An excellent PDA----especially now that the price is down

Author's Rating:

Pros: very light, keyboard's really easy to use

Cons: kind of cheaply built

The Bottom Line: 
Excellent Device. It's an organizer that actually makes one more efficient.

Author's Review
I purchased the tg50 in April 2003 when it first came out---it was selling at Best buy for 399, and I negotiated with them and brought the price down to 349, thinking I'd gotten a great deal. About a month later, the price was 349 everywhere, and now you get a $50.00 rebate from sony as well. That means there's a lot of stiff competition for these, especially now with the pocket PC's, which have more memory.

My primary reason for buying the sony was b/c I loved the keyboard on it---I STINK when it comes to using the graffiti writing, and am a much better typist that writer--so the sony had an instant attraction. I wasn't too concerned about the bluetooth or the mp3 player and what not, especially as the pda's simply a glorified organizer for me. As an organizer, it's fantastic. I don't know a lot about other pdas, but the sony has a hotsync feature that allows one to type up info on ones computer and then transfer it to the pda, and vice versa. This is a huge timesaver, and the sony's actually very quick in transferring info. Another thing I loved about the sony was the graphics. Compared to sony clie's of even just one year ago, the depth of colors, and the ability to read whatever's on the screen is soooo much better than it used to be, which makes this pda in and of itself fantastic to use. The fact that the tg50's lighter and thinner than most of the other pocket pc's out there was also a factor in my purchasing this--I hate the bulkiness of too many things in my pockets throughout the day, and the sony's thin enough, and light enough that it basically just feels like a wallet.

in terms of problems with it, I have a tendency to break/drop just about everything that I own, and the same goes with the clie. I've dropped it on the floor a couple of times and each time the cover has flown off and split from the device--to the point that I don't even bother putting the cover on anymore. I think the cover's more of a decoration than an actual protective measure, so if you purchase one and tend to break stuff as I do, you might want to buy a leather or plastic carrying case for it.

I apologize for not commenting on the gagetry of the clie as I don't really know or pay too much attention to that stuff myself. I just wanted a great organizer that would allow me to enter information into a database as quickly as I would be able to jot down facts---and in this regard, the sony more than meets my purposes. I'd recommend it to anyone.