What, did you think I'd just been twiddling my thumbs? :-)
Be sure to visit CIC's web page to take a look at exactly what this package offers. I know I'll be purchasing it tomorrow morning. I've decided that Jot works the most reliably, for me, of all the recognition systems that I've tried on the Nino. I'm anxious to give Calligrapher a try when the Palm-size PC-specific version is available as well.
7/12/98 - The Backup Battery Exposed!
I'm extremely pleased with the way this unit turned out. Many of us have been (and still are) waiting for it to be shipped to the retailor of our individual choice, and it has been quite a wait indeed. Happily, it looks like everyone will, in the very near future, have their order filled. Apparently, a significant percentage of CompUSA reatil stores currently have the units in stock, and I've heard reports from people who have already received their units from the Philips On-Line Nino Store. I do feel it was most certainly worth the wait. Click on the image below for a larger version of just what you get when you open up that box...
I've had much more time to reconfirm what I recently stated here, that the Nino does have a small speed advantage over the E-10. Nothing to go crazy about, but it is faster.
As far as the screen goes, I find them both equally able to be used without the backlight in a decent range of "marginal" light. I personally prefer using the backlight (on all my PDA's that have 'em) almost all of the time, however. The backlights are of equal brightness, differing slight in shade-of-green (the Nino having a very slight aqua tinge to it's backlight as compared to the Casio). For comparison, neither is quite as bright as the "perfect" backlight on a Newton, but seem brighter than that of a Palm III. As far as contrast goes Casio does have a slight advantage over the Nino, but this may be due in part to a "banding" phenomenon present in my pre-production Nino. I've seen it before, to a lesser degree, on many other PDA's (even the Newton with the contrast level set too dark) and grey-scale laptops. The word from Philips (which I've heard from another holder of a pre-production eval unit) is that this is a known problem with the pre-production units. This should not be an issue with the final, shipping Nino's. Also, the screens appear to be almost exactly the same physical size.
The biggest issue here, by far, is battery life. The first item of concern here was the little yellow insert included with the E-10, warning that playing an audio recording causes an increase in the power drain by about 15 times and that backlight use increases the drain by about 10 times. It goes on to state that, this being the case, "the backlight or unit may suddenly turn off when these functions are used," even if there is sufficient battery power for most other operations. It then goes on to state, "it is recommended that you refrain from playing back recordings or turning on the backlight except when necessary." There is also a recommendation that the muting of the E-10's audio be set to engage when battery power is low (settings option). After reading that rather concerning information, I moved on to the unit itself.
Note that there is a range of results that can be had depending on what type of battery one uses (alkaline, lithium, NiMH, NiCad, etc.) in a PDA. To keep things similar here, I've put a set of alkaline AAA's in the E-10 to test it out. I used it for about 1 hour total with the backlight on about 60% of the time. I just ran through this app and that, did a little voice recording/playback, etc. (about 1-2 minutes worth). It is worth noting that the backlight always shut off during audio recording (and I believe playback). Anyway, after about an hour the unit just shut off, as was predicted in the yellow insert. I'd turn it back on, and then the backlight, and in a moment or two it would shut off. Settings/Power reported "Good" on the battery levels. When I'd power the unit back on, I'd get the message:
I operated in this mode, watching it cut off every few seconds, for a bit, then left it sitting overnight. This morning I picked it back up and found the same to be the case (I suppose that's not surprising!) and noticed that you can see what turns it off from time to time. That is, for instance, I'll be in Calendar for a few seconds using the backlight and I'll go change the view, and the audio sample that is a "click" that plays when the button is pressed will shut down the unit. I cannot verify whether or not, as I mentioned above, playback of Voice Recorder files (and not just recording them) shuts off the backlight as, currently, attempting playback in Voice Recorder with the backlight on shuts the unit down entirely. Note that the Settings/Power indicator still reports "Good" on the batteries, indicating that the problem is not so much the degree to which the batteries are "fully charged" but the alkaline AAA's inability to handle the load of the E-10.
This little exercise makes me wonder how anyone could accept this from their PDA on a daily (hourly?) basis. I've never seen the above error message before on the Nino, and as I mentioned in the review, I got 6-7 hours usage from it (the Nino) on a set of alkalines under extremely heavy usage (100% on-time for the backlight, long periods of audio recording/playback, training the voice command software, many synchs, etc.) before the batteries got to the "Very Low" level. Again, if I'd used NiMH's or another type of battery in the units, the results might have been somewhat different. To me, the simple inclusion of that yellow insert shows that they're skating pretty close to putting out a system that is, by any practical yardstick, underpowered. Be thankful for your Nino's AA's.
At any rate, I wanted to share my personal observations and feelings on these issues. I hope they are of interest and of use to everyone. Cheers!
7/3/98 - Nino's Casing
