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Dave Johnson

Dave's Favorites: Sony's New Digital Camera PDA

From time to time I recommend digital camera attachments for PDAs because I think they're pretty cool. What can I say? I'm a sucker for secret agent-style gadgets, and taking digital images with a pocket organizer is pretty neat. For some folks, it may even be practical.

The problem is that till now none of those digital camera attachments could take what I would call "good pictures." Typically equipped with a VGA resolution (that's 640 by 480 pixels) and a noisy image sensor, they're curiosities and toys, not serious cameras.

But finally, Sony is throwing its not-inconsiderable weight around. The new Clie NZ90 is Sony's latest Palm OS-based handheld PC. It still fits in your pocket--barely--and it still does all the things you'd expect from a PDA. It does appointments, contacts, to dos, and memos. It plays games. But the NZ90 has a 2-megapixel camera built in. That's right--2 megapixels! I've played with the NZ90 and found that its pictures are essentially indistinguishable from those produced by an inexpensive 2-megapixel camera. The images are sharp and have little digital noise, and colors are bright and accurate. It's a real camera!

That's not all. If you set the resolution to 800 by 600 or less, you can use a 2X digital zoom. The Clie has a built-in flash. And it offers a small assortment of exposure modes, like automatic, portrait, and night photography.

The Clie itself is more of a mixed bag. Compared to other PDAs, it's bulky and heavy. It doesn't have much memory (less than 11MB) and it lists for a staggering $800. (You can check PCWorld.com's Product Finder for the best prices.) But this is the first PDA that's ever been able to take enlargement-quality images, and that's pretty amazing.

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