Casio Cassiopeia EM-500:

  The Cassiopeia EM-500, Casio's follow-up to its E-100 series of personal digital assistants, closely mirrors the E-115 but offers a few changes. The biggest change is the move to using MultiMediaCard (MMC) memory over the more standard CompactFlash memory slot. The postage stamp-size MMC cards offer needed memory expandability (as the EM-500 comes with only 16 MB of internal memory, compared to the 32 MB of the E-115), especially if you plan to use the EM-500 as a portable MP3 player--one of its many multimedia capabilities.

  While MMC over CompactFlash limits the ability of the EM-500 to use many Pocket PC peripherals, we were willing to overlook that once we got a peek at the EM-500's gorgeous TFT screen. This very bright, very colorful (65,536 colors, to be exact) display shines beautifully when you're playing games or watching mobile video player clips, which run along at a respectable 15 to 20 frames per second with the EM-500's 150 MHz MIPS processor.

  The thick EM-500 (about twice the thickness of the Palm Vx) offers standard Casio programmable buttons to bring up the menu, calendar, and contacts, as well as a navigational D-pad, which is great for gaming. In addition to functioning as a stereo MP3 player (when using the included headphones), the EM-500 also works as a voice recorder, allowing you to dictate reminders for yourself or voice messages to send with e-mail. Casio promises six hours of battery life, but we often were able to get seven or more as long as we left the backlight on medium brightness.

  With its IrDA port, the EM-500 can communicate with wireless devices, and its USB connection provides speedy data transfer--even installing programs larger than a megabyte took only a few seconds.

  Despite the limited memory and the lack of CompactFlash support, the powerful processor, excellent display, and long battery life make the EM-500 a competitive entry into the Pocket PC market. --J. Curtis

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  The Casio EM-500 Color Pocket PC features a fast 150 MHz processor, convenient Microsoft software, and 16 MB of storage in a modern and durable body. It's also the first Pocket PC to feature the new MultiMediaCard with postage stamp-size memory cards with up to 64 MB of storage.

  The EM-500 comes with Microsoft Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Money, and Pocket Internet Explorer. You can synchronize the EM-500's Mobile Address Book with Microsoft Outlook on your desktop using the included Active Sync software (Outlook is also included on the CD-ROM).

  Download MP3 audio files from your PC using the fast USB connection and play them through the EM-500's built-in speaker using Windows Media Player. The 240 x 320 screen features 65,536 colors for multimedia viewing. The battery has a life of up to six hours.

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