Anyone have a Zodiac yet?

[wyzard]

I'm extremely interested in getting one of these. Anyone with any hands on experience with one yet? Can you flip it, a la T3, to use PIM functions or is it only usable in console mode? I assume entry is similar to a Palm... stylus and grafitti?

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[imported_quasar]

The Zodiac has the same features as a T3, except for the slider, voice record, and 200 MHz difference. It can be put into portrait or landscape mode, has PIM features (but not NotePad), and has BlueTooth like the T's. It has the same resolution, virtual grafiti area, Grafitti 2, and a stylus as the T3, but its built-in stuff is designed to be used without a stylus except for text entering. However, beware, the buttons don't yet corespond with normal buttons. The analog controller doesn't replace the 5-way navigator, so some games aren't compatible, and the 4 buttons don't work like the standard 4 on a Palm PDA. I only say yet because it shouldn't be long before Tapwave gets requests for a compatibility patch, but I have no information on such a patch. Anyway, the Zodiac comes with it's own audio player, not RealOne, and it also comes wiht a demo of AeroPlayer. It has dual SD slots, compared with the T3's single slot, it projects stereo sound from internal speakers, compared with the T3's mono, and the Zodiac has a new launcher that differs from Palm standard. It looks a lot nicer and easier to use, but might take some getting used to after using Palm Standard for a while. The Zodiac makes a lot more use of color with built-in apps and the launcher than Palm PDA's do, which is nice.

[samknupp]

I ordered the Zodiac 1 last week and it arrived today. It is quite nice to hold in the hand in both modes and I find I amy running most programs in portrait mode. It is quite comfortable in this mode. I am suprised that the brightness is so much less than I had heard. It is much dimmer than the T/C and the NZ positively "outshines" it. However that may be it is a very capable machine and the brightness is adequate. The stereo sounds are a nice change and really catch the ear. I am reluctant to install the desktop software since I am already running Sony, Palm and Pocket PC on the same laptop. I am afraid to upset the uneasy harmony. I find I am liking the installed launcher but will try the latest version of Zlauncher and see how it does. The device is no larger than the NZ and feels much thinner. I think I will really like it.

[Scott R]

A couple of comments about some of the questions/comments made so far:

- I don't expect we'll see any patch coming from Tapwave that makes the analog controller emulate the palmOne's 5-way navigator. More likely we'll see developers patch their programs to work with both.

- All built-in PIM apps work fine in either portrait or landscape modes and can make use of the full resolution.

- The 200MHz vs 400MHz difference between the Zodiac and the Tungsten T3 or C isn't cut and dry. They use two different brands of processors (The Zodiac uses a Motorola i.MX1, while the Tungstens use an Intel XScale), so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Also, the Zodiac has a dedicated graphics chip (ATI Imageon) with 8MB of dedicated RAM and a dedicated Yamaha sound chip, so if/when multimedia developers tweak their apps for the Zodiac, it's very likely that they'll outperform the Tungstens. For productivity apps, the Tungstens may perform better. But last time I checked, even the slowest ARM Palm OS5 devices were extremely fast in running productivity apps, so I wouldn't be concerned unless you absolutely have to have super-fast performance in doing searches of large databases, etc.

Scott