Rating: 
Summary: State-of-the art handheld by Sony!
Review: I have used Palm Vx, Sony Clie T625C, Sony Clie NX70V, Compaq Ipaq 3970 before this great little laptop; palmtop! With UX50 you do not need to have a laptop computer. Palm OS 5.2 runs without any problems. Memory is sufficient and can be expanded easily. Best is that you will not have to use the expansion slot for a wi-fi or bluetooth card. You will be very much satisfied with this palmtop computer.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Concept - Poor Execution
Review: I like the idea of the small footprint yet hi-res screen, but I wish I had purchased a different product. My big dissapointment is on product quality. I returned by brand new unit because of a defective camera. After I got it back, the camera worked fine but the WiFi didn't work at all. I got it back again, but I'm just not thrilled. The units screen was covered with fingerprints and the clamshell lid is no longer aligned and feels loose. I asked Sony for a NEW replacement and just got laughed at. "Not gonna happen" was what I was told.Pro: Size and Memory Cons: Expanding Stylus and Quality
Rating: 
Summary: Almost Snagged
Review: I was all set to buy this until I saw one for real. It's so small it's clumsy. The built-in keyboard is useless; it was made for a child's fingers. The screen is so small, I don't know how us baby boomers can even read it. Sure it's got alot of goodies on it, but you can get most of those things as add-ons with many other PDAs. I'm really diappointed. I thought it would be something that I could use on the road without taking my bulky laptop. Not for $700, not for $649 at COMPUSA, not for $523 on Ebay. Sony, please go back to the drawing board.
Rating:
Summary: Another great Clie product
Review: I was one of the first to get on the Clie bandwagon, and I am continually impressed with each new Clie release. Sony has not let me down with the release of this new family of Clie. The good things: Wi-Fi (and bluetooth)!!!! It is built in so I don't need to get a $200 component to take advantage of my wireless network at home, at work, and several other wireless enabled sites I frequently visit. I like the wide-screen feature of this Palm. I haven't seen any software conflicts with this so far but it makes looking at movies a lot nicer. As with all the other Clie's, the fantastic high-resolution screen. This is what sold me on the Clie's in the first place. My pictures look so good that I don't carry pictures in my wallet any more. I also love the fact you can read an eBook without any eye strain. Best of all, this screen looks great in ANY LIGHT!!! In Las Vegas, I can turn off the back-lite and read off of the sun's lights beautifully. It does not matter the lighting, I've never had a problem looking at this screen. The ability to swivel it around for use is pretty handy and has raised a few oh's and ah's among my friends. I like the fact that you just turn it around after using it to protect the screen. It feels better than one of those flimsy plastic covers on some other Clies and most other Palms. The Internal memory on this is nice. It was especially annoying when I had to get a memory card to listen to music with my first Clie when I still had plenty of memory on the inside. I love this keyboard. It is much easier to type on than earlier models. Warning: this is not a keyboard for taking extensive notes. Use your laptop or desktop for that. But jotting down a few notes or a quick meeting is quick and easy with this keyboard. I love the more compact size. Yes, the screen is a bit smaller, but this is supposed to fit in your Palm afterall. I prefer the smaller size. When I need more real estate on my screen, I just turn on my laptop. The Palm computers were never meant to replace the laptop or desktop afterall. Very light weight at just over 6 oz. Fanstastic!!! I had a problem and called customer service. I had to send it in (that was bad, I missed it) but it came back quickly and in working order. Great job!!! The Decent Things: The .mp3 player. Why can't the volume be any louder. Yes, I know you just plug in some headphones or speakers to listen to it but sometimes I want to share a song or audio clip with a small group of people. Very annoying. I now turn to my laptop for that instead but the Palm would be more convenient. It is odd that the Palm has the quietest .mp3 volume but yet rocks the house with its midi and alarm sound files. Other than that, the portable .mp3 player is fantastic and very convenient and I would rather have this than any dedicated .mp3 player I've seen on the market. The only problem is that 128MB gets filled up fast. I would suggest a Memory Stick card reader... it is easier to get music on there than by using Clie's import program. The buttons. I'll give them credit in that my first Clie, the NR70, had the buttons in the worst place. When you wanted to go to the address, notes, etc. you needed to lift the screen to reach them. It was very annoying. Now the quick-launch buttons are accessible even when the screen is swivelled. My complaint is that they are the wrong buttons!!! The four buttons on every Palm are Addresses (always use), Tasks (always use), DateBook (always use), and Notes (often use). Now we only have one of those, DateBook. The other two are nice... Internet and Email. And I know I can reprogram them to how I want them. But I use the other stuff more than the Internet and Email. If the DateBook button would at least toggle between the different applications.... oh, I don't know. I just wish they hadn't messed with that. The camera. This was borderline descent and bad. The resolution is higher than my NR70 but it still isn't good enough to do anything good with it other than taking pictures of my contacts and including them in the address book. I would rather spend $100 less and use that $100 credit towards getting a decent camera. I bet you can get one at that amount at less than the extra $100 needed to get this one in the first place. Save the picture taking for a better device. Sony had a Clie with a 2MP camera built into it... what happened to that??? The Bad: The price... OUCH!!! You can get a decent laptop for this amount. But, I'll still give it the 5 stars because the Clie has always shown great and continuing innovation and because, overall, it truly is a great piece of (small) technology.
Rating: 
Summary: A great PDA
Review: I've been thru the range of PDAs - back when they weren't PDAs, I had a Zoomer. Then moved on to Palm Pro, Palm IIIx, Cassiopeia, IPAQ 3650, Jornada 560, Sony Clie PEG-615T, Handspring Visor, Dell Axim X5, IPAQ 5550, IPAQ 4150, and now I am currently using the UX-50 as my full-time PDA. Some of those listed are PocketPC (WinCE) and the rest are PalmOS. I have no quarrel with either camp, because they both have their pros and cons. Let it suffice to say that I simply WON'T compare PalmOS to PocketPC, because that's the Mac-vs-PC arguement all over. The keyboard is most useful. As for other reviewers who've claimed that the keyboard must have been designed for babies, it seems that these people have not run into the world of thumb-keyboards yet. I do have a full-size foldout keyboard for my IPAQ 5550, and while nothing can beat that, it also means that I have yet another accessory to carry with. But with the UX-50, I don't need to worry about that. The screen size is debatable, as I doubt you'll see many applications utilize the full-sized screen. Being left-handed, stylus usage has always been an issue with me. The default configuration is for righties, with the soft-silk area on the right side. That was easily fixed, as you can move the soft-silk area to the left, and now it's even easier to use. This is probably the best PalmOS available on the market, if you can deal with a few short-comings. #1 - the memory stick slot is designed in such a way that the inserted stick juts out from the rest of the case. While the device is in my pocket, I've jostled it to the point of ejecting the stick. #2 - the stylus is a joke. It's extremely thin, and that makes it uncomfortable to hold for a period of time. It's collapsable, which means sometimes it folds back on itself. Originally, the stylus itself had some friction to keep it collapsed or extended, but after some wear, that friction is gone. Same for the insertion slot, after some wear, it's too easy to slip out. #3 - I love the screen orientation, but I do wish Sony had considered a way to turn it to portrait mode, like the NZ/NX series. #4 - if you have 802.11b wireless, use that over the USB cable. The USB sync cable is also a joke, and inserting it can be tedious. You need to flip open a little flap which will get in the way, and peer closely at the mini-USB connection to make sure it's oriented properly. #5 - the charging base is also fruitless. All the other PDA's combine their sync function with charging. You put the PDA in the cradle, and it'll charge, and you can also sync. Not so on the UX-50. All it does is serve to charge the battery. If they could have designed it with an additional USB port on the base, that would have been an improvement. #6 - the battery life with wireless is shabby, so I simply use wireless for sync'ing. #7 - the hard buttons on the bottom are awkwardly placed. It's easy to press them when you don't need to press them. #8 - bluetooth is a joke. Has been for years. Why do they persist on shoving this on us? If "they" ever develop a home-theater remote control which works on bluetooth, that would be the only realistic application I can ever concieve of. You might think that with all these negative points, I don't like the unit. However, that's not the case, as I've rated it four stars (nothing deserves five stars, as that would imply perfection with no improvement).
Rating:
Summary: Cool gadget but uncool price
Review: I've been using a Tungsten E for work and got the the UX-50 for play and was originally hoping to face out the Tungsten E. They both run Palm OS 5 but I foung the Clie's interface not as user friendly as my Tungsten, it took me almost a week to get used to it and work with it without stopping to look up something in the users manual. For the size and looks it is a very nice gadget, it's capabilities are close to that of a laptop unfortunately the price tag doesn't justify the purchase. For such a high price it should at least have Documents to Go installed. The battery life is horrible! I got an extended battery which attaches to the bottom and makes the unit thicker and I'm still not able to use it as much as I use Tungsten during the day without worrying about the battery running out. I need to get a car charger before I can get more use out of it during the day. The stylus is too thin to hold comfortably and it collapses in mid-use. It also tends to slide out very easily and I've almost lost it that way. Same with the memory stick, it sticks out from the unit just enough for it to come out easily. The screen is very nice although I would appreciate it if you could occassionaly swtich to portrait mode. The swivel screen is one of my favorite features. Not a big issue but I would like to be able to delete someapplications like "Clie Demo" that I don't use and are taking up space in the memory and in the icons. The shortcut buttons are a nice feature but I immediately had to reassign them to features I use more than internet and e-mail. Their location makes it easy to press accidentally. The built-in camera is better than that found in most cell-phones but not excellent. It comes in handy for quick snapshots but don't expect more from it. The browser is lame and could use some improvement. It's nice to have a keyboard although it's not good for serious typing. Bluetooth works great but the infrared interface was difficult to use when working with my cell phone. This PDA has great potential but Sony has to first make some improvements before it becomes a "must-have". For 3 times the price, I thought this PDA would make my Tungsten E obsolete but I find myself still using it just as much because the Clie hasn't been too reliable to me. So I'll continue using 2 separate PDA's in the meantime.
