Sony CLIÉ PEG-SJ22

...in SJ, T/TG, and NR/NX/NZ Sony PDAs
4) 320x320 Hi-Res screen
5) 65,000 color capable screen
6) Small form factor
7) Palm OS 4.1.x
8) 4 MB ROM memory
9) Bigger scroll and application buttons than T series
10) Replacable Lithium-Ion battery
11) Jog dial and back button
12) Enhanced IR port
13) Decent Software Package
14) Wide Range of Accessories Available or about ...
...that is compatible to the Sony Clie. Just remove the fabric-covered hard flap, snap the Clie into the case which has hooks complementary to the holes behind it, and presto! You’ve got a nice leather casing that looks professional.


-ROCKER SWITCH-
The SJ-22 has an up/down rocker switch at its bottom centre. It makes scrolling up and down documents easy, but it can also be done with the jog-dial. I guess its there so that ... more

I was once using a Handspring Visor which I bought in 2000. It was a monochromatic PDA, and after it used to crash on me ever so often, at an average of twice a week (before that, it used to crash like once to twice a month), I decided to upgrade, and try out Sony’s Clie PEG-SJ22. I’ve owned it for half a year and it has not crashed on me yet. I am beginning to like this more and more.

I got this Clie as a present from my parents, but I think that a good price range is from £120 to £150.

-QUICK SPECIFICATIONS-
1) 16 MB of internal (RAM) memory
2) Memory Stick memory expansion
3) Standard connector used in SJ, T/TG, and NR/NX/NZ Sony PDAs
4) 320x320 Hi-Res screen
5) 65,000 color capable screen
6) Small form factor
7) Palm OS 4.1.x
8) 4 MB ROM memory
9) Bigger scroll and application buttons than T series
10) Replacable Lithium-Ion battery
11) Jog dial and back button
12) Enhanced IR port
13) Decent Software Package
14) Wide Range of Accessories Available or about to be released
15) Decent internal speaker

-SCREEN-
The resolution of the screen is so clear that I carry photos around in my palm, in a built in program called PG Pocket. Its like carrying a photo album, yet it is light. The 16Mb memory can store quite a number of photos, and the memory can always be increased, simply by slotting in a 8Mb, 16Mb, 32Mb, 64Mb, 128Mb or 256Mb MemoryStick.

Screen display is quite crisp and clear especially with the hi-res fonts turned on. Brightness can be adjusted by tapping on the lower left corner of the Graffiti area (It's marked) and it is adjusted via a sliding scale. I found that the lowest setting was still enough for any lighting conditions I was in. The unit is backlit. As usual, the battery drains faster than usual when the backlit is switched on, but think seriously, whats the use of a colour screen PDA if you can’t really see the rich colours, enhanced by the backlight.

-INTERNAL SPEAKER-
My biggest complaint by far is that the speaker volume is too low. This is a long-time Palm problem. I normally carry my palmtop in my bag because it is too big to be put in my pocket, and the alarm is only barely audible. In a noisy environment like a car, it'd be tough. The SJ-22 has no polyphonic MIDI, and no ADPCM audio. This rather restricts your choice of alarms sounds. In addition, as on other PalmOS devices I've seen, the alarms are all very short, one or two seconds at most. I'd like the alarm to play for at least a minute, in case I'm in a noisy environment where I might not hear it at first or in case I'm sound asleep.

-POWER SWITCH-
The power switch is out of the way, a small flush button on the top of the unit. This is probably mostly bad. It doesn't help prevent accidental power-on, because the application buttons will power the device on. It makes accidental power-off pretty much impossible, but I've never had a problem with that. Presumably the primary reason for the location of the power button is to reduce the size of the face of the device.

-JOG DIAL-
The SJ-22 has a jog dial on the upper left side of the unit. This works well for one-handed use of some applications, in particular HandyShopper. There is a Back button below the jog-dial, and that is handy in returning back to the main screen. Well, it takes a bit of practice before you can get the hang of using the Clie, with just one hand.

-Palm OS-
The unit comes with PalmOS 4.1. I believe that high-resolution (320x320) support was added in PalmOS 5, so the SJ-22 has the same Sony-specific support that the other newer and expensive Clie models have. Although the Hi-Res Helper feature gives most applications high-resolution fonts, low resolution stuff still leaks through. For instance, all launcher icons are low resolution, and I suspect that some high-resolution capable applications aren't compatible.

-CASING-
The SJ-22 case is silver-colored matt plastic. It makes the Clie lighter, I guess. But it looks more executive, compared to my transparent-blue casing for the Handspring Visor, which is more like my style 4 years ago.

-STYLUS-
Nice silver stylus with white tips. It hides finer tips so that you can press the reset button at the back. Hopefully you won’t need to use it, well, I haven’t and don’t think I’ll be needing it for a long long time.

-COVER-
The cover is a fabric-covered hard flap that covers the screen and buttons. I'd prefer a true hard cover or case. But this problem can always be resolved. I bought a leather casing that is compatible to the Sony Clie. Just remove the fabric-covered hard flap, snap the Clie into the case which has hooks complementary to the holes behind it, and presto! You’ve got a nice leather casing that looks professional.

