| Product: EM-500 Pocket PC |
Company: Casio |
| Web: www.casio.com |
Phone: 800-836-8580 |
| Platform: Pocket PC |
SRP: US$500
Street Price: same |
Cred Rating: | Special Award: |
The Casio EM-500 is the first "Windows Powered" handheld that I've tried. I've fiddled with various MS devices that have come out over the years, but this is really the first hands-on review I've done. As a Palm OS user, I wanted to wait until all the kinks had been worked out so I could do a fair comparison. I'm still waiting.
The EM-500 is the newest in the line of Pocket PCs from Casio, building on their existing E-110 and E-115 models. The processor in the EM-500 is 150MHz, which practically eliminates OS sluggishness. This is a significant improvement over the previous generation of WinCE machines, which tended to be slow and difficult to use.
The EM-500 is being marketed to a young audince as more of an entertainment than a work device, and Casio is touting the multimedia capabilities as its chief selling point. But the EM-500 has no more multimedia chops than other Casios, or other Pocket PCs, and actually lacks a few. The only multimedia feature that seems to distinguish the EM-500 is the fact that it comes in five colors.
The EM-500 is a very handsome machine. The review model I received came in a sort of subtle and tasteful bluish-purple that still sports some pizzazz. The EM-500 is about the same size as a Palm IIIc, though a little boxier. The shape is a definite improvement over previous Casios since it is both smaller and easier to hold. The weight, at 7.6 oz, is a little heavier than a Palm IIIc, and slightly lighter than other Pocket PCs.
There are lots of buttons on the Casio, though not all of them are useful. There is a nav pad on the front, which works for both navigating through menus and apps, and also for Gameboy-like entertainment control. There are three other quick-launch buttons for common apps, and these can be programmed to your personal preferences. There is a jog dial on the side that I found almost completely useless and awkward to use.
The screen of the Casio is absolutely beautiful. There have been a lot of complaints about screens on other handhelds - from the 4,096 color limit of HPs to the pixelization of Palm and Handspring color models. Casio has none of these problems with a full 64,000-color palette and crisp and clear screen. The backlight, which can be adjusted down to save on battery life, makes it very readable indoors, though it's a bit hard to see in direct sunlight.
With a great screen and fast processor, what's so bad about the EM-500? Casio made a couple of big mistakes when they designed the EM-500, ones that make this handlheld a bad choice even for those fond of the Pocket PC OS. First: memory. The EM-500 comes with only 16 megs of RAM. While that's a lot compared to some Palms, I found that, out of the box, there was really only 8MB of RAM available. This 8MB had to be divided between storage and processing, since the multitasking Pocket PC OS uses RAM for running the apps as well as storing them. Casio is currently running a special offer on the EM-500, and new purchasers will get a free 28MB (?) card, but that still doesn't make up for the other major drawback: the MMC (MultiMedia Card) expansion slot.
MMCs are smaller than CompactFlash (CF) cards, which is probably the reason Casio was able to trim a little fat from this model. But MMCs are not yet an industry standard, and there are very few devices that use them. They are more expensive than CF cards too. While CF cards come in a variety of flavors, including modems, bar-code scanners, 1GB hard drives, wireless modems, and soon Bluetooth connectivity, MMCs only do memory. While other manufacturers are going to adopt MMC (including Palm), and there will certainly be more options in the future, for now, the limited expansion capabilities of the MMC format cripple the much-touted multimedia aspects of the EM-500, and make purchasing one a bad choice.
The EM-500 works very well for playing multimedia - short films and MP3s look and sound great. But because the available memory is so small, it is necessary to add more memory. At US$180 for a 64 meg MMC (the smallest size that I would consider functional), turning the EM-500 into a true multimedia machine would be expensive.
Now to the OS. Microsoft's entry into the handheld OS market was supposed to bring a standard to all PDAs. Instead, it has done exactly the opposite. I didn't realize before trying the EM-500 that the Pocket PC operating system differs from WinCE, and that in some cases, software must be tailored not just for different versions of the OS, but for individual models of handhelds. This is ridiculous. There are not enough bad things I can say about Microsoft for screwing this up. The result is that it is much more confusing for the user to find programs, and there are far fewer applications for Pocket PCs than for Palm machines. While Pocket PCs are more capable than Palms for multimedia (MPEG video/MP3), the dearth of other software makes the Pocket PC a much less versatile machine.
One feature I was impressed with was the Microsoft Reader, an e-book program that allows you to read texts that have been formatted for it. The program also lets you add sticky notes or highlighting to the text. This is a very useful function for business and student users, and one that I would like to see incorporated into programs for other platforms.
Another feature I liked about the MS Pocket PC OS is the drag-and-drop functionality of the connection to the PC. When the EM-500 is hooked up to the PC, it appears on the desktop as if it were another folder - essentially like "My Briefcase." This is handy, since it means you can just grab a file and drag it to the window to put it on your EM-500. And files that you put on the Pocket PC are converted to the appropriate format, so dragging an e-book to the Pocket PC automatically converts it to MS Reader format, or Word to Pocket Word. Very smart.
Overall, I would not recommend buying an EM-500. Those who like the Pocket PC OS would do better to look at the E-125, the Compaq iPaq, or another PPC with more memory. Those who want color but want to stick with the Palm OS should look at the new Handspring Visor Prism, or the recently discounted IIIc. While neither of solutions are nearly as impressive for multimedia (as the PPC), what they do, they do well.
- Nate Heasley [11/25/00]
Check out:
Today's Tech Term
Today's Software on Cool Tool of the Day
Street Tech's Digital Living Today
|
