Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
The REX 6000 (Right, that's the REX from now on!) is a PDA that's as small as you can get them these days. As a matter of fact it's the size of a PCMCIA card (like a credit card, only about five times thicker), complete with a touch screen, five buttons, the usual software (calendar, memos, todo lists, calculator) and 2 megabytes of memory. Only problem is they're getting rather hard to find. Intel bought Xircom and promptly shut down the REX which is a real pity. That hasn't stopped it from gaining a pretty devoted and large groupd of users though. People are developing software, providing help and support and generally using their REXes in their everyday lives. I'm afraid to say I'm not too often one of those everyday users though. Being the happy owner of a Palm IIIe means I usually take it along instead of the REX since everything about the Palm is much faster. Everytime I do take the REX somewhere I'm struck by just how small and convenient it really is though. Everything I use my Palm for I can do just as well with the REX, even if it's a bit slower.
My REX, which I got in the autumn of 2001, came with a USB cradle which was just the way I liked it. However, the serial cradle is actually the favoured thing among REX users. For one thing there's a great physical risk built into the USB cradle. You push the REX in from the right, and it fits really tight into the opening with the connector. Really tight. After I'd thrown it halfway across the desk twice when pulling it out I learned to only insert it far enough to get the connecor light to light up :-) ... People also seem to have less problems getting the serial cradle set up under Windows XP (though it worked fine for me). The serial cradle requires batteries to operate, which was the main reason I didn't want that (and of course it seems backward to have more serial connected things :-). Call me a freak, but I want as few of my things as possible to run on batteries that might run out at the wrong moment. Speaking of which, the REX runs on batteries of course, non-rechargable ones. The nice thing is that it doesn't lose all the data inside if batteries run out, and of course they last a long time as well (months at the very least, unless you're Niclas or some other power user of course :-).
I've mentioned speed a few times above, and it's a very noticeable thing about the REX. It's not a fast thing by any means, especially not when you compare to a Palm or any other PDA. Text entry slows down somewhere around the 30th character written, and even something like flipping between days in the calendar can take a second or two to happen. The REX wasn't really intended to be used for data entry (versions prior to the 6000 didn't even have entry capabilities), but you sure can do it if you need/want to. I don't have any great demands for speed in a device this large, especially not if it conserves batteries :-) ...
The only really bad thing about the REX is that it's not manufactured anymore, and that's something I find that I'm able to cope with quite easily. There are problems with this though, in the shape of lack of updates. Many people are having different kinds of problems with installation and usage, experiencing various bugs, and without official support there's no way that'll get fixed. Writing this I've just managed to get it installed in Windows XP and I had no real problems with that as soon as I followed all the instructions, but others haven't been as lucky.
Still, if you can get your hands on one for a reasonable price, do so! It's just too cool to have a PDA this small that does pretty much the same stuff as all the bigger ones. There's a lot of great help to be found online as well so you won't be on your own even if Intel doesn't want to answer your questions.