What should I do with this old Clie?
April 9, 2007 2:33 PM Subscribe
On the heels of this excellent thread about the usefulness of a Palm III, I am now curious as to what I could do with my aging Sony Clie PEG-NX73V.
Not only did I enjoy the Palm III thread, but it finally convinced me to get off my lazy butt and post this. What can I do with this aging but clearly still useful Sony Clie PEG-NX73V? It's actually a feature rich little device, including both a CF card reader and a MemoryStick reader (I have a 128MB stick to use with it), a microphone, a camera with horrible resolution but the ability to do both still and moving pictures to an inserted memory stick, a headphone jack, (I used this as my MP3 player for a long time before I got my iPod)decent little keyboard, an IR port, 11MB of RAM available for the user on board (but with the 128MB stick also available).
Thing is... I don't use it at all now. Which is a shame. I actually love the feel of it, but I've already stated in the Palm III thread that I just can't use these things for taking notes or address book. That kind of leaves the calendar as the most possibly useful thing, but that presents a whole nest of complications since I would like to use Google Calendar if I started using a non-work calendar.
So, what possible cool uses are there for this device? I can use it on either a Mac or a PC (Windows or Linux). I am open to pretty much anything cool, fun, or even usefully productive. Fun may be the keyword, though, since if it's fun I am more likely to actually do it.
The one thing I WOULD like to do that I never quite figured out is the play video on it, so anyone that can enlighten me on that aspect of getting this thing to work, I would be VERY grateful.
Not only did I enjoy the Palm III thread, but it finally convinced me to get off my lazy butt and post this. What can I do with this aging but clearly still useful Sony Clie PEG-NX73V? It's actually a feature rich little device, including both a CF card reader and a MemoryStick reader (I have a 128MB stick to use with it), a microphone, a camera with horrible resolution but the ability to do both still and moving pictures to an inserted memory stick, a headphone jack, (I used this as my MP3 player for a long time before I got my iPod)decent little keyboard, an IR port, 11MB of RAM available for the user on board (but with the 128MB stick also available).
Thing is... I don't use it at all now. Which is a shame. I actually love the feel of it, but I've already stated in the Palm III thread that I just can't use these things for taking notes or address book. That kind of leaves the calendar as the most possibly useful thing, but that presents a whole nest of complications since I would like to use Google Calendar if I started using a non-work calendar.
So, what possible cool uses are there for this device? I can use it on either a Mac or a PC (Windows or Linux). I am open to pretty much anything cool, fun, or even usefully productive. Fun may be the keyword, though, since if it's fun I am more likely to actually do it.
The one thing I WOULD like to do that I never quite figured out is the play video on it, so anyone that can enlighten me on that aspect of getting this thing to work, I would be VERY grateful.
+1 to the e-books, I find that really useful, especially when in bed while my girlfriend is asleep, its easier on my eyes, and less disruptive to her than a reading lamp.
I also like the various emulators (can't think of any atm, and not got my Palm here so can't check for you), my favourite is Scumm VM, which is a free emulator that lets you play all the old LucasArts (and a few others now actually) graphic adventures, like the Monkey Island games, Day of the Tentacle.
Fantastic fun and great on the go :D
posted by chrispy108 at 4:17 PM on April 9, 2007
I also like the various emulators (can't think of any atm, and not got my Palm here so can't check for you), my favourite is Scumm VM, which is a free emulator that lets you play all the old LucasArts (and a few others now actually) graphic adventures, like the Monkey Island games, Day of the Tentacle.
Fantastic fun and great on the go :D
posted by chrispy108 at 4:17 PM on April 9, 2007
Another recent thread asking that very thing about a different Clie.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:43 PM on April 9, 2007
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:43 PM on April 9, 2007
Palm MAME.
I have a 70V, it's got a flash player installed and can also play AVI movies. The trick is to get them into the right directory on the memory stick. I was googling around to see which directory movies are supposed to go into and ran into this player which looks promising.
nthing ebooks. The jogdial on the Clies are awesome.
Build your own Palm Robot.
Pick up observational astronomy and use Palm Planetarium.
Get a PEGA WL 100 wireless LAN card for that and surf the web.
posted by porpoise at 5:34 PM on April 9, 2007
I have a 70V, it's got a flash player installed and can also play AVI movies. The trick is to get them into the right directory on the memory stick. I was googling around to see which directory movies are supposed to go into and ran into this player which looks promising.
nthing ebooks. The jogdial on the Clies are awesome.
Build your own Palm Robot.
Pick up observational astronomy and use Palm Planetarium.