-ROCKER SWITCH-
The SJ-22 has an up/down rocker switch at its bottom centre. It makes scrolling up and down documents easy, but it can also be done with the jog-dial. I guess its there so that you can play games with it, because other than that, the up/down rocker switch is pretty redundant.

-CONNECTOR-
THe connector on the bottom is always exposed, and runs some risk of being damaged easily by split water, sharp objects and who-knows-what.

-HOW TO CHARGE AND HOTSYNC THE CLIE-
The SJ-22 does not come with a cradle, unlike PDAs made by Palm - it comes with a cable only. The cable consists of a USB cable, an AC cable, and a small black connector which is plugged into the bottom of the Clie. The cables plug into the connector, and the connector plugs into the unit. Normally I like modularity, but here I think it may have been taken to excess - the connector looks easy to lose. It is possible to buy a cradle, but I feel that this should have been included, rather than it being sold separately.

The AC cable has a brick in the middle of the cable, not a wall wart at the end, and so avoids consuming extra outlet space. Better still would be to optionally draw power from the USB connection - Belkin does this, and starts to get the right idea with modules like a cigarette lighter plug with a USB female connector on it.

The Clie takes a couple of hours to be fully re-charged. I am thankful for the rechargeable lithium batteries, because my Handspring required fresh AAA batteries all the time, so I get to save a lot of money on this Clie. There is a little red light at the bottom to indicate that the Clie is being charged. A fully charged Clie lasts for a fortnight, with an average use of about 5 mins a day. But if you're into gaming on the Clie, expect the batteries to deplete much faster.

Hotsyncing the Clie is really quick and easy. Install the drivers, and connect the Clie to the PC. Within seconds, you can transfer lots of data, including games, photos, from the PC to the Clie and vice versa.

-INFRA-RED-
According to the Palm Info Center review, the SJ-22 doesn't have the "enhanced" IR support that gives other Clié models a decent range when controlling consumer electronics. I'd wondered about that, given the lack of the remote control application.

*INCLUDED PROGRAMS*
-ADDRESS BOOK-
The Edit screen reserves quite a bit of screen space for an image. Since most entries presumably won't have an image because this Clie does not have a built in camera and it is a huge hassle to upload photos of your friends, this seems like a waste of screen real estate. Better would be to have a relatively small "no image" notation that expands when you select an image. Perhaps I’m just a bit choosy.

-PICTURE GEAR POCKET AND PHOTOSTAND-
These two specially included programs by Sony, allow you to carry pictures of your kids on your palmtop. The pictures seem to range from 140K to 200K, so it's not very practical to store more than a few in RAM. Putting the pictures on a Memory Stick is supported, and makes it reasonable to carry hundreds of pictures if you like. Because of the general use of the Sony Memorystick, you can take photos with the Sony Digital Camera, take out the memory stick, insert it into the Clie and within seconds, you can download your photos into your Clie, that’s if there is any space within the relatively small memory space.

-CLIE PAINT-
Clié Paint is a relatively simple paint program. Aside from its non-Palm user interface, it works fine. It can load photos downloaded for PictureGear Pocket, making doodling more interesting. You can add speech bubbles, smily faces… well, basically, not red-eye reduction or stuff which Adobe Photoshop can do, but relatively simpler jobs.

-CALCULATOR-
Well, nothing advanced. Just a simple calculator to do arithmetic. You can always buy a more advanced calculator for the Clie online and download it to the Palm.

-KINOMA PLAYER-
Kinoma Player lets you play movies. At about 50K per second, this doesn't seem very realistic. Perhaps a short clip. Putting movies on a Memory Stick would be reasonable, but I don't see any indications that it can be done. In addition, the lack of good sound support makes movies less than totally interesting. It would be nicer if the Kinoma Player can fully utilize the resolution of the screen, but that would mean that the Clie needs a higher RAM and more powerful OS.

-MEMORY STICK PROGRAMS-
Card Info tells you about the Memory Stick you've inserted.

MS Backup backs up the entire RAM onto the Memory Stick.

MS Gate gives you a file management interface for moving databases and applications between RAM and the Memory Stick

MS Import makes the unit look like a USB disk drive and lets you easily move files to the Memory Stick from your PC.

MS Autorun lets you select an application to run or a database to install when a Memory Stick is inserted.

-WORLD ALARM CLOCK-
World Alarm Clock is really handy for those who has family members scattered all over the world, like me, with my sister in the states and my parents back home in Singapore. It displays the different time zones, side by side, and you can color code each day. Well, its just a pretty program. Quite handy.

-RECOMMENDATION-
I do like this SONY Clie PEG-SJ22 a lot, because its relatively cheaper than the other more advanced models. I don’t really fully utilize the palm, as in I just use it to play games, keep note of my schedules, record down my friends’ contacts, and look at my photos. I feel that this Clie is worth every single penny my parents paid for.

But for those who intend to use it more regularly and have more advanced features, I recommend you taking a look at the higher-end models. This model is meant for those who use it like an average of twice a day, for 2 mins each time.
 

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