I want one!!!

    In the midst of extreme interest for Barbie’s sister and modern magic wands, a very important event almost went unnoticed. Sony has released Clie – insanely cool pocket PCs. Half of their price is the price of all hardware and labor of Taiwanese children; another half is gluing on of the Sony logo onto the Clie. Up until now, Clie looked like slightly modified, pathetic parody on Palm Pilots. However, this time around Japanese has thought up something completely different.

    New modems are called PEG-NR70 and PEG-NR70V. Both computers feature fold-out design [they look like overgrown Ericsson cell phones]. One side contains the keyboard; other has a color LCD display with resolution of 320 by 480 pixels. The coolest feature of Clie is that the display is not mounted statically [like, for example, on Psion], but it can swivel, like the display of the new iMac. You can open Clie up, turn the display 180 degrees, and close Clie up again – but the display will end up facing outward, turning Clie into a keyboard-less PDA with a touch screen. Awesome!

    And here are some obvious and some hidden features of these little monsters:

• Processor - Motorola Dragonball SuperVZ, 66 Мhz
• Operating system - PalmOS 4.1
• 16 MB RAM, 10 MB Flash ROM
• Sony MemoryStick slot
• Infrared Port
• Headphone jack and volume control
  [computers can play music in MP3 and ATRAC3 formats – the latter is the format used in minidisk players]
• PNR70V has a built in video camera, which can take pictures of several resolutions: 320x240, 160x120 or 88x88 pixels.
• If you use your Clie every day for one hour, the batteries will last you five days on one charge.

    NR70V will cost approximately 465 US dollars, while NR70 – 385. However, these are the prices for Japan. There is no estimated arrival date set for the European or US markets. In the land of Sony, however, the new Clie will start popping up at the end of March 2002.