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News
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review]
- We are investigating the
advantages of allowing our clients to pay via an online payment
system. We would like your feedback in this matter. Would you
utilize an On-Line payment system where you can pay your
invoices via a credit card? Please let us know at
staff@dogriverdesign.com.
- New Site Tools at
www.DogRiverDesign.com.
Our Goal
is that your Web Site is successful for you and your business.
We also realize that not every small business can financially
justify a large web marketing budget. For this reason, Dog
River Design has partnered with
SiteSolutions.com (3rd largest submission service in the
world!) to bring you Cost Effective, Automated, Web Marketing
Solutions. These services will not yield the same results as
our Full Service Web Marketing Solutions, but for the price they
are a great fit for a base line marketing effort.
Net Watch
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review] Boy I sure
wish that I had something to report on this month.. But I'm dry as
a bone. I'm looking for ideas so if any of you have some
suggestions for "Net Watch" please email me at
staff@dogriverdesign.com. I hope to have something ready for
next month.
Be sure to check our our new Web
Site Tools page on our site. There you can use the same
tools that we use to test your page for Search Engine
Optimization. We use them to get at good balance of
information before we send the pages to the search engines for
inclusion. There you can also, see if you are located in the
search engines, what position your site is located in the search
engines, and also check for broken links in your site. If
you have any questions, please give us a call (843-851-2824) or
drop us an
email!
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Product Review
[Top] [News] [Net Watch] [Product
Review] Gadgets!!!
If any of you all know me, you know that I just love gadgets.
One of my favorite gadgets are those little hand held computers or
PDAs. My first PDA was the Tandy PDA back 6 or 7 years ago.
I knew I was in love the first time that I saw one. You
could carry it with you, had a very long battery life, connected
to your Dos Based PC, and had major "head turning" appeal.
In all actuality that Tandy really was only good for a couple of
things, solitaire and reversi. Sure you could store names,
addresses, phone numbers, and your calendar, it was just very
difficult to input anything of substance with the handwriting
recognition software included.
While I abandoned the Tandy some
time ago, I never abandoned the hope that one day I'd have the
perfect portable, easy to use, feature rich, FAST, hand held
computer. I came close with a product called Clio. The
Clio was a very small, notebook computer like, Windows CE device.
It had a great screen, long battery life, full set of Pocket
Office 2000 applications, it was just very slow.
I finally reached what I thought to
be perfection when our company provided us with the Palm IIIx.
For the time it was fast, light, easy to use, worked with our
office database software, had a very long battery life, and widely
supported with third party software. My Palm IIIx is still
in use today. When my wife Sue saw it, and liked it, I gave
it to her. Of course this did leave a gadget void in my
life. So the search was on to replace my beloved Palm IIIx.
There are few things that I love
more than trying new computer gadgets. It has taken over a year,
but I've finally picked a winner for me. I had a few
"wishes" for my next PDA. I wanted it based on the Palm OS
and not Windows CE, I wanted it to have a color screen, be fast,
expandable, light, rechargeable, and inexpensive. I have
been looking and trying several models;
- Palm's: IIIx, 130, 505, & 515
- Handspring's: Prisim, and new
Trio
- Sony's: Clie line of PDAs
Prices ranged from $139
refurbished all the way up to $600 new. (a great source for cheap
PDAs is www.returnbuy.com)
I finally settled on the Sony where all my wishes were met except
the inexpensive. I chose the Sony PEG-NR70V/U
because of the shear volume of features, including an MP3 player,
built in Digital Camera and programmable remote control to run
your RV, VCR, stereo, etc. All those features came at the
steep price of 599.00. Fortunately I hit a deal at Dell's web site
offering 10% off all PDAs and free shipping, so I came out ahead
of the game on this one, saving about $90 on what I would have
paid at my local Best Buy.
Now that I have my new gadget, let me give you the low down.
Basically I like it very much. I needed the Palm OS based
PDA because it links directly with Amicus Attorney which I use
for my contacts, time billing, and calendar. The Sony by
far has the best color screen on the market with 320x480
resolution. Palm and Handspring screens are basically
160x160 resolution. This means that every thing you see on
the Sony is clear, bright and crisp. The camera is a neat
feature. It captures only at 320x240 but for just a quick
click it is great to have built in.
Other unique features are the
Virtual Grafitti, a part of the screen used to input letters and
numbers with the stylus. Unlike most Palm devices where you
are drawing on a special part of the unit with no visual feedback.
The Sony uses a portion of its display as the input section.
When you draw your letters you actually see how you are inputting
things on the screen. This has really helped me become more
accurate. For all those that just can't get the hang of using the
stylus, there is an integrated keypad. The keypad is much
faster when putting in larger volumes of data. The ability
to have each in one built in is a real plus.
Finally, one of the most important
features that I really wanted was speed. My old Palm IIIx
was really slow. The Sony boasts a 66Mhz processor, twice
as fast as any other Palm Based PDA and you can really notice
the difference. I whish
that I could say that the Sony was a "Grand Slam," but I can't.
There are several issues that I'd love to see resolved with this
unit. First of all is its total dependence on the memory
stick to move certain data back and forth. You cannot move
any of the pictures captured with the built in camera off the
Clie with out one. You can try to configure the Clie Mail
application and send them to yourself but I've not figured that
one out yet. Sony's software installation is also very
cumbersome leaving you wondering what you need and don't need to
install to get things to work right.
 Bottom
line is that I would NOT recommend this unit to anyone
unless they are as much of a gadget person as I am. I'd
still recommend Sony, just not this unit. Their
PEG-T615C/S Color PDA (shown left) is a very good fit for just
about everyone. And at $299 for a 320x320 color screen, 16
megs of ram, and Memory Stick expandability, it is a very good
bargain.
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