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When the REX PC-Card Organizer premiered last winter, everyone went gaga over its tiny credit card size and surprisingly-crisp LCD screen. Powered by two lithium watch batteries, weighing only 1.4 ounces and measuring 3-3/8" x 2-1/8" x 1/4", this teeny PDA could be plugged into the PC card slot of a laptop or into a desktop computer via an optional docking station. The REX came with TrueSync personal information management (PIM) software (address book, task organizer, appointment calendar, etc.) where data could be entered on your PC and then loaded onto the REX. The TrueSync software also allowed you to transfer data to your REX from other popular PIMs (Sidekick, Lotus Organizer 97, ACT!), but there were widely reported problems. Even though the technology of the first generation REX was impressive, and the device sold very well, the fact that it had no data entry capability (unlike other PDAs, everything had to be downloaded from the desk- or laptop) prevented lots of potential customers from buying in.
 A step closer to getting the REX right. Introducing the REX Pro. The new version is the same size and functions the same as the original (see our review), but adds data entry and editing capability. This new technology is called the "SuperKey Light Data Entry System." "Super" is a bit of a stretch, to say the least. Anyone who's entered their name or other info into a console game knows how "light data entry" works. There's no touch screen or stylus; you enter data by moving the cursor along rows of letters, numbers, punctuation marks, etc. It's funky and painfully slow. It took me almost six minutes to enter a contact record with name, address, city, state, zip, phone. Obviously, one would get faster with repeated use, but it just feels torturous spending all that time cycling through, letter-by-letter, pressing little buttons to select characters and enter words. It also seems clueless to me that there's no way to skip more than one letter at a time, skip to the prev/next line, etc.
 "SuperKey" data entry? More like "TortureKey." The original REX had five buttons, the REX Pro has six. Six *really* small buttons (my clumsy fingers strike again). Still, entry does work, and if you really need to enter a record on the road, I guess you could. I tried to imagine this. You're in someone's office. They give you a contact name and number. There's just no way you're going to enter this info on the spot (and not drive you and your host insane). You'd still need to jot it down on a piece of paper and enter it later. If that's the case, you might as well wait 'til you're back at your desktop or laptop machine and enter it there. I guess if you had a long plane ride or a boring night in a hotel room (one that doesn't get the Spice channel?), you could enter your new/updated records then. One cool feature of REX Pro is that TrueSnyc now works in both directions, so new/altered data in the REX gets loaded to your PIM and vice versa. Editing on the road, adding a new phone number, changing someone's last name 'cause they got married, moving an appointment, these sorts of things make more sense. The REX Pro can now sync (allegedly without a hassle) with MS Outlook, MS Schedule+, ACT!, Lotus Organizer, Sidekick 98. It will also wrestle with RTF, tab-delimited and comma-separated ASCII data, so you can (theoretically) load in data that's not in a supported database format. The REX Pro has added other features and improvements over the original. It can handle twice as many records (a whopping 6,000) on its 512K of memory. Pop-up, context-sensitive menus, QuickNotes and QuickLists (that store frequently entered data for rapid entry) speed entry and navigability. You can also reschedule appointments, attach contacts, etc. There's real power in this little sucker. And the high-contrast 160 x 98 LCD screen seems crisper and brighter than ever. It's truly a marvel. I wasn't happy with the first generation of REX. I was undeniably impressed its technology, but it felt like a proof-of-concept device. REX Pro feels like the actual version 1.0. It's not perfect, it's still funky around the edges (in terms of real-world data entry, anyway), but it's a usable piece of technology. If you want a PDA that's truly an unconscious carry, and you don't plan on doing a lot of data entry on the fly, I wouldn't hesitate to at least give the REX Pro a test drive. - Gareth Branwyn [10/10/98]
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