Casio has introduced two Pocket PCs: the small and sleek EM500 and the rugged EG-800. The EM500 comes in five different colors, is small and sleek, and guaranteed to be a hit with those looking for personal organization and a lot of fun. The EG-800 provides a rugged, color-screen Pocket PC for industry and niche markets. With these, Casio now offers the most complete family of Pocket PCs anywhere.
The EM 500 is the smallest of Casio's color-screen Pocket PCs. The active matrix LCD color display is the same type and size as used in the existing Casio E-100/105/115; it's just in a smaller case. The EM500 is available in different colors: blue, red, green, yellow, and a grayish purple. You get to choose the color that suits you best.
Casio's new EM500 "multimedia" Pocket PC
Buttons, speakers and jacks
The front of the EM500 looks similar to its big brother, the E-115. Along the bottom front Casio kept the three application launch buttons and the finger joystick that can be used as a game pad. The speaker is located between the joystick and the launch buttons.
On the left side, from top to bottom, you find the power (on/off) button, jog wheel with up/down/action and the voice recorder button. The jog wheel lets you move up and down through document lists and menu items. The voice recorder button lets you make recordings on the fly. Both of these are cool features found on most Palm-size and Pocket PCs. Casio decided to drop the Windows button on the EM 500. This was used to call up the Start menu on previous models.
Casio also made some improvements to the onboard sound system. I noticed that the volume is significantly louder on the EM500 than the prior Casio units. In addition, the headphone jack is now located at the top of the unit. This makes it much easier to put the EM500 in your pocket while you listen to music through stereo headphones. Finally, Casio offers a remote control headphone, which allows you to play and stop music, adjust volume, and jump to the next or previous tracks while the EM500 is in your pocket. This helps make the EM500 ideal for mobile listening.
Memory and data storage
The EM500 ships with 16 Mb of internal RAM memory, which is split between program execution and file/data storage. You'll have to play with this to see what the ideal ratio is, but you should be able to use at least 8 Mb for file storage. However, if you keep a lot of data files on your EM500, particularly music files, you may need to take advantage of the EM500's new type of data storage support. The EM500 is the first Pocket PC that ships with a MultiMedia Card slot instead of the Compact Flash card slots found in other Pocket PCs. (See Screen 1 for a size comparison of the two cards.) A MultiMedia Card is about the size of a postage stamp and about as thick as a piece of cardboard. Yet it adds up to 32 Mb of file storage to the EM500. MMC cards with 64 Mb capacities are coming soon.
Screen 1: The Cassiopeia EM500 comes with a MultiMedia Card slot that accepts postage-stamp-sized memory cards. These
add up to 32 MB of storage to the EM500. Shown here is the smaller SanDisk MultiMedia Card next to a CompactFlash card.
USB connectivity, optional serial cable
The EM500 has a built-in infrared port that can be used for data transfer between Pocket PCs, or synchronization between the EM500 and a desktop PC equipped with an IrDA port. It ships with a USB connectivity cable, which lets you connect to a USB-equipped desktop or notebook PC for fast data synchronization.
Casio offers an optional serial cable for the EM500. The port on the bottom of the EM500 is exactly the same as the E100, E 105, and E-115 Casio Pocket and Palm-size PCs. Owners of these devices can re-use existing serial cables. A serial cable lets you connect to a PC through its serial port. Casio also plans to offer adapters that will let you connect your EM500 to a mobile phone via the serial cable.
Battery and performance
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