Tapwave enters age of Aquarius

THE PRODUCT I WAS LOOKING forward to most last year was the Zodiac by Tapwave. After months of begging, I finally got my hands on one. I was lost in the waning hours of E3, and wandered down the wrong hall. There was a sign on the door saying Tapwave, so I wandered in and found the suite spot.

Tapwave was real! I could touch one! Way way cool. Lets just say I was so tired I did not do the happy dance, but instead just grinned and tried not to make a fool out of myself, but I think I failed. I took pictures, played the odd game or two, and was really impressed. I was also told that they would be be in a major retailer 'soon'.

Notes taken, good impressions made I mentally filed it away, content to write it up when I got the press release about the nationwide launch. After pestering them for 10+ months to get on their mailing lists, surely they would let me know when they launched, that is the purpose of a press release, and that is what the press does. We write about the cool things they do, and they tell us about the cool things they do.

Needless to say, I ran into one while on a trip to CompUSA a weekend or two ago. Wow, they must have just got them in, and I should be getting the 'official' launch announcement any second now. Wait. Wait. Wait wait wait. Nothing. Go to the site. Oh, I missed it by a month and change, and I still am not on any of the press lists.

So I give up. I will tell you what I remember about this very cool product, then banish from my mind, it simply isn't worth the effort any more. They did have really good little nutty snack food packets at E3, but bribes like that will no longer do, I need at least caffeinated drinks now. That said, here is what I think.

The Tapwave Zodiac is a Palm Pilot from hell with a gaming bent. It starts out with a 200MHz Motorola ARM9 CPU, and is backed up by an ATI Imageon W4200 graphics chip with 8MB of dedicated ram. This is fed through a 3.8 inch 480*320 screen in 16 bit color. Subjectively, it looks great. Objectively, I wouldn't have a clue as to how to measure it.

There is a dedicated Yamaha sound system, vibration, enough buttons and triggers to choke a horse, and an analog control stick. Yes, I said ANALOG. Ye-friggin-haw, a real controller on a handheld. It is a good controller also, I liked the feel a lot, and it certainly blows the notchy 8 way clunkers of the past away. Yes, looks like they payed attention to what makes a controller not stink.

It also has either 32 or 128MB of main memory, a USB cable, and bluetooth built in for ad-hoc multiplayer. Shades of the Atari Lynx, in a good way. If you really feel desperate, it also has infrared, but that is so 2002.

For expansion, there are 2 SD slots, and one even supports SDIO. Why you would want something like an 802.11b card for a device like this is beyond me. I mean all you can do is surf, play real net based games, and access remote machines. What good is that?

The Zodiac is probably the most fully featured Palm OS device ever made. If it does not have that intangible 'feel' thing down though, it is rather pointless. The road to silicon valley is littered with handhelds that feel wrong. The Zodiac is right. It has a hard but smooth black metal shell. It nails that intangible 'solid feel' that you can't really describe, but know it as soon as you hold one. In ranting about the Zodiac earlier, this was my biggest worry, but I am convinced.

As you can see, it has a pretty standard look about it, but it feels more curved than it actually is. It also feels more substantial, but my hazy memory tells me it was quite slim and tidy. Either way, it gets two thumbs up for the physical side of things.

I know what you are thinking, what about the important parts? How are the enhancements to the Palm Desktop? Pretty damn good. Instead of the usual icons and categories paradigm, they have a radial menu system. You have a central start point, and 8 directions. Each direction is a separate category, or a program. It appeared to be fully hierarchical, so sub-menus and the like should be no problem. I was told you can put things where you want, how you want, and move things till you get bored. No more remembering what you filed things under, then tap-tap-tap-tap until you get the right category. Simply grab the joystick, and do a N-E-NW, and you are in the program of your choice. 3 motions, 8*8*8 choices. Not bad for efficiency of movement.

If you are sitting down, I will also tell you the Zodiac's dirty little secret, it plays games. It is not just a work machine. In fact, there are about 20 games currently available. They range from classics like Duke Nukem and Doom II to more modern titles like Tony Hawk. Remember, this machine has a pretty powerful 3D chip, so the games are fairly smooth and high rez.

As pictured above, Doom II was the marquee title, but don't read to much into it. The Zodiac runs at a higher rez then the original, so it ends up a little blocky and pixelated. Oh how things have advanced. Duke Nukem is much closer to a true 3D game, so it runs much less painfully on the Zodiac. In the 15 minutes or so I had with them, I got a distinct feel that Duke was a better port, but Doom was not bad. I mean Doom II, come on, it can't suck.

Tony Hawk was the last game I looked at, and it was full 3D. It looked like a modern game on a small screen. It showed more of what the Zodiac was capable of than the older ports, and that was a good thing. Hopefully there will be more games of this quality that stretch the hardware soon, the platform deserves some things that push its limits and show off the bells and whistles.

Overall, the Zodiac is a very slick piece of hardware on an equally slick OS. You can run all Palm titles on it, and there are thousands of those, or you can also buy a bunch of modern games. The highest end of those run a reasonable $30, while most are under $20, and a few are less than $10.

The Palm enhancements are good, and it look like a rugged piece of equipment that will last a long time. I don't think my lust for this hardware was misplaced late last year, it looks like everything they said it would be. The only problem is that I no longer care. The only reason I got my hands on one is that I ran into them by accident. The only reason I knew about the launch was that I ran into one in a store. Cool, but no longer worth the effort. µ