[comp.sys.handhelds] For Sale: Casio SF-7000 B.O.S.S.

williamo@hpcupt1.HP.COM (William O'Shaughnessy) (06/16/90)

 
Subject:  For Sale:  Casio SF-7000 B.O.S.S.
 
I have a Casio SF-7000 BOSS personal organizer for sale.  It is a
little over a year old and in mint condition.  I have the manual but
I have been unable to find the little cable that allows you the connect
two BOSS organizers together.
 
Features:
	32K of RAM
	QWERTY "membrane" keyboard
	Telephone Directory
	Business Card Library
	Schedule Keeper (with alarms)
	Memo Pad
	Calendar Display (shows two months at a time)
	Local Time and World Time Displays
	Secret Memory (ie- passward protected)
	Data Communications (with BOSS organizers and PCs (separate option))
	Simple Calculator
 
Asking $100 or best offer.
 
Please note that this was posted by a friend so send email to me (Pete Stoppani)
and not to the poster.  Thanks.
 
--
| Pete Stoppani                    | stoppani@decwet.dec.com                  |
| DECwest Engineering, Bellevue WA | decwrl!slough.enet!stoppani              |
| "The wise learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise."            |

wayne@csri.toronto.edu (Wayne Hayes) (06/17/90)

In article <-288069999@hpcupt1.HP.COM> williamo@hpcupt1.HP.COM (William O'Shaughnessy) writes:
>Subject:  For Sale:  Casio SF-7000 B.O.S.S.
>Asking $100 or best offer.
>Please note that this was posted by a friend so send email to me (Pete Stoppani)
>and not to the poster.  Thanks.
>--
>| Pete Stoppani                    | stoppani@decwet.dec.com                  |
>| DECwest Engineering, Bellevue WA | decwrl!slough.enet!stoppani              |
>| "The wise learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise."            |

THIS IS A GOOD DEAL.  BUY ONE.

I just bought the Casio SF-7500, the only difference being that the 7500
has 64K rather than 32K, but for most people (2 friends of mine included)
32K is more than enough.  It's just that I couldn't find a 7000.

This little sucker is *impressive*.  First, it's miniscule:  about
13 x 7.5 x 1.5 cm (divide by 2.54 for inches...), and only a few ounces.
MUCH smaller than the Portfolio, it can easily be carried in the front
or back pocket of a pair of jeans.  I have a friend  that carries a
similar one (2 years old) *all* the time, even if he's only wearing
shorts.

The only thing the Portfolio has over the BOSS is that it can run "well
behaved" *small* MSDOS programs that are not I/O intensive.  I spent
hours drooling over the Portfolio, but still didn't like it's size.
I saw the BOSS, played with it for 10 minutes, and it had everything
the Portfolio had and more (except MSDOS), smaller, better user
interface, and I bought it (also 1/2 the price.)

You can buy a PC-interface for $129 Cdn (probably $79 or so in the US),
The search capabilities are impressive, and data can be moved and copied
and updated in a breeze.  The attention to little details is overwhelming.
You can set a date for a scheduled alarm, enter 384 characters in the
message, but set the actual alarm for a different time.  Say a meeting
at 3pm but put the alarm at 2:50.  Reschedule the event with a few buttons.
(So for a weekly event, you set the event once, it rings and as one of the
reminders you say "set up for next week" and it takes about 30 seconds to
reschedule the event for next week.)  The daily schedule is graphic, showing
the scheduled areas like

0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 11
------------------------------------
                        #
------------------------------------
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
------------------------------------
         ###
------------------------------------

might mean you have a wake up alarm set for 8am and a meeting from 3pm to
4pm.  (You can choose am/pm or a 24 hour clock.)  At the touch of a button
you get the text for the above events on screen.  The touch of another
button and the day recedes into a classic monthly calendar with today
flashing and any days with anything on the schedule marked with a dot,
the dot below the number for morning events and above for afternoon/evening.
You can enter any date from 1901-2099.  There are actually 2 months displayed
at once across the big screen, this month and next month.

The business card feature allows you to enter multiple employees in
single employer listing (saves space, I guess).  The entries include
Company, division, phone number, FAX number, telex #, name, etc.
It's memory efficient, and the batteries (3 large watch-type) are claimed
to last about a year of regular use.  There is no backlight.  And the
alarm is impressively loud for it's size.

For me, the added bulk of the Portfolio definitely isn't worth it, although
others's mileage may differ.  If I want a laptop, I'll get a *real*
laptop, one with a disk drive and a keyboard that I can type on and a
full size screen with graphics...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not flaming the Portfolio (although I guess it
looks like it cuz I never really wanted a teensy laptop but the 
Portfolio was the only palmtop that had nearly everything I wanted until
I met the BOSS), some people may need that little bit of extra power
(and maybe even more if Atari ever actually gets moving on it's promises
of 640K [384 already available] and a disk...), but I don't.

Anyway, as a sample of memory, I have 150 phone numbers, 20 business
cards, a handlful of small memos, a few scheduled events and I'm using
4.5K, 7% of capacity.  Note however, that I don't yet have addresses with
most of the phone #'s, so that would probably double it to 9K.  Still
not much when you have 32/64K.

There's also the 8000 which is basically a 7500 with a chiclet keyboard
and about an extra $50 (not worth it, it's bulkier and the touch pad on
the 7000/7500 is surprisingly responsive), and the 9000 which also has
a card drive.  However, the 4 cards available so far are: another 64K
(I don't need) and 3, yes count them *three* spelling checkers: one
with a thesaurus, one with medical terms and one other with specialty
terms from a category I can't remember.  Also useless, since my spelling
is purrfict.  :-)

A very satisfied and impressed BOSS customer...

-- 
Mathematics: That branch of Human Thought which takes a finite set of trivial
axioms and maps them to a countably infinite set of unintuitive theorems.

Wayne Hayes	INTERNET: wayne@csri.utoronto.ca	CompuServe: 72401,3525
-- 
Mathematics: That branch of Human Thought which takes a finite set of trivial
axioms and maps them to a countably infinite set of unintuitive theorems.

Wayne Hayes	INTERNET: wayne@csri.utoronto.ca	CompuServe: 72401,3525