Rating:
Summary: left hand users
Review: If you want to use the graffiti and are left handed, your hand gets in the way and are unable to see the screen.
With that price it should have "documents to go" all ready installed.
Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: It seems like most of the software built-in or bundled with the Clie is either limited or requires a paid upgrade for full functionality.
Playing MP3's is a headache, transferring music, is only possible with the pro or magicgate versions of memory sticks, unless you use a third party player.
Printing, is not readily supported from most applications either, unless you transfer the file to a desktop.
Another complaint I have is not being able to transfer, print, or otherwise use Clie Memo files (handwritten notes) on anything but another Clie. I use a lot of handwritten notes in my work, and aside from being able to read them back on the screen, the information cannot be stored, shared or printed.
Using Bluetooth for Syncing works well, but file transfer isnt always possible.
The Browser that ships with the UX50 is out of date and impossible to update (version 3.0) while it does work, 3.1 offers a lot better functionality and viewability. Checking web based e-mail is not supported by the current browser either.
The ux50 is not a bad PDA, but don't expect it to work well out of the box. there are a lot of third-party programs out there to work out a lot of the "bugs" but be prepared to pay more for them.
My advice to someone looking for a pda is to check out the PEG -TH55 (also from sony) Its got most of the same features (minus the keyboard) and a much larger viewable screen area
Rating:
Summary: looks nice but too much trouble at the end
Review: Ok I bought this Clie ux 50 thinking it was going to be fairly simple in setting it up with my wireless lan at home. Well I was wrong!! On my first day in trying to set up my clie with my Dell wireless router I encounter some problems. It wasn't working. I called Sony customer service and they tried to help me out but no one could figure out why it wasn't working. Talking to Sony for the fourth day, a sony tech. told me that it might be that my router might not have a new firm ware upgrade and that I need to call Dell to find out how I can go ahead and get a new firm ware update. As most people know calling Dell is not so simple. It took me 5 hours to get to talk to some one in Dell and it took me another hour for them to help me set up the firm ware upgrade. Once everything was done I tried to get my clie ux50 to link with my wireless router and AGAIN IT DID NOT WORK. Once again had to take my time to call sony and let them know that the firm ware upgrade did not work. (Bare in mind this was my sixth day talking to Sony about this problem) After talking to Sony they decided to take me to the next "higher" lever of Sony Tech. but they were not open on the weekends. So I had to wait until Monday for someone from their dept. to call me. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon , now the 7th day with this problem, I received a call from Sony's tech. I spent one minute with him, all he told me was that my Dell wireless router 1184 was not compatible with Sony Clie. WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!! sO PLEASE BE WARE ALL BUYERS AND ESPECIALLY DELL BUYERS
Rating:
Summary: Not what is should be at this price
Review: Over the past ten years I have had many abortive attempts with owning PDAs. I have a habit of using them intensely for two months and then totally losing enthusiasm. As a point of fact, I am convinced that ebay would not be the enterprise it is today had it not been for me littering its pages with my PDA divorces. Recently, after an admirably lengthy self imposed separation, I found myself in Comp USA with my AMEX card in hand. The Sony attracted me by its original design and multimedia features. It certainly is a revelation in terms of connectivity and web browsing. I also like the keyboard. However, let me tell you why I am returning it (despite the 15% open-box return charge) and going for a more traditionally designed HP. It is not a bad unit, I just feel that the high price suggests it is more special than it actually is: The swivel screen concept should allow for a larger screen but this one is disappointingly about standard size for a PDA. The unit is slightly smaller but somewhat thicker than a standard PDA. Battery life is poor. My main issue, however, is the included software which does not contain the basics I would expect. No word processor, no spreadsheet and no outlook equivalent email program other than something which pops email. All these are available but, at this price, I would expect these included. I liked the sketchpad but, for some reason, it only operates on a reduced screen size. The camera is nice and I liked the zoom feature but it would be better with a higher resolution. Looking at the prices of comparable units I feel that the $650 tag consumes about $350 for the vogue value of the undeniably neat mini-tablet design. It depends how much this means to you.
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