Tuesday october 22nd, 2001: Sony releases
yet another Clié device!
It's becomming now a kind of routine: just
when the trouble created by the PEG-N750C
and PEG-N760C
release were fading away (those who had
just bought a PEG-N700C
or a PEG-N710C
did not really appreciate discovering
that they had bought an "obsolete"
device, and that Sony was going to ask money
for the update), Sony comes again with a
brand new Clié device, the PEG-T415.
This one has a new, refined design, but
is essentially a finer PEG-S320
(1 cm thick, about 50% less than the PEG-S320)
with a high resolution screen (320x320),
a buffed-up infra-red port, an improved
sound capability when compared to the existing
Clié devices (through a small loudspeaker,
though, since the PEG-T415
has no built-in MP3 capabilities), all that
for 300 US$.
Let's forget a moment about the unpleasant
side of this release frenzy, and rejoice
about this promising (though not revolutionary)
new device. The sheer number of high-resolution
devices sold will persuade developers to
update their programs to support resolution
higher than the original 160x160, which
will in turn benefit to all Clié
PEG-N6x0C
and PEG-N7x0C owners!
And after all, having at last a decent infra-red
port will please those who dream about using
their Clié as remote control, and
it was about time the PalmOS devices started
to feature a better sound quality instead
of the miserable buzzer we've been living
with for what seems an eternity... :-)
Also, in the self-satisfaction department, I'm proud to announce that the €uroClie mailing list has recently seen the subscription of its hundredth reader... Welcome to all of you! As you probably noticed, this is not a high-volume list, and I'm kept busy right now by my daytime work so the update are somewhat delayed - the French pages are more up to date than their English counterparts, but I'm slowly keeping up... ;-)
Friday october 5th, 2001: PEG-N710C OS update!!!
They did it! A few active members of Clie board (http://www.palmblvd.com/boards/Sony-Clie-710C/
et http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CLIE_Users_Group)
have finally found a way to reflash a PEG-N760C ROM on a PEG-N710C, allowing
it to go from OS 3.5.2 to 4.1. What it brings is essentially the fact that you
don't need USBSwitcher anymore to hotsync your Clie. The device is also reported
to be slightly faster, and support 65535 colors instead of the initial 256,
plus some less visible improvements. On the other hand, the upgrade process
is, well, not entirely legal since you've got to use a Brayder program (JackSprat)
to backup a PEG-N760C ROM, then FlashWrite (included with JackSprat) to restore
the ROM backup on a PEG-N710C... It means you must first get JackSprat (or at
least FlashWrite) and a copie of a PEG-N760C ROM done with JackSprat. Don't
look for that stuff on the €uroClie site, I won't mess with that! That
being said, check the Clie boards for instructions, especially this
message and that one...
Last thing, the drivers of the PEG-N760C (you could need them after the upgrade)
are mentioned in this
message! ;-)
One word of caution, though: this process is potentially dangerous for your
Clie, you must first backup everything, of course, and be careful not to reinstall
everything that was on your PEG-N710C blindly afterward, especially so since
the system patches on your PEG-N710C are not compatible with the PEG-N760C!!!
Thursday october 4th, 2001: A long awaited update!
At last a sign of life on €uroClie...
Sorry for that long time without (apparent)
update, I've first had some vacation during
the summer holidays, then I was really busy,
and had almost no time to update the site.
Hence some pages are getting really out-of-date
(especially the FAQ), but don't worry, even
if I'm a bit on the slow side to add the
new software that support the great features
of the new Clie devices, I continue to update
the version information of the existing
programs. Amongst the new software (since
the last update), let's just cite PiDirect
VFS, which is similar to MsMount.
Apart from that, most of my free time has been used working on a Windows ROM
editor for the Clie. Those that need such a program right now can use a Linux
program called Romeo, you can use
it with a Clie ROM with just a minor source code modification.
To let you have a glimpse at what my program will look like when it's finished
(yes, I know I'm slow at programming, but I'm learning as I code), here's a
screenshot of CHROMED (Clie Homebuilt ROM EDitor), my future ROM editor (the
interface has already changed since when I took thish screenshot, but it's only
to give you a hint of what it will look like anyway):
I'll keep you advised, of course, of the development of CHROMED, both on this
site and on the €uroClie mailing list.
Once this project is mature enough, I'll try to write a ROM flashing tool (unless
Sony finally decides to release publicly their own tool), so that you can reflash
the nice custom ROM created with CHROMED! ;-)