Sony's Clie PEG-TJ25, along with its sister unit, the PEG-TJ25, is a mid-level PDA aimed at business users. It is a solid unit that can now be purchased online for as low as $150. Sony lists the unit on its website for $200.

The TJ25 and the TJ35 compete for the same user as PalmOne's excellent Tungsten E, which sells for $200 on the PalmOne website. The TJ units, which are handsome and colored silver, come with a solid protective cover that flips open to the side. The TJ25 fits comfortably in the hand with measurements of 3.0 x 4.38 x .47 inches, weighing in at a light 4.9 ounces.

For navigation, the TJ series has a roller that you can push down with two buttons directly on the side. We found this system, different than competing 5-way navigation solutions in devices like the Tungsten E, easy to use. The unit also has four buttons, each one linked to the four main Palm OS applications, the Address Book, MemoPad, Calendar and To Do List.

Like the Tungsten E, the TJ series has a 320x320, 65,000 color display, and a graffiti writing area just bellow it. While the TJ series display is more than adequate, the Tungsten E's display is brighter. It worked better indoors, as most PDA displays do, but was still usable outside.

Since the units are Palm OS 5.2.1 devices, they use Graffiti 2, based on on CIC's Jot for handwriting recognition, just like all the recent PalmOne PDAs. We're big fans of Jot, which we find easier to use than the traditional Graffiti. The unit also bundles Decuma's handwriting recognition solution, which is even closer to natural handwriting than Graffiti 2.

The TJ series runs on a 200 MHz Motorola i.MXL processor, which offers solid performance and can handle multimedia tasks well. The Tungsten E uses a 126 MHz Texas Instruments CPU. The TJ25 bundles 16MB of RAM, of which only 11MB are available to the user, while the TJ35 has 32 MB of memory, 23 MB user available. The Tungsten E also bundles 32MB of RAM. 32MB of memory, we think, is the minimum amount of RAM that a handheld aimed at business users should have.

Of course, what would a Clie unit be without a Memory Stick slot. A memory card is a must have purchase for any handheld user. You can, for example, store additional applications and images, and most importantly backup your data in manner that's easy to carry around. And since the Memory Stick slots on the TJ series support the newest Memory Stick models available, you'll be able to store up to 1GB of additional data on single card. SanDisk recently announced that it had doubled the storage capacity of Memory stick up to 2GB, which should be available in a few months.


Memory Stick