Sony Clie PEG-SJ20 Handheld

I am a graduate student and bought this handheld to replace my Palm Vx. My Vx worked great until it started randomly crashing and causing me to lose data. The Sony SJ20 has been perfect for me. I use nearly all of the features and software that are included and have not needed to buy any additional software. I did buy a 64 Mb memory stick and this has proven to be more than enough for me. Word, and Excel documents synch great with the Documents2Go software (provided). Without the backlight, it is difficult to read the screen (impossible in direct sunlight), but I always leave the backlight on and battery life has still been great. This makes me wonder what the point of the non-backlit screen is, but since the backlight works so well, this hasn't been an issue. Screen resolution is awesome compared to the Vx and thus I am able to carry around digital images of my family, etc to show others. I have had the Sony for around 6 months and I am perfectly happy with it. I would highly recommend it for students, or those not requiring/wanting color, MP3 player, WIFI, and all the other bells and whistles. This handheld is designed for practicality and it definitely delivers for a great price!

My experience is completely different from the other reviewers. My SJ20 worked out at first, long enough to waste all my time inputing data. Then I tried to synchronize with a second computer - I was trying to combine personal and business information from the two computers onto the Clie. The Clie doesn't work on two computers, Barry at Sony support says that it may work on two, but Sony won't help you figure out how to do that. That is three hours later - I purchased this because of the reviews saying Palm support wasn't so good, but Sony's was. Not true - at least not in this case - talked to two different Sony technicians - they were kind of jerks and really didn't care. I don't care about the Clie - if it don't work for my purposes, I will return it - what I care about is the havoc Sony technicians unleashed on my computers in an attempt to get the Clie to work - following their directions, my computer has been trashed. I have spent hours on this ordeal and now have much more work to do to reinstall and reconfigure my computer and uninstall the clie software. On top of it all, I have lost all of my data - well, actually the data does exist on the computer I put it on, but now the Clie doesn't sync with it and Sony won't help. I have had bad experience with Sony products a decade ago, but thought things had changed - guess not. No thanks. Should have listened to my friends, all of whom have older Palms - but are very happy with them. I read these reviews and thought that maybe things had changed and that the Clie is better than the Palm. It is amazing how advanced some of this technology is, but it can't sync with two computers - that doesn't sound like an unreasonable expectation.

At present, I own a Sony SL10, and I'm planning to buy a SJ22 or SJ20 or SJ30 (I'm not sure about whether I need color, perhaps to show digital pictures, but the battery drain is 3-4 times higher I heard : you can hold the device 4 days instead of 2weeks with a B/W device). BTW, I'm an active user of PDA : nearly 1hour a day for appointments, contacts, notes taking, scientific calculator, financial calculator, dictionnaries, CIA factbook world encyclopedy, image viewers, avantgo newspapers (in the train or bus its excellent : with the jogdial, you can even read it standing up !), excel viewing, pdf viewing, maps download, mails....The problem of Sony devices (compared to palm m515) are as follows : quite slow (the palm m515 can make an entire search in 2-5 seconds, the sony needs twice as much time)- while they have the same Dragonball vz 33Mhz. Screen refresh is 2 times slower (it's not a big problem, but its really noticeable), but thats explained by the resolution.My real concern is about the pen and write pad : I have my sl10 for 2 months only and the write pad becomes a real mess : I had to stick a plastic film on it, but it doesn't 100% resolve my problem. Perhaps this is because the pen is too small, too "design" (palm pens are much better and the write pad of palm's is a dream when you write fast !).Also, 16MB is a must (EVEN WITH A 64mB MEMORY STICK) when you want to use dictionnaries on your palm. With 8Mb, you will need a lot of optimizations every time (docs to go requires already 600KB just for install, mails : 500K, forget the dictionaries : dictionnaries : 2-8MB). It's quite a big problem after some time.Also remember : a lot of programs cannot acces the memory stick and the memory stick is much slower (2-5 times slower acces)So the dilemn is here :Get a Sony (SJ20 or SJ22) for the style, the hi-res screen and the jog dial.Get a palm (Vx, m500,m505 or m515) for the very good writepad and pen (trust me, this is very important for heave PDA users), for the fact it's very fast and perhaps for the more common (and cheaper) SD-cards.I'm really concerned by my SL-10 writepad problem, and as the SJ22 seem to have the same writepad/pen, its a big trouble for me.

Purchased this as a backup to the one I already have. Unfortunately, the battery on the one I just purchased discharges quite a lot faster than my old Clie. Thought this had a newer battery and if so, it does not operate substantially better than the one I have in my original Clie.