A pocketful of PDAs - evaluations of Apple's Newton MessagePad 130, HP's OmniGo 120, Motorola's Envoy 150, Psion's Series 3a, Sharp Electronic's Zaurus 5800FX and U.S. Robotics' Pilot 5000 personal digital assistants - includes related product summary box - Hardware Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1996 by Rick Broida

Part PIM, part electronic notebook, the $399 OmniGo 120 delivers a good combination of features at an affordable price. With a larger screen and better communications options, it would be a tough PDA to beat.

Motorola Envoy 150

Rating: ***

Look ma, no wires! That's the allure of the Envoy 150, the only PDA in the group with integrated' two-way wireless messaging. Without the need for a land line, the Envoy can send and receive e-mail, faxes, and pager messages. And that's just the icing on the cake: This PDA also features a splendid graphical operating system, a robust suite of applications, and a rechargeable battery.

Unfortunately, the luxuries of wireless communication don't come cheap. With prices starting at $875 and soaring as high as $1,175 (depending on accompanying wireless-network services), the Envoy is the most expensive PDA in our roundup. This makes the wireless capabilities a liability rather than an asset. It's also the heaviest, weighing in at 1.7 pounds.

Based on the pen-driven Magic Cap 1.5 operating system, the Envoy's point-and-tap interface centers around a virtual office. On the "desk," you'll find a phone, date book, Rolodex, notepad, in- and out-boxes, and a drawer containing a calculator and wallet (for Pocket Quicken). The office metaphor extends all the way to the "hallway," which contains doorways to such things as Envoy settings and a library of online documentation. You can even go "downtown" to shop for add-on software or to order additional wireless services. Without question, Magic Cap is the easiest operating system to navigate and the most fun to use.

We found all the applications to be first-rate,

particularly the appointment calendar and Rolodex. For free-form note taking, the Envoy ranks near the top. Your blank canvas can be graph paper, a checklist, or even a two-column list. Plus, whereas most PDAs limit page size to the area of the screen, the Envoy lets you extend the page vertically to create a larger virtual workspace. If you want to input text, you'll find the onscreen keyboard the fastest and most efficient way. The Lexicus QuickPrint handwriting-recognition software is slow and unwieldy; you have to write your characters in boxes, rather than directly on your virtual page.

Among the Envoy's other high points: a built-in land-line modem (2.4Kbps data, 9.6Kbps fax) to use with an available phone jack; an infrared (IR) port for communicating with other Envoys; and two Type II PC Card slots, for expanding the unit's 2MB of RAM and adding applications. (A few dozen are available, including a game pack and OAG FlightLine.) And you can link the Envoy to your PC or Macintosh (optional) to exchange scheduling data with MS Schedule or Lotus Organizer.

The Envoy's only significant shortcoming is its screen. Though agreeably large, it suffers from excessive glare and poor contrast. Like the OmniGo's screen, it has a greenish luminescence when viewed from certain angles. But the OmniGo achieves better results with this effect; the Envoy screen actually appears blurry when tilted sideways.