Get a Clie NX80V while you can

SONY HAS DECIDED to halt production and sales of the Clie, as we reported earlier. According to a Reuters wire, development and sales will continue "just in Japan". Support contracts and warranties for US customers will continue to be honored, the company said.

At the risk of being called a contrarian, after I heard of the news this humble writer rushed to spend a couple hundred greenbacks in a nifty Sony Clie PDA with digital camera and mp3 playback that has been on my wish list for a while. I plan to use it as a replacement for my aging Palm and to combine with its pda functions a handy, modest megapixel quality digital camera for casual shots, which gives much better pictures than the sub-megapixel cameras embedded in many of today's "smart phones" (including the Treo).

So-called smartphones which can combine the functionality of my PalmOS PDA, my digital camera, and my cell phone are currently selling at totally unacceptable prices. And I decided to get one of the last Clie units anyway. Why?, because no "smartphone" gives me the same set of features that I will enjoy carrying around my existing cell phone in one pocket and a Clie pda with camera on the other.

Take for example the predecessor of the expensive and until now top-of-the-line NZ90, the Clie NX80V. This model is still available, sells for around $350 USD, and includes both memory stick and a compactflash slot, mp3 playback, optional wifi capability (via compactflash), a high-resolution screen, PalmOS 5.2, a fast cpu, and a 1.3 MP digital camera. It offers just the right balance of price and features, at an affordable middle ground price between low-end PalmOS PDAs and the expensive Treo 600 series that double it in price.

It's strange to see big corporations suffer from the "right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" syndrome. Sony develops so-called smartphones in partnership with Ericsson, and together they have focused on the Symbian OS, not the one from PalmSource.

Apparently there was little cooperation within Sony between the Ericsson and Clie teams, to advance and integrate the two product lines. And one wonders how that happened. This is the same management that decided that South America was "not important" and didn't even attempt to market these units down here.

Leaving Sony's Dilbert-style management decisions aside, the point is: if you had a particular Sony Clie PDA into your personal "wish list", the time to buy it is now. The price can be even a bit lower than the included links if you decide you don't need Amazon.com's money-back warranty. µ

L'INQs:
NX80V Spec Sheet (PDF)
Sony Clie NX80V PDA at Amazon.com