Sony CLI° S300/E

Sony is the undoubted king of notebook style, but the CLI° indicates that it has some way to go to gain this crown in the palmtop arena. It may be light, thin and predominantly purple, but the square-jawed styling falls short of the Palm Vx (see Labs, issue 74, p135). This is bad news for Sony, as its main rival at this price is currently the Vx, and the Palm m500 - the Vx's successor - looks set to up the style stakes further. Another improvement will be speed, with the m500's processor increasing to 33MHz as opposed to the 20MHz chip inside the CLI° and Vx.

Where the CLI° starts to pull away from the Vx is in its range of features. Sony adapts its innovative Jog Dial, now an ever-present feature on VAIO notebooks, providing an easy way to scroll down screens and open files without reaching for the stylus. Not content with this, Sony even includes a Memory Stick port - this provides an easy way to add memory or optional extras such as a digital camera or GPS module.

However, the sheer number of ways to add memory or accessories - Handspring's Springboard modules and MultiMediaCards to name but two - means an annoying lack of consistency across the palmtop PC board. The Memory Stick is fine if you already own Sony digital cameras or notebooks, but is otherwise a step backwards into proprietary technology.

Still, with the 8Mb Memory Stick and 8Mb of internal RAM provided as standard, there's plenty of room for adding programs. Sony includes a couple of its own applications to view photos and videos, although the lack of audio (other than beeps) rather hinders the CLI°'s claims as a personal entertainment centre. There's also 2Mb of Flash ROM, which stores the PalmOS. Disappointingly, the CLI° ships with version 3.5 rather than the new 4, but upgrading won't be costly.

One of the main benefits of PalmOS 4 is support for 16-bit colour. A future CLI° will take advantage of this, but for the moment Sony provides a mono screen. Due to the slim dimensions of the S300, it's smaller than the screen provided with the Vx or Handspring, and there's a visible difference if you compare the units side by side. It's still sharp though, and the backlight works well. Sony reverts to lighting the whole screen, rather than backlighting just the active pixels as with recent Palms.

Sony claims a typical battery life of 15 days, assuming around 30 minutes of usage per day, and like the Vx it relies on a rechargable lithium ion battery inside the unit itself. Unlike the Vx, you have the choice of recharging using the supplied USB docking cradle or by just taking the power adaptor - something we'd recommend doing if you need to travel with the CLI° for more than a week.

There are certainly enough innovations here to make the CLI° a tough competitor in the Palmtop PC market, but if Sony intends to make an impact it needs to price the unit more aggressively. Unless you desperately need expandable memory or the separate power adaptor, the Palm Vx still wins on looks and ergonomics.

Author: Tim Danton