Casio Zoomer review, part 4 (addenda and corrections)

brian@piano.grot.starconn.com (Brian Smithson)

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From: brian@piano.grot.starconn.com (Brian Smithson)
Message-id: <9310171228.ZM6683@piano.grot.starconn.com>
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1993 12:28:56 -0700
X-Mailer: Z-Mail (2.1.1 01dec92)
To: zoomer-list-1993@grot.starconn.com
Subject: Casio Zoomer review, part 4 (addenda and corrections)
Status: OR

This is part 4 of my Casio Zoomer review, which is just some miscellaneous
additions and corrections to previous parts.

Screen brightness and contrast
------------------------------
I should have mentioned that the screen is not backlit or anything, and
so it relies on reflected ambient light.  This is really nice for conserving
battery life, but it does make the Zoomer more difficult to use in low or
no light.  So far, this hasn't been much of a problem.  I have noticed some
circumstances in which the best viewing angle is one which produces a fair
amount of reflected glare from overhead lighting (fluorescents, in the
office), and this is kind of a problem; a welcomed improvement would be a
glare-reducing surface on the screen.

Power switch
------------
I had mentioned that the power switch is a momentary switch, but I didn't
mention that it is a "soft" power switch.  The unit doesn't actually turn
off until it's ready to turn off.  For example, if you start an application
and then immediately turn the power off, it finishes activating the
application before it actually shuts down.  This is nice, but I kind of
wish that it blanked the screen immediately so that you'd get some feedback.

Silly "GEOS" sticker
--------------------
I'm not sure if this is present on all Casio Z-7000's, but mine had a little
GEOS logo (nice logo!) above the top of the screen on the left side.  It
matches the "Personal Digital Assistant Z-7000" lettering on the right side.
However, unlike the right side, the GEOS logo was actually a clear sticker
which was stuck to the unit.  Because of the texture of the Z-7000 case,
the sticker didn't stick very well and looked terrible.  Mine is now peeled
off :-).

Game buttons
------------
There are game controls on the Zoomer (a cross-shaped cursor control, plus
"A" and "B" buttons, like on a Nintendo).  As far as I can tell, they are
not used by any of the bundled software.

Hard reset (correction)
-----------------------
I mentioned that the "hard reset" button, inside the battery compartment,
did a really big reset on the unit and deleted all user files and preferences.
Apparently, this isn't true.  I did a reset a while ago (just to try it out).

-- 
-Brian Smithson
 brian@grot.starconn.com