Sony Clié model PEG-T665C (discontinued)
July 2002

Take a Clié T615C, give it a 2x faster processor and MP3 playback and you've got the T665C, released in July 2002 in the US.

This was the second Palm OS PDA to have a 66MHz Dragonball processor. Sony's NR70 was the first (other Palm OS units had a 33MHz processor these days). Since late Fall 2002, newer Palm OS 5 PDAs such as the Sony NX70, NX60 and Palm Tungsten T have been introduced with even faster ARM processors. Still the T665 and NR70 are the fastest Palm OS 4 PDAs with Dragonball processors.

Not only is this (and the NR70) twice as fast as any other Palm OS 4 PDA, but is has a 320 x 320 pixel screen that is absolutely lovely (Sony knows how to do LCDs). The screen is very bright, the contrast sharp and the colors are saturated. That's higher resolution than Pocket PCs and considerably larger than the 160 x 160 pixel screen standard on most other Palm OS PDAs. Not all Palm applications support high resolution, but if your favorite app doesn't run at high res, you can set the Clié to run in 160 x 160 compatibility mode.

A/V Remote

Just as with some other Clié models, you'll get A/V remote control software that can control up to 15 pieces of home audio and video equipment (and not just Sony brand ). The IR is strong enough to reach up to 15 feet, but our couch is only about 9 feet away from our home entertainment center so that's the farthest I tested). There are about 5 to 10 supported brands, depending on the component type. I was able to control Yamaha receiver, a Sharp TV and VCR, Sony DVD and CD/MD deck but not our Zenith TV (not listed as an available TV brand).

Software Bundle

The software bundle with Sony PDAs is always excellent. Sony includes their own software for image viewing and editing that runs at high resolution, and you get some nice 3rd party software like Documents To Go standard edition from DataViz for working with Word and Excel files, and Intellisync Lite if you want to sync to Outlook or Lotus rather than Palm Desktop.

Questions? Comments?
Post them in our Discussion Forum!

Picture Gear Pocket is an image viewer for the Clié and it also has a desktop application that lets you copy and covert image and movies files back and forth from your PDA (supports Memory Stick). gMovie is as you guessed, a movie viewer. You can use Picture Gear on the desktop to convert most all movie formats to Clié-friendly format. However, it doesn't make very high quality movies. Try downloading some high quality movie trailers from Sony Pictures web site PDA section and playing them with Kinoma Player (an excellent free movie player) if you want to see what this PDA is really capable of! See the specs section for a more complete list of included software.

MP3

The unit has an MP3 (and ATRAC) player, similar to the one found in the Clié 760C and NR70. The audio player now has bass boost— if you own other Sony audio equipment, you're familiar with bass boost (it increases bass presence ). The headphones are different from those older models: these are ear buds with a volume controller and the audio jack is now a standard 3.5mm (1/8 in.) rather then the proprietary one used on older Clié models. There's also a Hold button that turns off the display to save power when you're using it as an MP3 player. It sounds great, but get ready to buy yourself some Memory Sticks to store all those audio files!

Like past Clié PDAs, the unit is expandable via Sony's Memory Stick technology. These are tiny stick-shaped removable memory cards already used in some Sony digital cameras, and supported by newer Sony VAIO notebooks. It comes with 16 megs of RAM built in. You can use the Sony Bluetooth card as well, for those of you looking to add a little networking to your life (currently released in Japan and available from exporters, should hit the US soon).

Conclusion

Pro: Sony just keeps getting better and better! This is an attractive, slim model that's smaller than the N760C and the same size as the T615C. Built-in MP3 player and decent headphones, absolutely lovely high resolution display. Fast processor you'll notice in everyday tasks like file-copy and image viewing/manipulation. Con: battery life could be longer, but isn't horrible either. The price competes with low-end Pocket PCs like the Toshiba e310, and some folks may opt for the Toshiba since the specs are better.

Specs: