PRODUCT REVIEW: SONY CLIE PEGT615C PDA

Sure enough, it wasn't but three weeks after I bought my PDA that Sony released the color version. I figured that they would, but not as soon as I realized. I returned the monochrome one to the store, and bought the color one in it's place. The monochrome unit's retail price has dropped to $249.99, and the color unit is debuting at $399.99. The cost of Sony's Memory Stick Media has also dropped, and you can now get a 64MB Memory Stick for $49.99 retail, along the same lines as CompactFlash and SmartMedia cards. Sony has some bold products, and in playing with my Color Clie, I quickly discovered that Sony is sitting on something far more impressive than they may realize.

The T615C uses the same shape and design as the T415, but is only slightly thicker, probably an eighth of an inch thicker, and an ounce or two heavier. The cover is a little stronger on this one and also doesn't accidentally press the buttons as much as the previous model I had, and is coated in a leather instead of nylon. They upgraded the memory to 16 MB on board, and of course there is a high resolution backlit color display at 65,000 colors. The T615C uses the same side jog dail and back button as the monochrome model, and the same USB Cradle. It also expands the memory capacity with the purple Sony Memory Stick. It has the same beaming capability as similar PALM based units.

Where the Sony T615C excells is visual quality. The unit came with some demo games, Acid Solitaire, Race Fever, Zap2016, Bejeweled, and suffice is to say, I was impressed with the little handheld. Being an avid gamer, as always, I must honestly say that this is better looking than the GameBoy Advance, predominantlly because of the backlit bright TFT screen. Race Fever reminded me of a long distant game I played back in the 80's, believe it or not, produced by Square called "Rad Racer" and it got me to thinking about Sony's little PDA. This COULD BE the GameBoy killer, seriously, if you could download games to it from the PC that are of equal quality or better to GameBoy Color and Advance games, then you would have something. Couple this with the rechargable battery, louder speaker, and you've got a great handheld gaming system. I was beamed a couple more games to my unit by some other Palm 505 users, like Froggy (just like Frogger), Sokoban, Gobble (exactly like Pac-Man), Invaders, MineHunt (Just like Minesweeper) and Dope Wars.

This really got me to thinking. If I could just find a Palm OS compatable NES Emulator, I could play lots of NES games on this. I would be in bliss if I could find a decent working emulator for NES Roms that works on the Palm OS 4.1. If you are reading this and know of one, by all means, Email Me and I will be most grateful and happy :). I did some searching online and only found PocketPC emulators that worked, but no Palm OS NES or SuperNES Emulators. Anyone know where I can download Tetris for my Palm for free? I wonder if the original DOOM or Wolfenstein for the PC would play on this?

What Sony doesn't realize is that if they provided a game OS, and their third parties started releasing games for the Clie, their sales of these units would skyrocket, and they could decently lower the price. I could easily imagine playing Final Fantasy VI, or Mega Man on this, albeit the button configeration is a little clunky for gameplay, but if they just refit this unit to have a D-Pad and strategically positioned buttons, there you have it, THE GameBoy competition.

Of course I used some of the Clie's other features besides the games, like the Picture viewer. I was able to use it to view Digital Photo's I had taken with a digital camera on the Sony Memory stick and I installed images from my PC onto the Clie and they looked great! I put some anime, and joke images on my PDA. And yes, for the pervs out there, you could put porn on it.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the Remote Commander to work on the color Clie, like it worked on the monochrome one. Everytime I attempt to open Remote Commander the screen goes blank for a second and nothing happens. Bummer.

There's something about the MIDI sounds on this one that make me optimistic, I was able to load a collection of rather lackluster MIDI-0 files onto it like the previous Clie I had, but the new unit came with a sound file, "AI" that intrigued me, it certainly sounded to me that it was playing polyphonic instruments. Funny thing also was that I was able to load more of my .wav quotes and jokes into it than the T415, but I'll be dammed if I can get it to accept any of my awesome MIDI collection. Any suggestions?

PROS: 16MB Memory, Clear Bright Hi-Res Color Backlit TFT Display, Good Sound, Solid Design, Palm OS 4.1, QuickTime Support, Image Viewer,

CONS: Remote Commander Difficulties, Still No Polyphonic Midi Support?