Rex Is a Small Entry in the PDA Kingdom
“Is a puzzlement,” Yul Brynner famously said in “The King and I,” when stumped by something brought to him by nanny Mrs. Anna. So too is the Rex 6000, a 2-megabyte device that is perhaps the smallest and thinnest personal digital assistant on planet Earth.
The size of a credit card, the Rex 6000--which lists for $150 to $190, depending on options--can carry contact lists along with your schedules, to-do items and even some Internet content. It slips into the PC Card slot of a notebook computer to synchronize with Microsoft Outlook or its own desktop software.
Rex maker Xircom Inc. of Thousand Oaks says it will offer optional sync tools for other programs such as Lotus Notes, Symantec’s Act, Lotus Organizer and Novell GroupWise in the spring.
Because Rex has a small touch screen, your fingertip or a stylus can navigate the various features of the device. There’s a small row of icons at the bottom of the liquid crystal display to identify the most vital features: date book, contact list, task list, memos, Web content, calculator and world clock.
The world clock is kind of cute, by the way. It features time-sensitive shading to show where on Earth it is, or isn’t, daylight. The other programs function reasonably well. The calendar is straightforward and accessible, with the ability to attach notes to a given item. The contact database is equally direct but seems limited to a total of five fields for phone numbers or e-mail addresses. When my wife’s information was being transferred to the Rex 6000, her pager number dropped from sight.
The on-screen keyboard is tough. Press the letters or numbers, and you can, somewhat laboriously, enter text into the device. This is good for ad hoc additions, but it’s tedious for a major data overhaul. Unless you have a great deal of time or are a retired Swiss watch maker, you might prefer to enter information via the PC and sync it over to the Rex.
As with the Palm and some other hand-held devices, Web content on the Rex 6000 is limited by the device. Pictures aren’t possible, and the text is minimal. But it’s nice to have at least the potential of some relevant news and information on a device such as this.
One refinement lacking in the Rex, however, is a backlight, which would make it possible to see the screen in dark environments. But Glenn Cox, a Xircom product manager, said that adding a backlight would have kept the card out of notebook PC Card slots and could have compromised the remarkable battery life of the Rex 6000--between four and six months on two watch batteries.
For those without a notebookinto which the Rex can be slipped, Xircom offers two docking stations. Connecting the Rex 6000 was easy and the supplied software--created by Puma Technologies--worked well. Slowly, but well. A complete sync took more than 10 minutes, exponentially longer than a similar operation with a Palm or Pocket PC.
It is that slowness--along with some of the other quirks of the Rex 6000--that puts this on my “acquired taste” list for now.
With a base price of $150, the Rex 6000 will appeal to many, including those on a budget and those ultra-chic users who like the sleek looks of the small, silver card. But to actually get things done, consumers could spend that same $150 on a Palm m100 and get the same memory and more options.
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Mark A. Kellner is editor at large for Government Computer News.
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The Skinny
Rex 6000
What it is: A credit-card-size personal digital assistant
Price: $150 to $190, depending on options
Manufacturer: Xircom
The good: Tiny and eminently portable
The bad: Lacks many niceties
Bottom line: Buy a cheap Palm instead
