Today I played with the new Sony handheld PC (the UX1).

As gadgets go, it is pretty neat to hold and to play with. Once upon a time I used to habitually buy these small form-factor devices. I once had a Toshiba Libretto. In fact, I used it with an early “WiFi” (Wavelan) card to mimic a 3G terminal in various “visionary” projects back in the day. Worked a treat, except for the 30 minutes battery life.

At 1,999 pounds, the UX1 is clearly expensive and aimed at gadget freaks with cash to burn. I no longer fit into that category, mostly because I have what seems like a small museum of various portable computing solutions in a large plastic bin. This tells me something. Oh yes! Don’t buy any more portable computing gadgets until I work out why I really need one.

I see that Palm has also joined the portable computing category, something apparently different to the PDA category. This is a cyclical thing. These intermediate form-factor devices come and go, mostly go.

There are some key problems though, like the lack of seamlessness. Clearly, if I have a UX1 or Palm whatsit, then I’m not about to ditch my laptop, desktop or mobile phone. No one size fits all. The problem then is workflow. If I write a document on my UX1, I want to make sure I can access it on my laptop etc. Synchronisation has always been the issue. I’m guessing that they must have thought of this, but I’m not holding my breath that it really works. I no longer have the patience to find out or to spend 2K in the process.