray or blue. It has a plastic exoskeleton and extra padding on the front and back. While not offering the same protection as the Slider, the ShockSuit is very rugged. I've dropped my Palm several times from a four-foot height with no damage to the Palm. I also regularly throw the Palm into my backpack and have never had to worry about damaging it.
The ShockSuit also comes with a handy belt clip, the most useful and well-designed one I've seen. The clip is a separate piece that affixes to your belt. A small knob on the back of the ShockSuit locks into the clip, and once in, cannot come out without pressing the release buttons. This construction is very handy because, with this design, the Palm is quite secure. The slight downside is that the knob on the back of the case prevents it from lying flat.
The major downsides to this case is its bulk and the fact that it is u-g-l-y. Certain design features are not well thought out, either. The stylus is kept in two little clips on the right side of the case. Unfortunately, these clips don't hold the stylus very well and I've often had to root around the bottom of my backpack for it. I haven't lost one yet, but I know the day will come. I've taken to putting the stylus sideways under the flip cover, where it stows securely, but not very conveniently. The case doesn't allow syncing without removing the Palm, unless you have The Bridge. There is a hole that will let you connect a cable or Bridge without removing the case, but it doesn't have a cover for the hole, which allows dirt to get in. If I could redesign it, I'd add a little flip-cover over the hole.
I have used the ShockSuit for about two months, and found it to be a very rugged product. I treat it pretty rough and it's held up well (though the nylon covering is fraying a little around the edges and there were reports of delamination problems in early production). For $35, I think it's a pretty good deal, and it has definitely saved my Palm from brain damage on more than one occassion.
- Nate Heasley [11/01/99]
Other Palm cases reviewed on Street Tech:
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