PEG-S300

The PEG-S300 is the monochrome model of the first Clie generation.

Its main advantages when compared with the Palm Vx are the jogdial and especially the MemoryStick slot (a 8 Mb MemoryStick is bundled with the PEG-S300, except in the PEG-S300D version). Otherwise, the bulk (dimensions, weight) is comparable with the Vx, as are the battery life and the screen (a bit smaller physically on the Clie). The price can also make a difference. Initially introduced in the USA at 400 US$ (455 €), you can find the PEG-S300 at prices as low as 250 US$ (285 €) after the 50 US$ rebate coupon granted by Sony (USA residents only), which sets it favorably compared to its challengers.

The PEG-S300 suffered from a high launch price, and will also suffer from the competition of new models like Palm's m500. Sony didn't help either by failing to adjust the OS to handle properly the MemoryStick. Initially, only the MS Autorun software allowed the user to automate the required copy operations if you wanted to use the MemoryStick to store applications. MS Autorun could handle only one application per MemoryStick, and the databases couldn't be modified (read only) unless you accepted to lose the changes upon exiting the application...

More recently, programs like PowerLauncher Lite followed by PowerRun, or Rondo then Rondo Anesso, or MS Mount, appeared to fill the gap and help the users to actually use the MemoryStick like a RAM extension. Those programs authors have done a wonderful job, of course, but they did what Sony should have done before launching the Clie! Everything isn't perfect yet, but those programs improve with time and should progressively stabilize and get out of the beta phase, avoiding the (more or less frequent) crashes on our Clie. Let's hope also that Sony will quickly modify the new 4.0 PalmOS (already available for Palm brand users) to give at last to PEG-S300 / PEG-S500C users a good OS / device pair with a decent hardware support.