Get a PEGA WL 100 wireless LAN card for that and surf the web.
posted by porpoise at 5:34 PM on April 9, 2007
Response by poster: propoise - any pointers on how you get it to play .avi files? i.e. what app will do that for an old Palm like mine?
Thanks for the previous threads links.
posted by smallerdemon at 9:29 PM on April 9, 2007
Thanks for the previous threads links.
posted by smallerdemon at 9:29 PM on April 9, 2007
Best answer: Under CLIE should be "Movie Play" - this is the app that came with my Palm. It's also the app that will play back movie recordings taken from the internal camera.
If you throw a MPEG formatted (I think this might be important; you'll have to find a program to convert videos to MPEG if it's not already - googling should yield some results but anyway, you'll probably be converting the size of whatever you want to watch anyway... there should be some commercial packages out there but I used to use TMPGEnc to convert DVDs) into a directory on your memory stick /PALM/Programs/Movieplayer/100MQV01 (using, say, MS Import) it should show up under when you open "Movie Play." You might have to switch between Movie Player format and MPEG format.
To see if a video is MPEG, I'd recommend using GSpot which will give you the video and audio codec information.
If that's not working, try making a movie under "Movie Rec" and going into "CLIE Files" to search for it on your memory stick, but it should be somewhere around /palm/programs/movieplayer - the final folder might be different.
The player can play the movie rotated, too, so you can take that in mind (re: the HiRes+ screen) when you're converting/viewing movies.
I haven't really played around with the Flash player at all and am thinking of deleting it.
The website looks awful, but I love PowerRun - it loads programs into the memory stick and temporarily loads them back into RAM to execute the program thus saving a lot of RAM and allowing one to load many more programs into the PDA.
posted by porpoise at 7:50 AM on April 10, 2007
If you throw a MPEG formatted (I think this might be important; you'll have to find a program to convert videos to MPEG if it's not already - googling should yield some results but anyway, you'll probably be converting the size of whatever you want to watch anyway... there should be some commercial packages out there but I used to use TMPGEnc to convert DVDs) into a directory on your memory stick /PALM/Programs/Movieplayer/100MQV01 (using, say, MS Import) it should show up under when you open "Movie Play." You might have to switch between Movie Player format and MPEG format.
To see if a video is MPEG, I'd recommend using GSpot which will give you the video and audio codec information.
If that's not working, try making a movie under "Movie Rec" and going into "CLIE Files" to search for it on your memory stick, but it should be somewhere around /palm/programs/movieplayer - the final folder might be different.
The player can play the movie rotated, too, so you can take that in mind (re: the HiRes+ screen) when you're converting/viewing movies.
I haven't really played around with the Flash player at all and am thinking of deleting it.
The website looks awful, but I love PowerRun - it loads programs into the memory stick and temporarily loads them back into RAM to execute the program thus saving a lot of RAM and allowing one to load many more programs into the PDA.
posted by porpoise at 7:50 AM on April 10, 2007
Response by poster: I'd love to find an affordable PEGA WL 100, but man, even a used one is $85.
Thanks for great suggestions so far! I am going to definitely make it a book reader, and I am going to see if I can start putting shows on my memory stick (turns out it's a 256MB stick, so I can surely get a few decent tv shows on it). I'll try all of your suggestions Porpoise.
posted by smallerdemon at 9:35 AM on April 10, 2007
Thanks for great suggestions so far! I am going to definitely make it a book reader, and I am going to see if I can start putting shows on my memory stick (turns out it's a 256MB stick, so I can surely get a few decent tv shows on it). I'll try all of your suggestions Porpoise.
posted by smallerdemon at 9:35 AM on April 10, 2007
For etext reader I like Mobipocket as it supports the HiRes+ (so it hides the virtual graffiti pad and uses the full screen) and Word2Doc (a MS Word plugin) that will convert any text you can open up in Word to *.prc that'll automatically add it to install on your next sync (you can also move the files to your MS card /PALM/Programs/MSFILES/EBOOKS/).
I've been trying to get a WL100 from ebay but, yeah, the lowest I've ever seen was $60-something USD plus shipping.
posted by porpoise at 10:50 AM on April 10, 2007
I've been trying to get a WL100 from ebay but, yeah, the lowest I've ever seen was $60-something USD plus shipping.
posted by porpoise at 10:50 AM on April 10, 2007
Response by poster: Are there any know CF wifi dongles that work with it? Or that can be hacked to work with it?
posted by smallerdemon at 2:10 PM on April 10, 2007
posted by smallerdemon at 2:10 PM on April 10, 2007
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This thread is closed to new comments.
Buy a WiFi dongle for the CF slot, and use it to SSH into your computers. Browse the web. Mo-blog your life.
Some more threads.
posted by djgh at 3:23 PM on April 9, 2007